In the News: Laval University Pushes Religious Propaganda

Contre le prosélytisme religieux à l’Université Laval (Against Religious Proselytism at Laval University), Claude Simard, Le Devoir, 2017-04-22

The Faculty of Theology and Religious Sciences of Laval University in Quebec City has announced the establishment of a new professorship in the teaching of protestant evangelical “missiology” (missionary activity), using a donation of $420,000 from Evangelical doners in Canada and the United-States. Claude Simard, a retired Laval U. education professor, denounces this religious interference in the operations of a public institution of learning whose proper mission is to promote objective non-partisan education. Instead, this new post will promote ways to be a more effective propagandist for Evangelical Christianity.

Recall that Protestant Evangelical Christianity is a religious denomination which is currently growing and increasing in influence in the world. It is second only to Islam in that regard. By establishing this position, Laval University is abandoning the values of the Enlightenment and returning to the Middle Ages when universities put as much effort into promoting belief as they did knowledge.

Given that “interfaith dialogue” and “diversity” are so fashionable these days, how long will it be before a similar professorate in Islamic “missiology” is established? There is certainly no lack of funds to do so: Saudi Arabia would surely be very happy to provide generous financing, as it does to many mosques throughout the world, as long as the version of Islam taught there is sufficiently Wahhabist.

This is an unacceptable exploitation of an institution of higher learning for the purposes of religious proselytism. It is further evidence, if any were needed, that faculties of canonical theology are anachronisms and have no place in public universities. Theology is a pseudo-science, an empty shell, the study of nothing based on nothing.

See also:

• Création de la Chaire de leadership en enseignement en missiologie protestante évangélique (Establishment of the Leadership Professorate in the Teaching of Protestant Evangelical Missiology), press release of Laval University, 2017-03-30