This episode delves into the groundbreaking report, "Finding DORI: A Department of Religious Inefficiency" from the BC Humanist Association. Published on April 1, 2025, this document proposes the establishment of a new governmental body: the Department of Religious Inefficiency (DORI). Far from striving for streamlined governance, DORI aims to intentionally embed inefficiency into the Canadian government by expanding the entanglement of religion and state. The report outlines a series of bold initiatives to achieve this, moving away from what it terms "misguided secularism".

Key Proposals and Themes:

• Constitutional Transformation: DORI would be established as a super-parliamentary structure with powers equal to the Crown, formally recognizing the dual authority of church and state. This is intended to exacerbate constitutional debates and highlight tensions between secular governance and religious privilege. The report also suggests replacing the Charter of Rights and Freedoms with a Charter of God’s Supremacy.
• Sanctimonious Symbolism: The report advocates for a divinely inspired national anthem and the establishment of state representation for all churches, rather than a single state church, to maximize bureaucratic inefficiency. It also calls for a return to compulsory, lengthy religious sermons at the beginning of each parliamentary session.
• Theocratic Trade: The report proposes reframing trade disputes, such as with the United States, as holy wars, aligning economic interests with divine providence and seeking international support from faith-based groups.
• Expanding Ecclesiastical Economics: DORI envisions making tithing mandatory for all residents and instituting a National Tithe, allocating 10% of the government’s budget to places of worship. It also proposes complete tax relief for all members of the religious clergy and the creation of a 'Super Charity' status for religious organizations, eliminating all reporting requirements. Furthermore, the report suggests abolishing permissive property tax exemptions for places of worship and granting full statutory exemptions to all properties held by religious owners.
• Clerical Curriculum: The report calls for redirecting funds from public education to independent religious schools, aiming to financially starve public institutions. It suggests repealing sections of the BC School Act, increasing funding for religious schools, reducing public school budgets, abolishing the Ministry of Education, and eliminating funding for non-religious textbooks. DORI also proposes curtailing comprehensive sexual education and systematically substituting science with superstition in schools, suggesting replacing science with subjects like astrology and alchemy.
• Theocratic Treatments: DORI recommends radically restructuring healthcare funding to prioritize religious hospitals and replacing evidence-based medicine with prayer and spiritual healing. It also suggests replacing all abortion and sexual health clinics with crisis pregnancy centres.
• Sanctified Unions: The report proposes explicitly permitting every religion, sect, cult, and new religious movement to solemnize marriages and abolishing all civil marriages in British Columbia.

Conclusion:

"Finding DORI" presents a comprehensive, albeit potentially controversial, vision for a future where religious inefficiency is a central pillar of Canadian governance. The report argues for a move away from secular principles towards a theocratically influenced society across various aspects of public life.

Source:

"Finding DORI: A Department of Religious Inefficiency." BC Humanist Association, April 1, 2025.

An informal discussion panel hosted by the BC Humanist Association and Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada. We recommend that you watch the film “Preconceived” first – an award-winning film about anti-choice “crisis pregnancy centres” in the U.S. Joyce Arthur of ARCC and Teale Phelps Bondaroff of BCHA, share a few observations about the film and touch on issues around CPCs in Canada.

Our new report looks at prayers in Saskatchewan municipal council meetings. This podcast was generated in part with the help of Google's NotebookLM AI tools.

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BCHA Research Coordinator Dr Teale Phelps Bondaroff provides an update on some of our upcoming research and how you can get involved.

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In June 2023, Chilliwack Progress Editor Paul Henderson was fired for tweets criticizing those offering little more than "thoughts and prayers" in response to the near-drowning of a local child. In this presentation for the BC Humanist Association, Paul speaks about his firing and his time covering the religious right in the Fraser Valley.

Read more about Paul's story

CONTENT NOTE: Parts of this discussion touch on child abuse and suicide.

Perry Bulwer is the author of Misguided: My Jesus Freak Life in a Doomsday Cult.

