The distinctions between Canadians and Americans -- in the past blatantly visible to the more ardent of Canadians and totally invisible to nearly everybody else -- is at last becoming more plainly evident.
The Americans, it seems to be turning out, are more Christian than we are, or at least far less anti-Christian.
So much so that the distinction is the topic of a major article in this month's edition of Christianity Today, a much respected American Evangelical news magazine, founded by Billy Graham, who remains its honorary chairman.
In January, Christianity Today ran an editorial on the Canadian election campaign and the militant attacks made on Alliance leader Stockwell Day for his Christian convictions. It was headed, "Bigotry Up North."
The magazine then assigned Toronto freelance writer Denyse O'Leary to review the status of Evangelical Christianity in Canada, and discover why Day's religion had drawn such abuse upon him.
Her article is entitled, "A Velvet Oppression," the term used by Vancouver civil rights lawyer Iain Benson to describe the opposition Canadian Christians increasingly encounter in courts and in dealing with government. The oppression described in the O'Leary article, however, isn't very velvet.
Never once, she found in examining news coverage of the campaign, did Day introduce the subject of his Christian beliefs. Always, it was brought up either by the Liberals or the media. When it did come up, the attacks became strident. Examples:
Hedy Fry, secretary of state for multiculturalism and the status of women, denounced Day's belief that "Jesus Christ is the God of the whole universe" as "an insult to every Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh -- everybody else who believes in other religions."
Macleans, the national newsmagazine, asked "How Scary?" was Day in a cover line.
The government-owned CBC picked up a speech Day made three years ago in which Day was disclosed as a "young earth" believer as the basis of a whole documentary. Nowhere, however, did they give Day the opportunity to defend or explain.
(The CBC also promoted the jeer at the Alliance proposal to settle moral issues by referendum. The network repeatedly ran a spoof call for a referendum on whether Day should change his first name to "Doris.")
However, her article continues, this Canadian oppression of Christianity is by no means confined to election campaigns. The Supreme Court, for instance, will soon decide whether Trinity Western University will be allowed to turn out trained teachers.
Its requirement that its students abide by traditional Christian sexual morality is seen as an attack on sexual freedom. How could people who believe in marital fidelity and straight sex possibly make good teachers?
A recent article in the British Columbia Law Review traces the way that the Supreme Court of Canada, while expanding all other civil rights, is curtailing freedom of religion.
The law, says the article, increasingly takes the view religion is "a private matter that should not intrude in the public square." Since people of nearly all religions draw their morality from their faith, this effectively prohibits them from holding public office.
A Toronto print shop operator was fined $5,000 by the human rights commission for refusing to print material from a gay organization, meaning (says rights lawyer Benson) that a Christian is prohibited from practising his faith in his job.
All of which, in the eyes of American Evangelicals, is shockingly discriminatory.
To many Canadians it has become reasonable and acceptable. And that represents a significant difference.
The article attributes this difference to the decline of the mainline churches from the 1960s onward.
I think longtime editorialist Bruce Hutchinson gave us the basis of a better explanation. The U.S., he said, represents "the affirmation of dissent," where Canada represents "the affirmation of order."
It's a nice way of saying that Canadians do as they're told where Americans make up their own minds. When the "respected" intellectual view in Canada was nominally Christian, then we were Christian.
Now that it's liberal, skeptical and anti-Christian, we go that way. We're sheep, and they aren't, and that's the difference.