Can the tendency of the media to consider religious associations as good spokespersons for communicating the concerns of cultural communities with regard to public policies lead to misinformation?
Several interest groups are involved in the issue of secularism in Quebec. On the one hand, the Mouvement laïque québécois, Pour les droits des femmes du Québec and the Rassemblement pour la laïcité militate, as their name or statutes indicate, in favor of secularism.
On the other hand, religious associations such as the National Council of Canadian Muslims, the World Sikh Organization of Canada, the Lord Reading Law Society and the Christian Law Alliance defend principles in accordance with their religious dogmas.
These antagonistic positions are the prerogative of a healthy democracy.
However, questions arise when the interventions of an interest group are perceived as reflecting the concerns of the whole of a given cultural community, as is often the case for religious associations.
Religious associations
You should know that Quebec stands out from the other provinces since it is here that we find the highest proportion of people who believe that their religious or spiritual convictions are not very or not at all important (40%) in terms of the way they live their life, compared to only 15% to 25% in the other provinces. Quebec also stands out with a lower proportion of people participating in a group religious activity at least once a month, ie 14% compared to 21% to 32% in the other provinces.
This Quebec specificity suggests that Quebecers are less likely to identify with the positions of their Church when it comes to public policy.
Added to this are the results of a major study of 130,000 American clergy from 40 different denominations, which demonstrates that denominational affiliation is highly informative for a pastor’s party registration, but not for a congregant, and that many congregants, especially in conservative churches, are not politically aligned with their pastor. Thus, it is not because a group shares the same religious convictions that there is consensus at the political level.
It is also important to consider the objectives of religious associations when intervening at the policy level. The international survey by AWID (Association for Women’s Rights in Development) notably established that one of the strategies used by religious fundamentalisms to exert influence on society and politics was to penetrate the political and public space. Great recruitment efforts are thus taking place in schools, colleges and universities through the promotion of religious identity at the expense of common citizenship.
This factual information therefore calls for caution when interpreting the concerns of a cultural community through the prism of religious associations.
Role of the media
The role of the media, in a democratic society, is to inform the population of the issues that concern them with as much objectivity as possible. However, in the case of secularism, the media have, it seems, little questioned the effective representativeness of religious associations or even the objectives they were aiming for when they took a stand.
This lack of questioning, when it comes to public policy, is very worrying.
In politics, a party leader seeks to obtain a minimum of 90% support to feel legitimate in his role as standard bearer of the vision of his members. Can the representatives of different religious communities claim to have a similar level of support from their members when they speak out on public policies? It would be amazing.
It would be good for the media to take this into account when it comes to adequately informing the population on political issues, while respecting the sovereignty of citizens. Failure to do so contributes to misinformation.