By Lloyd Mackey

March 2009

According to some observers, Translink, which operates most B.C. transit systems, is right to forbid secular humanists from mounting their anti-God bus ad campaign – if the organization is not willing to let other religious groups do the same.

John Stackhouse, theology and culture professor at Regent College, expressed that view in a recent email to the Translink board, in the wake of the B.C. Humanist Association’s request to run the ads.

He also suggested Translink “should let those ads run as long as they were prepared to let other religious groups mount their ads as well.” To Stackhouse, the point is that, “in the academic definition of religion, along functional lines, secular humanism certainly qualifies as a religion.”

Vancouver was the latest city to have the ads proposed, in a campaign which has been spreading through English-speaking cities across the Western world.

Atheist groups have been sponsoring ads on buses in London and Washington, D.C., in recent weeks. The British campaign was started by comedy writer Ariane Sherine in a Guardian newspaper column last June. It has received financial support from Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion.

She was spurred on by advertisements appearing on central London buses, apparently directing passersby to a website – which told those who did not accept Christianity that they would suffer for eternity in hell. Her response was to spearhead the placement of the ‘probably no God’ ads.

The Canadian leg of the campaign began in mid-January, when the Freethought Association of Canada announced plans to buy similar ads. The Toronto-based group is using its website, atheistbus.ca, to raise funds.

Interviewed by BCCN, Stackhouse asked: “Why would [Translink] forbid ads about religious matters when they allow ads that might be understood as being at least as provocative? I think of political campaign ads, [and] of salacious or otherwise immoral consumer advertising that implicitly and sometimes explicitly recommends a metaphysics and an ethic quite contrary to Christianity . . . Why should those public messages be allowed and not the message of the secular humanists – or of the Christians?”

Stackhouse suggests there is a lingering distinction between “organized religion” and everything else.

He adds: “We should be sophisticated enough to recognize that every message conveys something of a worldview and commends something of a way of life. And it is not at all clear that allowing implicit messages is somehow more appropriate than allowing explicit ones. One might argue that the implicit ones affect us insidiously while the explicit ones are simply there to take or leave as one will.”

But “in fairness,” he adds, “such policies [provide] a public space such that everyone can inhabit it without too high a level of provocation. And given the increasing levels of violence associated with religion around the world, one cannot help but sympathize with such a concern.”

The bottom line, in Stackhouse’s view, is that Translink has a pretty sensible policy – given the multiple concerns that have to be weighed. “They certainly made the right decision about the secular humanist advertisement campaign.”

TransLink’s policy states, in part: “No advertisement will be accepted which promotes or opposes a specific theology or religious ethic, point of view, policy or action.”

Connie denBok is happy with the ‘no God’ campaign. She is a Toronto minister with an evangelical focus. The youth group at her church, Alderwood United, recently sponsored Bus Stop Bible Studies (BSBS) ads in some Toronto subway cars.

DenBok notes: “There is a pathological politeness among Canadian church people,” whose approach is to keep silent in the face of attacks against belief in God. She quotes the Bible in defence of her stance: “When the disciples are silent, even the rocks will cry out.” (Luke 19:40)

BSBS (busstopbiblestudies.com)  now has 600 ads in play. Led by David Harrison,  the initiative began two years before the atheist campaign. Each ad includes a quote from the followed by several thought-provoking questions.

Harrison traces his own interest in God and the Bible to a time when he was facing business bankruptcy. He cried out: “God, if you are there, help me.” The help following that cry persuaded him, he suggests.

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For the youth group at Alderwood United, the BSBS project was most satisfying, because they got to choose the biblical passage that would go on the sign they sponsored.

Harrison says he welcomes Canadian free expression and freedom of religion stances that make possible the Bible study ads – and, for that matter, the atheist ads.

While there have been some blog protests and letters to the editor from individual God believers, a wide range of Christian leaders have, in fact, welcomed the ‘competition.’

The one public exception, so far, is Charles McVety, president of Toronto’s Canada Christian College, who maintains the atheist ad campaign is “intolerant.”

The United Church of Canada (UCC) has a more welcoming view. It has piggy-backed onto the issue by offering a chance for people to vote for or against belief in God on wondercafe.ca, an outreach website. At press time, the pro-God vote was winning. The debate has sparked a huge number of emails, now on display at the website.

Keith Howard, the person in charge of the Wonder Café project, said he doubted the church’s B.C. Conference would get involved in bus ads to counter the atheist efforts.  

Howard said that a UCC national initiative, putting an ad in the Globe and Mail, garnered a lot of attention.

“It allowed us to have a counter position that doesn’t sound confrontational. [The church] is looking for ways to be able to declare things we believe without shutting down conversation.”

In a January 30 interview with Jennifer Wells of the Globe and Mail, Malcolm Roberts – president of Smith Roberts Creative Communications, which organized the UCC’s online voting campaign – explained: “We can’t sell you on church. We can’t sell you on, there is a God or isn’t a God. We just want you to formulate your own opinion and what makes you feel comfortable.”

And Freethought Association president Justin Trottier says he welcomes the “cheeky” UCC counter-ads, suggesting “that’s what this is all about, dialogue.”

Don Hutchinson, Centre for Faith and Public Life vice-president and legal counsel for the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, welcomed the fact that atheist groups appear to have reversed what he suggested was their previous opposition to public expression of religious beliefs.

Now, he suggests, “religion is welcome in the public square, and this is really good news!”

But, perhaps the most intriguing response to the God bus ads came, on January 31, from Lyn Cockburn, an Edmonton Sun columnist.  

Cockburn, an evangelical in her teenage years, has taken more of a skeptical – albeit  good-natured – approach to faith, during her adult years.

True to form, she drew on the famous  ‘Pascal’s Wager,’ suggesting that if you “bet on God, you might get lucky.”

Blaise Pascal, a 17th century French mathematician and philosopher, had proposed a wager which Cockburn short-handed as: “If you believe and God exists, you’ll go to heaven. If you believe and are wrong, you lose nothing. If you don’t believe in God and God does exist, you lose heaven and go to hell. If you’re right that there is no God, you lose nothing and gain nothing.”

She then proposed: “Granted, all of that is a bit too long and involved to put on the side of a bus. Perhaps it could be boiled down to: “Take a chance, bet on God – B. Pascal.”

March 2009