A historic church in Quebec, Canada, was set on fire on Thursday. The church, named Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Allégresses Catholic Church, is the most recent of many church buildings that have been damaged in recent years.
113 Catholic and protestant churches in Canada have been burned or vandalized since 2021. At least 33 of these churches have been destroyed.
These attacks started shortly after Indigenous groups and the media claimed they discovered over 1,300 unmarked graves at several residential schools in Canada.
The residential school system was established by the Canadian government in the 19th century and implemented by Catholic and Protestant churches. The intention was to help indigenous children assimilate into Canadian culture, including converting them to Catholicism or Christianity.
Because of Canada’s unjust treatment of indigenous people in the past, essentially everyone believed the claims, including me.
As a result, Canadians debated whether it was worth celebrating Canada Day that year. There were protests and riots, statues and monuments were destroyed and removed, Canada lowered its flags to half-mast for almost a year, and churches were damaged or destroyed.
That year, the Canadian Press named “Children Who Never Returned from Residential Schools” the Canadian Newsmaker of the Year.
Since then, however, Canada’s mainstream media refuses to acknowledge that the discovery of the unmarked graves at residential schools is one of the biggest hoaxes in Canadian history.
The co-author of the book, Grave Error: How The Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools), says:
“Our book demonstrates that all the major elements of the Kamloops narrative are either false or highly exaggerated. No unmarked graves have been discovered at Kamloops or elsewhere—not one. As of August 2023, there had been 20 announcements of soil “anomalies” discovered by GPR near residential schools across Canada; but most have not even been excavated, so what, if anything, lies beneath the surface remains unknown. Where excavations have taken place, no burials related to residential schools have been found.”
The mainstream media hasn’t reported on this. Instead, CBC featured a report saying “Denialism is the last step of genocide.” So the biggest story in Canadian news in 2021 has become a non-story—even as churches burn to the ground because of it.
Like the media, leftist politicians like Justin Trudeau have mostly maintained silence about the attacks. This is probably because in 2021, though he condemned the attacks, he said the anger against Canadian churches was “fully understandable given the shameful history we’re all becoming more and more aware of.”
I don’t think it’s a coincidence these attacks are happening during the most anti-Christian era in Canadian history. In 2018, the Supreme Court of Canada banned a Christian school from opening a law school because of the school’s covenant on biblical sexuality. In February 2021, Canada arrested and jailed a pastor for his Christian beliefs for the first time. That year, Canada also unanimously passed a conversion therapy bill that effectively labels the Bible as homophobic and transphobic. Therefore, Canadians who attempt to convert LGBT people to the gospel could be fined or sentenced to up to 2 years in prison. Also, Justin Trudeau has threatened to strip the tax-exempt statuses of crisis pregnancy centres. These organizations are run by Christians.
The increased hatred for Christianity in Canada is why the Conservative Party of Canada has introduced Bill C-411 to increase the penalty for arson against churches.
Though churches are not being burned in other Western nations, Canada’s opposition to Christianity isn’t unique. Western countries were once called Christendom because they adhered to Christian theology, but all of these nations have become anti-Christian.
Still, grass withers, flowers fade, and church buildings burn to the ground. But the word of our God and the true Church—not the buildings—will stand forever. Jesus has built his church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it (Isaiah 40:8, Matthew 16:18).