Our new report looks at prayers in Saskatchewan municipal council meetings. This podcast was generated in part with the help of Google's NotebookLM AI tools.

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BCHA Research Coordinator Dr Teale Phelps Bondaroff provides an update on some of our upcoming research and how you can get involved.

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In June 2023, Chilliwack Progress Editor Paul Henderson was fired for tweets criticizing those offering little more than "thoughts and prayers" in response to the near-drowning of a local child. In this presentation for the BC Humanist Association, Paul speaks about his firing and his time covering the religious right in the Fraser Valley.

Read more about Paul's story

CONTENT NOTE: Parts of this discussion touch on child abuse and suicide.

Perry Bulwer is the author of Misguided: My Jesus Freak Life in a Doomsday Cult.

Misguided is a unique first-hand account of a life spent in the Children of God, a/k/a The Family, a millenarian doomsday sex cult under the sway of a charismatic leader, David Berg.

In 1972, Perry Bulwer, a naive 16-year-old growing up in Port Alberni, BC dropped out of high school to run away with the Children of God, one of a number of millennial Christian cults that sprang up in the 1960s and 1970s. Soon, Perry was preaching the cult's doomsday message on the streets of some of the largest cities in the world.

Bulwer takes the reader on an extraordinary trip through the world of biblical literalism, fundamentalist endtime fantasies, paranormal spirituality, evangelical extremism, ritual abuse, and liberally interpreted Biblical teachings that were used to justify licentious sexual doctrines, evangelical prostitution, and child sexual abuse.

Along the way, we learn about the inner workings of the CoG, a/k/a The Family, and the machinations of David Berg, a self-declared endtime prophet who claimed to be personally mentioned in the Bible, and that God spoke through him. Berg predicted the imminent destruction of America, the appearance of the Antichrist in 1985, and the Second Coming of Jesus in 1993. Berg died in 1994, before various law enforcement agencies around the world caught up with him.

Perry Bulwer escaped The Family in 1991, managing to escape the cult's tight control while living in Asia. Returning to Canada, he tried to pick up his life where he had left it off two decades earlier. Through education Bulwer lost his religion, turning from religious extremist to secular humanist lawyer, fighting for the rights of sex workers and drug users living on the streets of Vancouver. Haunted by his own past, Bulwer became an advocate for thousands of second-generation survivors of the cult's child abuse and psychological trauma scattered around the world.

About Perry Bulwer

Born in Port Alberni, BC, in 1955, Perry Bulwer joined the Children of God after dropping out of high school at age 16, and spent the next two decades living in CoG communes in Canada, the United States, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Malaysia, Macau, Hong Kong, and, undercover, in Beijing. In 1991, aged 36, he was able to escape the cult --- with no money or possessions, and little in the way of education or skills. He spent the next decade catching up on his studies, and in 2002, graduated from the University of British Columbia with a law degree.

After a 2004 diagnosis of PTSD and fibromyalgia, Bulwer retired from the practice of law (though he remains registered with the Law Society of BC). Back home in Port Alberni, Perry Bulwer advocates for second-generation cult survivors, continuing to shed light on the Children of God, a/k/a The Family.

Bettianne Hedges of Humanist Canada hosts Leslie Rosenblood from Centre for Inquiry Canada alongside Teale Phelps Bondaroff and Ian Bushfield of the BC Humanist Association, who will discuss the many ways Canada still tangibly privileges religion and its institutions over similar non-theistic organizations. Just a few policy choices cost Canadians billions - yes, with a "b" - each and every year.

You can learn more by reading:

• Cost of Religion in Canada from CFIC
• A Public Good from BCHA
• Follow the Money from BCHA
• An Extra Burden from BCHA

Recorded March 19, 2024

Join Megan Sheldon of Be Ceremonial as we explore the foundations of ceremony, including how we can create our own rituals to acknowledge times of change in life, death, and everything in between. You will learn how to craft a ritual, design a ceremony, and mark the seemingly invisible moments that often go unnoticed in our society. There will be an opportunity for questions, as well as a chance to browse the Be Ceremonial platform that inspires you with hundreds of secular rituals across the life cycle.

