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In the November election, the Liberal Party retained majority control of the Parliament, while the Canadian Alliance, the nation's second-largest political party, strengthened its base in Alberta and other western provinces. Stockwell Day, a lifelong Pentecostal and head of the Canadian Alliance, lost his bid to replace Jean Chrétien as Canada's prime minister. "When the fires of fear are stoked in a deliberate, strategic way, we couldn't overcome that significantly in a 36-day campaign," Day said in an exclusive interview with Christianity Today.

Day's ascendancy to a national political profile and his party's election setback highlight deepening cultural and religious divisions within Canadian society, pitting the oil-rich West against the establishment East and devout Christian believers against committed secularists.

Day downplayed his religious beliefs during the campaign, but his candidacy became a lightning rod for criticism and religious ridicule:

• "How scary is he?" asked Maclean's, Canada's national newsmagazine, in a lead article about Day in July 2000; thereafter, the word scary became common usage in describing evangelicals.

• Hedy Fry, Canada's secretary of state for multiculturalism and the status of women, publicly denounced Day's belief that "Jesus Christ is the God of the whole universe" as "an insult to every Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh—everybody else who believes in other religions."

• Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the government-owned radio and TV network, produced a documentary on Day's religious beliefs focusing on his endorsement of the Genesis narrative of the Creation. The producers did not interview Day or allow him to respond to the program's sharp criticism of a speech he had given three years earlier. In another broadcast, a Liberal Party critic used a purple Barney dinosaur doll as a prop and mocked Day's views.

• Educational discrimination: Trinity Western University (TWU) in British Columbia traditionally sent student teachers to another institution to complete their teacher training. But after TWU, which is affiliated with the Evangelical Free Church, applied to graduate its own teachers, the British Columbia College of Teachers challenged the request in court, claiming that TWU students could be bigots because they adhere to traditional Christian teaching on sexuality. Bob Burkinshaw, a TWU history professor, said that not only does his university promote mutual understanding, but it is the only British Columbia university that requires students to take a course in thinking through social issues. The Canadian Supreme Court is considering the case this year.

• Privatized religion: A recent article in The University of British Columbia Law Review argued that the justices of the Canadian Supreme Court are devaluing the public expression of religion and expanding other civil rights, including those of homosexuals. As legal scholar David M. Brown says, "An expansive definition of freedom of religion appears to have given way to a view that religion is a private matter, which should not intrude into the public square." Ian Hunter, law professor and former human-rights judge, says that although surveys show about 80 percent of Canadians identify themselves as Christians, public religious expression has become so stigmatized that to be "publicly identified as a Christian in Canada is a political and social liability."

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April 2 2001, Vol. 45, No. 5