A modest proposal (not!) in Canada

Apparently, a retired professor at Canada's Royal Military College proposed recently, via the state-run Canadian Broadcasting Corporation [update:  a reader helpfully has informed me that CBC is not state-run, but is state-funded, and operates under a mandate to "promote Canadian culture"], that the government subject churches to non-discrimination laws, that ministers, etc., be required to get licenses, and that the "registered religious practitioners" be prohibited from making "claims of exclusivity.  It should be unethical for any RRP to claim that theirs was the one true religion and believers in anything else or nothing were doomed to fire and brimstone.  One might also expect prohibition of ritual circumcisions, bans on preaching hate or violence, the regulation of faith healers, protocols for missionary work, etc."  Here is the stated motivation for the proposal: 

Now what is the point of proposing this? I do it because I am worried that the separation between church and state is under threat. Religion is important in our lives, but it can become a danger to society when people claim that the unalterable will of God is the basis for their opinions and actions. Yes religion can be a comfort and a guide, but we cannot take rules from our holy books and apply them to the modern world without democratic debate and due regard for the law.

The proposal is taken apart ably by Lydia McGrew, here.   But step back for a minute, and think about it:  An educated person in a constitutional democracy on a state-run television station [again, CBC is not state run] has proposed the total subjugation of religion to the state.  Kind of puts things like Pledge cases and Ten Commandments fights in perspective.

Rick