Misguided is a unique first-hand account of a life spent in the Children of God, a/k/a The Family, a millenarian doomsday sex cult under the sway of a charismatic leader, David Berg.

In 1972, Perry Bulwer, a naive 16-year-old growing up in Port Alberni, BC dropped out of high school to run away with the Children of God, one of a number of millennial Christian cults that sprang up in the 1960s and 1970s. Soon, Perry was preaching the cult's doomsday message on the streets of some of the largest cities in the world.

Bulwer takes the reader on an extraordinary trip through the world of biblical literalism, fundamentalist endtime fantasies, paranormal spirituality, evangelical extremism, ritual abuse, and liberally interpreted Biblical teachings that were used to justify licentious sexual doctrines, evangelical prostitution, and child sexual abuse.

Along the way, we learn about the inner workings of the CoG, a/k/a The Family, and the machinations of David Berg, a self-declared endtime prophet who claimed to be personally mentioned in the Bible, and that God spoke through him. Berg predicted the imminent destruction of America, the appearance of the Antichrist in 1985, and the Second Coming of Jesus in 1993. Berg died in 1994, before various law enforcement agencies around the world caught up with him.

Perry Bulwer escaped The Family in 1991, managing to escape the cult's tight control while living in Asia. Returning to Canada, he tried to pick up his life where he had left it off two decades earlier. Through education Bulwer lost his religion, turning from religious extremist to secular humanist lawyer, fighting for the rights of sex workers and drug users living on the streets of Vancouver. Haunted by his own past, Bulwer became an advocate for thousands of second-generation survivors of the cult's child abuse and psychological trauma scattered around the world.

About Perry Bulwer

Born in Port Alberni, BC, in 1955, Perry Bulwer joined the Children of God after dropping out of high school at age 16, and spent the next two decades living in CoG communes in Canada, the United States, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Malaysia, Macau, Hong Kong, and, undercover, in Beijing. In 1991, aged 36, he was able to escape the cult --- with no money or possessions, and little in the way of education or skills. He spent the next decade catching up on his studies, and in 2002, graduated from the University of British Columbia with a law degree.

After a 2004 diagnosis of PTSD and fibromyalgia, Bulwer retired from the practice of law (though he remains registered with the Law Society of BC). Back home in Port Alberni, Perry Bulwer advocates for second-generation cult survivors, continuing to shed light on the Children of God, a/k/a The Family.

Bettianne Hedges of Humanist Canada hosts Leslie Rosenblood from Centre for Inquiry Canada alongside Teale Phelps Bondaroff and Ian Bushfield of the BC Humanist Association, who will discuss the many ways Canada still tangibly privileges religion and its institutions over similar non-theistic organizations. Just a few policy choices cost Canadians billions - yes, with a "b" - each and every year.

You can learn more by reading:

• Cost of Religion in Canada from CFIC
• A Public Good from BCHA
• Follow the Money from BCHA
• An Extra Burden from BCHA

Recorded March 19, 2024

Join Megan Sheldon of Be Ceremonial as we explore the foundations of ceremony, including how we can create our own rituals to acknowledge times of change in life, death, and everything in between. You will learn how to craft a ritual, design a ceremony, and mark the seemingly invisible moments that often go unnoticed in our society. There will be an opportunity for questions, as well as a chance to browse the Be Ceremonial platform that inspires you with hundreds of secular rituals across the life cycle.

About Megan Sheldon, Co-Founder & CEO, Be Ceremonial

Megan Sheldon (she/her) is the co-founder of Be Ceremonial, the world's first guided ritual app + online community. Be Ceremonial inspires you to create your own ceremonies across the life cycle, drawing on hundreds of universal rituals. Megan is a cultural mythologist, secular celebrant, and end of life doula who is striving to change the cultural narratives around death, dying and grief.

Download End of Life: A Guide for Humanists and Non-Religious People in BC