From March 22-24, 2015, I attended a conference organized by academics, policymakers, think-tankers, and religious leaders called Our Whole Society: Bridging the Religious-Secular Divide. Highlights of the conference included addresses by Andrew Bennett (Canada’s Religious Freedom Ambassador) and Doug White (Centre for Pre-Confederation Treaties and Reconciliation, Vancouver Island University), among others. It was also good to see my colleague Paul Bramadat (University of Victoria) give such incisive comments throughout the conference. I was also pleased to see my Roman Catholic friends represented so ably by the deep Vatican II-inspired comments of Shawn Flynn (St Mark’s College).
I participated in a panel called Doing interfaith in a secular age alongside Gianni Castiglione (President, University of Toronto Secular Alliance) moderated by the Very Revd Peter Elliott (Dean, Christ Church Cathedral, Vancouver). The story of how I was invited dates back to January 2015, when the key conference organizer, University of Toronto PhD student-extraordinaire Helen Mo, contacted me to offer my thoughts on identity and religion in Vancouver. As we got closer to the date, I discovered that she had put me on the ‘Charles Taylor panel’ with an interfaith twist. My comments therefore revolved around Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age with examples of interfaith cooperation in Vancouver, BC, especially the interreligious social justice alliance from 2007-8, Faith Communities Called to Solidarity with the Poor. This panel offered many opportunities to interact with the audience, who participated quite vigorously. I was also glad to meet Dean Elliott, a person who has been so influential in the Anglican Church of Canada (and in the Anglican Communion writ large) and who above all is a real pastor and therefore a real person.
I wrote up my reflections on the conference at the Bulletin for the Study of Religion‘s blog. Read it here. As the reflection will show, I valued my time at this conference, although I had my disagreements with a great many of the speakers. But most of all, I’m glad for the friendships that developed from this conference, especially with Helen Mo, in whose very able hands this conference generated some very productive thoughts.
Justin K.H. Tse 