About Megan Sheldon, Co-Founder & CEO, Be Ceremonial

Megan Sheldon (she/her) is the co-founder of Be Ceremonial, the world's first guided ritual app + online community. Be Ceremonial inspires you to create your own ceremonies across the life cycle, drawing on hundreds of universal rituals. Megan is a cultural mythologist, secular celebrant, and end of life doula who is striving to change the cultural narratives around death, dying and grief.

Download End of Life: A Guide for Humanists and Non-Religious People in BC

Despite decades of calls to action, our emissions are not on a path to stave off a horrific future for our children and future generations. The BC Climate Emergency Campaign is a group of civil society organizations, anxious about the climate emergency, who are collaborating to increase the ambition of climate policy and action in BC. We are not a formal coalition, but have chosen to work together on a joint campaign. Signatories, which include the BC Humanist Association, share a belief that BC’s climate plan, CleanBC, needs a profound jolt, one that would transform CleanBC into a genuine emergency plan and force the provincial government to take real action on climate change. In this webinar, BC Climate Emergency Campaign Coordinator Emiko Newman will prioritize an action-oriented, hope-filled approach that's heavy on solutions to the crisis. Presenter: Emiko Newman, BC Climate Emergency Campaign coordinator Emiko is passionate about exploring the intersections of social justice and climate justice. In 2022, she completed a master’s degree in Social Justice Education and Environmental Studies at the University of Toronto, focusing on the power of eco-pedagogies for fostering a praxis of hope within environmental education. Her past work experience includes coordinating anti-racism workshops, working as a research assistant on environmental and sustainability education, and teaching piano. She joined the BC Climate Emergency campaign with the desire to work alongside others to push the government away from incremental action towards the emergency-level action demanded by the climate crisis. Emiko is also an avid field hockey player, pianist, taiko player, and (sometimes) completer of reading challenges.

Despite a 2015 Supreme Court of Canada ruling that prayers at municipal council meetings are unconstitutional, multiple communities across British Columbia still opened their 2022 inaugural council meetings with a prayer.

This is a recording of a discussion about prayers with BCHA Research Coordinator Dr Teale Phelps Bondaroff where he explores our latest work updating the status of prayers at BC municipalities. We've made incredible progress in ensuring compliance since 2018 but there are still a number of stragglers that we will continue to challenge.

Learn more about our work at https://www.bchumanist.ca

The Government of British Columbia's Master Agreement with religious healthcare facilities allows some hospitals to 'opt-out' of providing patients with procedures that they're legally entitled too.

This means your right to MAID or an abortion is subject to the whims of Catholic Bishops and not the rule of law.

Find out about the history of religious hospitals in the province and how this agreement came about. We'll also give you the tools to help end these religious opt-outs.

Special Guest: Dying With Dignity Canada's CEO Helen Long.

References

Vandenberg and Boschma (2020)

Fritz (2015) The origins of public funded medical care in BC and the BCMA’s contributions

Schratz (2018) Important history behind out health care

CBC From the archives: Kim Campbell clashes with BC premier over abortion

Abortion History (2007)

Denominational Health principal members

Humanists call for end to Master Agreement

Email your MLA (BCHA)

Email your MLA (DWDC)

Share your story (DWDC)

The Canadian constitution does not have a formal establishment clause separating church and state as the USA does, so can Canada be considered a secular country? In this presentation, BC Humanist Association Executive Director Ian Bushfield will argue that Canada’s unique legal and political history, coupled with a forward-looking Charter of Rights and Freedoms and judiciary, has resulted in more robust protections for the nonreligious and state neutrality than presently exist in America. Bushfield will walk through several of the major legal cases in Canadian religious law, from Big M Drug Mart to Saguenay and Trinity Western University. Along the way, he’ll highlight how secular activists and humanist organizations have increasingly made their voices heard through the justice system and identify several issues on the horizon.

This talk by BCHA Executive Director Ian Bushfield was recorded at the Kelowna, Atheists, Skeptics & Humanists Association (KASHA) Forum on July 31, 2023. Please note that the final minute of the talk was re-recorded.

The BCHA team discusses its newly released report: Open for Unconstitutional Business.

Read the full report

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