Call to Conscience – An Important Issue with Implications on Religous Freedom

This past Sunday at Toronto City Church we had a representative from Call to Conscience share with us about a campaign that is being organized to protect the rights of doctors, nurses and other healthcare practitioners to refrain from being involved in assisted suicide. Assisted suicide is now legal in our nation and in our province here in Ontario that government is setting things up so that everyone would be forced to participate whether they feel it violates their conscience or not.

I definitely have some strong feelings about assisted suicide but also do not approach the issue without compassion and understanding. That being said, regardless of where you stand regarding the issues I think that any rational person would agree that no one should be forced to participate in this if it violates their religious beliefs, conscience or personal morality.

Religous Freedom Watch: Canada Summer Jobs Program

I had initially planned to post today on ‘5 Things that Will Stop You from Moving Forward in 2018‘ but ultimately decided to go another direction (I plan to get this post out some time next week).

As a pastor and Christian leader, I have some growing and serious concerns about religious freedom in our nation. While I am thankful for all the liberty that we do have here in Canada, I do believe we need to stay aware and vigilant about threats that do arise and speak out for righteousness.

One such threat is the Canadian Government’s recent decision with its summer job funding program to discriminate against any organization that is Pro-Life. This potentially will affect thousands of churches, ministries, not-for-profits and groups of other faiths as well and severely affect the programs they run to serve the community. Furthermore, the logic that is being used in this decision could be expanded to a number of areas and even threaten the charitable status of churches (if we would be denied funding because our church is pro-life how long before our charitable status comes into question?).

My Canada posted a recent update giving a more in-depth look into this situation as well as some clear action points that you can take to make a difference. Check it out here. Let’s pray. Let’s speak out. Let’s take action.

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Photo by Pam Menegakis on UnSpash