After discussing what we're up against last week, we saw a major change on Thursday when the Legislature agreed to amend its practice of starting each day's session with "prayers" to "prayers and reflections."
This change came as a result of your campaigning on this issue. It shows that those challenges - religious privilege and apathy - can be overcome when we do the work and we do it together.
There's still lots more to do.
The fact that MLAs opted to keep the prayers in prayers and reflections shows that our politicians still feel like they can't fully end the state endorsement of religion. We see this as well in the words of O Canada, which were recently made gender neutral but MPs were unwilling to touch the religious language in it.
More tangibly, this also shows itself in the handouts given to religious private schools and hospitals, the property tax exemptions uncritically afforded to churches, the immunity from human rights laws for religious groups and who can perform marriages.
In the past year, we've shown some of this work and our goal is to continue to expose and confront these privileges in the pursuit of a more secular, just and equal society.
We need your support to make this happen. Please consider joining the BC Humanist Association today for a donation of as little as $10.