The abbey by the Fraser River in Vancouver, Westminster Abbey, expresses thanks. This article is excerpted from Jennifer Le's album, the monumental work "A Comprehensive View of the Maple Leaf Country," which details various aspects of life in Canada. To read the full article, please click: Here. Without the author's permission, note: due to original author copyright, please do not reprint. Friends at home often say, why not go to church? There,
Domestic friends often say: Why not go to church? You can meet many friends there who will help you before landing. Before landing, LG also said to me that in Canada, you can make friends through the church and find an organization to rely on. I know a few religious friends at home, all of whom are kind and warm-hearted. My cousins and their families in the US and Canada are all devout Christians. So, I originally thought that after landing, I would quickly enter this circle. After all, regarding religion, I still have some foundation.
When living with the landlord, both were devout Christians, so since we moved in, they haven't stopped promoting the gospel to us. The landlady gave us CDs introducing the life of Christ, some small booklets of doctrines, and often introduced to us how to follow the Lord's teachings, overcome her husband's bad temper through constant prayer.
Here, the Christian church is divided into different ethnic churches according to the language used by the preaching pastors. Western churches also have different denominations. Koreans have their own churches, and Chinese churches are divided into Cantonese-speaking and Mandarin-speaking ones.
When we first arrived, we followed the landlord's family to a nearby Chinese church, where the pastor preached in Mandarin, but it didn't feel very fresh. In the church aisle, there was a reception desk with several warm-hearted church members registering people behind the desk, greeting each other warmly. They seemed to know each other well. For newcomers, whether they are church members or not, they are warmly welcomed, with name tags pinned on their chests, introduced by the host to the attending church members as new sisters or brothers, looking like a warm big family of mainland immigrants.
My landlords could be considered very devout believers. Basically, every Sunday they go to church unless they are too sick to go. The church's organizational system is also very strict, divided into small groups of church members based on proximity or good relationships, each layer having leaders to convey the opinions or activities of the uppermost level of the church and reflect the opinions of the congregation upward.
According to the landlady, church friends often help each other. Many people encounter work or life problems and seek help from pastors and church friends. The church also frequently organizes various fundraising activities to send warmth to the poor in the parish...
Last year before Halloween, the landlord told my son: Halloween is a pagan festival, Christians don't recognize this festival, so my son was not allowed to bring Halloween costumes and decorations home, and he was also told to drive away children coming for candy on Halloween night. That evening, the whole family went to participate in the church-organized event to resist the "devil's temptation."
Apart from my landlord and my cousins in Canada, more than ten friends and classmates we know here do not believe in religion. When we first arrived, my LG asked a friend who had been in Canada for ten years and his wife why he didn't join the church. The friend's wife said: joining the church requires paying "tithes" - giving 10% of one's income to the church. Poor people already pay a lot of taxes to the Canadian government and don't want to pay more taxes. Moreover, it is tax on top of tax (meaning tax after income tax).
I asked my girlfriend why she doesn't join the church. Her answer was that the church now is not pure, many people are not devout Christians, but have other purposes for going to church. She has no other purpose, nor does she want to pay "tithes" to support those pastors. With this money, if she wants to do good deeds, she can donate directly to the poor, and the government will even give her tax deductions! Besides, just looking at those promotions makes her feel repelled, unable to believe, so she doesn't go to church. And she tells me that there aren't many Christians in her company either.
Later, I asked the landlady if one must pay "tithes" to be a believer. She replied: Not necessarily. If you don't have money, you don't have to pay, just doing volunteer work at the church is fine.
To be honest, I also feel uncomfortable about this way of collecting money, though I know that the church needs to survive and pastors need to eat and live. Remembering the dark medieval times of the Crusades when the rulers of the combined political and religious Catholic Church exploited the poor masses through "tithes", I never expected that hundreds of years later, believers still have to support the church in such a way.
At the beginning, my LG looked at the introduction of doctrines brought by the landlord out of curiosity. But once he started reading, he couldn't continue because the doctrines use absolute terms in their propaganda. My LG said he has been brainwashed by atheism for half his life and finds it hard to believe these things.
I originally thought about letting my son be influenced by Christianity a little. Unfortunately, the landlord's bad temper completely destroyed the beautiful impression of Christianity in my son's mind. He thinks that someone as "trashy" as our landlord, who is a devout Christian, is someone he doesn't want to associate with. Moreover, although the landlady is like an angel, it is obvious that whether a person is kind or not has nothing to do with whether they are a believer. Probably because the child suffered too much委屈at that time, his impression of Christianity was greatly discounted.
After moving, there was no Chinese church nearby. However, the town where I live has more than twenty churches that organize events every week. Each Friday's local newspaper has a special section publishing the activities of each church for Sunday, including which pastor will preach what content, and the time and location, etc.
Among my Western neighbors, it seems that not many people believe in religion. I asked a few people, some said they believe, some said they don't, but none of them were as devout as my landlord and my relatives.
The church schools here operate independently and are also public schools. It is said that one-third of the property tax we pay each year goes to education. If my child attends a public school, then the city government will transfer the educational funds from the property tax to the local education bureau; if my child attends a church school, then these funds will be transferred to the church school system for use as educational expenses.
It is said that the primary and secondary church schools here originally had strict requirements for believers, and children had to be baptized before they could attend. However, with the decrease in the number of believers, the student population of church schools began to decline, and there were frequent reports of church school mergers. Now, it is said that with a believer's recommendation, children can attend church primary and secondary schools. As for church high schools, there are no such requirements anymore.
Here, the church schools, under the name of violating the doctrines, do not teach students physiological hygiene knowledge. Although the government and many civilians strongly disagree with this, there is nothing they can do. Originally, the provincial government wanted to force church schools to follow the Ontario education curriculum and include physiological hygiene education. However, this proposal was quickly blocked by powerful church forces and had to be postponed because government officials had to consider the next election and dared not offend the church with numerous believers.
This is what I have seen and heard about churches in Canada. Just for your reference.
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