Dimitri Soudas: The secular state we’ve forgotten

"A school funded by taxpayers is not a cathedral, a mosque, a synagogue, or a temple. It is a public institution, bound by a civic compact: to educate every child, regardless of background, to the best of its ability, for the maximum number of instructional days possible," writes Dimitri Soudas. Photo by Julia McKay /Julia McKay/The Whig-Standard

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I’ll begin with a personal disclosure that may seem, at first, to cut against the argument I’m about to make.

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This Sunday is Greek Orthodox Easter. It is the most sacred day in my faith — the celebration of the Resurrection, the centrepiece of the Orthodox Christian calendar. My family will gather, as we do every year, to mark a holy day that binds us to our heritage, our ancestors, and our God.

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And yet, this week, I learned that students in the York Region District School Board — children of Greek Orthodox faith — were denied the flexibility to write their tests even a day or two later, to accommodate a religious observance their families hold deeply sacred. No leeway. No accommodation. Rules are rules.

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I found that troubling. But not for the reason you might expect.

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Because here is what I find equally troubling: that the very same school board, like some other publicly funded boards, schedules what are called “diamond days” — days off granted in recognition of various religious and cultural observances — more frequently, in some cases, than it schedules standard PA days. That publicly funded schools have, in many jurisdictions, installed prayer rooms within their walls. That the secular public institution, funded by every taxpayer regardless of faith, has quietly become a mosaic of religious accommodation — while simultaneously being unable to offer two extra days to a Greek Orthodox child before a math test.

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Something has gone sideways. And it’s time we said so out loud.

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Let me be precise about what I am not saying. I am not saying religion is unimportant. I am not saying faith has no place in the lives of Canadians. I am not saying that Greek Orthodox Easter, or Eid, or Diwali, or any other religious observance is less valid, less meaningful, or less worthy of respect. Every person’s relationship with their faith is their own, and in a free and democratic society, that relationship must always be protected.

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But freedom of religion has two sides to it — and we have become dangerously comfortable with only one of them.

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A secular state means that the state does not favour one religion over another. It also means that the state does not allow religion — any religion — to colonize public institutions funded by the common purse. A school funded by taxpayers is not a cathedral, a mosque, a synagogue, or a temple. It is a public institution, bound by a civic compact: to educate every child, regardless of background, to the best of its ability, for the maximum number of instructional days possible.

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Prayer rooms in public schools are a violation of that compact. Not because prayer is wrong. But because prayer belongs in the home, in the house of worship, in the private sphere that a free society zealously protects. When we install prayer rooms in schools, we are not being inclusive — we are blurring a boundary that exists precisely to protect everyone equally, including the believers. The moment the state endorses one form of worship through the infrastructure of a public building, it has taken a side. And the secular state has no business taking sides on matters of faith.