In Public Spaces: Hosting Religious Conversations Across Diversity in Secular Quebec (original) (raw)
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Chester Ronning Center for the Study of Religion and Public Life, 2023
From 2022 to 2023, the Chester Ronning Center (in cooperation with the Institute for Religious and Socio-Political Studies) undertook a community needs assessment which proceeded from a need to contribute to the limited literature about public engagement for Religious Studies Centers (RCS), as well as the need to better understand religious community organizations in Alberta. In general, religious organizations feel grossly misunderstood and misrepresented, and do not find many spaces in which religious voices and ways of life are both welcomed and heard. The challenges of being religious in secular society tended to be consistent across denominational and even interfaith boundaries. Organizations have a general favourable impression of institutions like the University of Alberta and believe more can be done within it, especially in partnership with the Ronning Center, to make space for their views and ways of life to be understood. Suggestions for areas of service that the Ronning Center could expand into abounded, especially about supporting religious students on campus, and opening spaces for meaningful encounter and learning on the topic of religion. This assessment is an important first step into better understanding religious organizations in northern Alberta for the purposes of developing ongoing engagement with a University-affiliated RSC and addressing both their concerns and their needs. Taking all phases of this assessment into consideration, the final report concludes with a number of recommendations which can inform the strategic planning of RSCs, especially the Ronning Center.
Religious Sphere in Canada: Public Manifestations and Media Representations
New Media and Communication across Religions and Cultures, 2014
Canadian demographic trends indicate that the number of religious adherents from various faith groups is on the rise. Despite successful integration of some religions into mainstream Canadian society, discrimination against some faith groups persists. Christianity is the dominant religion in Canada, the minorities being Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism. The mainstream media are considered a main driver of social cohesion in Canada because they construct ideologies and define communities. They are a key lever in shaping debate about religion in the public sphere; however, debates exist on how religion is portrayed in the media. Despite the vast religious diversity in Canada, media organizations commonly ignore religious minorities, deeming them insignificant, unfavourable, and sometimes invisible. This chapter reviews and compares research findings on Canadian media depictions of these faith groups over the past few decades. Canadians of various faith groups have expressed a wide array of sentiments toward their representations in the media. Vast differences in media depictions exist; however, dominant discourses and representations prevail for each faith group: Christians are the normal group; Muslims are in discord with Western societies; Jews require sympathy; Buddhists are peaceful; Hindus are friendly; and Sikhs are extremists. It is suggested here that considerable research needs to be conducted on Canadian mainstream media patterns of coverage and portrayals of interfaith activities within Canadian society.
Intercultural welcoming spaces in Montréal
City, Culture and Society, 2012
Collective spaces are the underlying armatures of societies, a physical, economic, social framework that supports the creation and growth of shared identities. Since antiquity, common spaces have been the connective textures of a community, contributing through distributions, dimensions, morphologies, to embody the local material culture, outlining the society's values, attitudes, and beliefs. The paper takes into account three small scale outdoor collective spaces, leftover between buildings in Montréal, interested in recent years by active protection aimed at re-proposing the idea of common roots among inhabitants, creating a shared texture among different communities. Mediating the intercultural imperatives between the roots recall and the new immigrants encounter, Québec seems to have widened the vision that traditionally referred a country identity to its history, fastening its ethos to the environmental qualities of spaces. As at the time of the encounter between the Aboriginal first nations living the territories and the French colonists, even today, nature and culture are the two poles around which the dynamic interactions revolve, contributing in small inbuilt urban fragments, to the development and spreading of the sense of being Québecois. The paper, in line with the latest issue of the journal (2011), dedicated to creative cities, outlines the efforts pursued in Montreal to tie settled communities and nature in a new conception of public space.
Media narratives of the interactions between religions and cultures in Canada
New Media and Communication Across Religions and Cultures, 2014
Canadian immigration patterns suggest that as the country retains its commitment to intake some half a million immigrants a year from Southeast Asia, Africa, South and Central America, the dynamics of religious diversity and interactions in Canada are bound to increase. A fixed and rigid “secularist” mindset among news outlets, magazine boardrooms, film companies, and other media will miss the richness of the creativity, diversity, imagination, and interactions between cultures and religions, which will continue to form the “street narratives” that the media's meta-narrative overlooks. This chapter documents instances of where the “meta-narrative” is seen to prevail and distort the accurate portrayal of religion and culture in Canada, where it has missed the interactions between religions, and the contributions that culture and religion are making to each other.
Research Gate, 2019
This is a brief exploration of the changing landscape to religion and as Millennials leave traditional religion behind they bring with them remnants of faith they bring to secular spaces, seeking community and inspiration. One interesting study called How We Gather from Harvard Divinity School examines this specifically through the new spiritual innovators and the needed dialogue with traditional religious leadership.