Separation Of Church And History

Former PM Paul Martin was never ashamed of his Catholic roots. Yet a few Wikipedia enthusiasts are apparently ashamed on his behalf.

Until a few days ago, former Prime Minister Paul Martin was still Catholic, Stephen Harper was affiliated with the Christian Missionary Alliance and the late MacKenzie King used to be a slightly unconventional Presbyterian. Then, this information mysteriously vanished from Wikipedia. A quick online search revealed that the sudden disappearance of information concerning the religious affiliations of Canadian politicians-both dead and alive-was a haphazard editorial decision taken after a brief online discussion between the likes of DoubleBlue, Ducio1234 and Skeezix1000, thus confirming the worst misgivings that so many have about Wikipedia.

In a single swoop, denominational information concerning former prime ministers John Diefenbaker, Lester B. Pearson, Louis St. Laurent, R.B. Bennett, and all others starting from September 25, 1926–when Prime Minister Arthur Meighen left office for the second time–was removed. Perhaps this was a watershed moment in Canadian religious history that I had not known about, maybe DoubleBlue and friends discovered something entirely new about our country’s past, or perhaps they simply have not gotten around to deleting Meighen’s Presbyterianism yet.

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Interestingly enough, DoubleBlue & Co began their work by deleting religious affiliation of MacKenzie-King and R.B. Bennett, but they omitted Gilles Duceppe, Stephane Dion and Jack Layton. If it was all about removing information which, as those guys claim, is irrelevant to the actual political discourse, wouldn't it make more sense to start with existing political party leaders than going all the way to 1920s and hiding religious affiliation of the Prime Ministers who died long ago?

But even if they started with today's politicians, removing their religious affiliations from Wikipedia "info boxes" - what would it achieve? One of the commenters at Small Dead Animals suggests - it's to prevent "character assassination". He brings Preston Manning and Stockwell Day as example. But does he believe that merely removing Stockwell Day's religious affiliation from the highlights of his Wikipedia biography would be enough? As far as I recall - back in 2000, Wikipedia wasn't even there, so there was no Wikipedia biography whatsoever. Did that prevent the "progressives" of all stripes from bashing Stockwell Day for being an Evangelical pastor?

And vice-versa: unlike Stockwell Day's religious affiliation, the one of Stephane Dion is still there (for now). And it must have been there throughout most of his tenure as Liberal leader. Was Stephane Dion ever bashed for being Catholic?

So it wasn't about preventing character assassination or removing irrelevant information from the info-boxes. (Especially since the information about politician's religious views (if any) often appears in the article itself.) What apparently mattered is someone's desire to purge Canada's history, to remove at least the most noticeable references to the fact that Canada's founding fathers and Canada's greatest Prime Ministers were Christian. If it's not an attempt to separate church from history - I don't know what is.