In this UBC Graduate and Faculty Christian Forum Professor Egerton will examine the changing nature and definitions of Canadian pluralism, focusing specifically on whether multiculturalism, after its inauguration in 1971, was able to recognize religion, along with language and ethnicity, as a constituent part of Canadian pluralism. Building on his study of Canadian religion, politics, and constitutional development since 1945, he will address the changing nature and definitions of pluralism in Canadian history (1945-1980s) including the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (1963-1971) and the multiculturalism regimes of the late 1960s-70s. Dr. Egerton will consider whether religion might not need reasonable accommodation within Canadian definitions of pluralism. He is joined in this discussion by John Stackhouse.

John G. Stackhouse, Jr. is Sangwoo Youtong Chee Professor of Theology and Culture at Regent College. He is the author of Can God Be Trusted? and Canadian Evangelicalism in the Twentieth Century: An Introduction to Its Character.

George Egerton is Associate Professor of History at the University of British Columbia. His research interests include the history of international organization; British, American, and Canadian international relations in the modern era; the genre of Political Memoir; and the history of religion and politics in Canada. Author of Great Britain and the Creation of the League of Nations (1979) and editor of Political Memoir: Essays on the Politics of Memory (1994) and Anglican Essentials (1995), he is presently completing a book on human rights, religion and constitutional politics in Canada since 1945. His recent publications include: 'Trudeau, God and the Canadian Constitution: Religion, Human Rights, and Government Authority in the Making of the 1982 Constitution,' in David Lyon and Marguerite Van Die, eds., Rethinking Church, State, and Modernity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000); 'Between War and Peace: Politics, Religion and Human Rights in Early Cold War Canada 1945-1950,' in Dianne Kirby, ed., Religion and the Cold War (London: Macmillan/ Palgrave, 2003); 'Entering the Age of Human Rights: Politics, Religion, and Canadian Liberalism: 1945-1950,' Canadian Historical Review, LXXXV: 3 (September 2004); and 'Writing the Canadian Bill of Rights: Religion, Politics, and the Challenge of Pluralism, 1957-1960,' Canadian Journal of Law and Society 19:2 (November 2004).