Immigrants, Religion, Community, and Culture

I went to a couple of volunteer orientation meetings for the Metro Immigrant Settlement Association and Halifax Immigrant Learning Center. It was interesting. I would say most of the people who were immigrants (or former immigrants, I’m not sure when you stop being new to Canada and just start being from here). It was interesting to learn what that process looks like for people and the struggles new Canadians face. What was more interesting was watching the people who work at MISA/HILC respond to me. This place is understandably a hotbed of pluralism and “tolerance”. It may have all been in my head but seemed to notice a bit of a wall go up when they figured out I was a Christian, and a pastor at that. At one point I was having a one-on-one discussion with another one of the volunteers who was looking for a new church to attend and I told him he would be welcome to visit Deep Water anytime. Shortly thereafter the person who was leading the session managed to work into our discussion of a Job description for a volunteer role that sharing our religious views was definitely not appropriate for that role. She stopped looking around (like she usually does) and stared directly at the other side of the class when she said it. This was about our 4th hour of orientation and this was the first time they mentioned religion. Found that interesting. I haven’t decided if I actually want to volunteer with them or not. I have a hunch the “religion” thing would become an issue, especially since one of my roles would be to introduce this new person to my circle of friends which at this point are almost all people who are Christians (I know, I’m working on it.)

This whole experience leads to an even deeper understanding of our culture. I think most everyone who was in that session, particularly the leaders would say that spirituality is important and that religious views enrich our lives and all that jazz yet they expect that you can truly befriend someone and interact with them on a regular basis and develop a meaningful friendship without your “religion” ever entering the picture. Ridiculous. If you can do that you suck at your religion. How could anyone, Christian or not, get that close to someone without their religion coming up? Obviously you would have to have that area super compartmentalized. If I had been meeting with someone weekly for 3 months to hang out, practice English, talk about life in Canada, etc and on the last day they said, oh – by the way, I’m Muslim and I had never heard them talk about Allah, or going to mosque, or say they couldn’t meet at such and such a time because that is when they pray frankly I would think – they must not be much of a Muslim and Islam must not mean that much to them. Either that or they have been working incredibly hard to hide this important part of themselves. In the first case I’d lose some respect for them, in the second case I be offended. Either way I’d say if you are __________ (insert your religion here) than go for it, be that around me, let me see that part of your life.

And here’s the lesson for those of us who follow Jesus. True community is when we learn to embrace people for who they are not when people learn to dumb who they are down enough that pretty much anyone could embrace them. The world’s version of acceptance says you need to know what to hide in order to fit in and the Jesus version says you need to realize that no matter what you reveal you have a place with me.

Of course the other question is if I were Buddist, Hindu, Muslim, would they feel the same way and what about the immigrants – do they get the same speech? Welcome to Canada, your sexuality, socio-economic status, and culture are welcome, but please check your religion at the door.