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If we mean by "God" a transcendent reality that attaches greater significance to our life as a community-in-time than historical record alone can guarantee, if we mean by "God" the attendant recognition of our collective dependence on an encompassing power that perudres beyond our numberless "isms" and sovereign entities, and if we mean by "God" a centre or locus of meaning that is trans-historical, then I am for its retention and celebration.
If, however, the inclusion of "God" in our national vocabulary and in the rituals that define us as a people is theologically specific, intolerant of personal interpretation, and invoked by political authorities to validate their judgments and decisions, then I am for its elimination.
God as hostage to political whim is a fearful reality. We know its kind in our time. The identification of God with the state is an invitation to misrule. We have seen the results.
But this is not the Canadian context. The calculated effort to delete God from our national discourse is itself a form of misplaced zeal.
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Leave God alone. The alternatives, as George Steiner reminds us, can be quite grisly.
Jennifer Harris: When I was growing up in Toronto, there was no reference to God in O Canada.
The original set of English lyrics, by R. S. Weir, makes no such mention in its opening verse, and this was the version sung in my school, at hockey games, etc. Even the old Anglican hymn book, which includes our national anthem, made no mention of God in the popular first verse. Where we now sing "God keep our land glorious and free," we once sang "O Canada, glorious and free."
I am not exactly sure when the words were changed. No doubt, it had something to do with the creation of O Canada as our official national anthem in the 1980s. The French-language version has always been explicitly Christian.
This reference to "God" in the English-language version is as blandly theistic as possible, allowing for the vast majority of people in Canada to sing our anthem convincingly. There is something quite Canadian about this desire for inclusion.
While the removal of this reference would indeed be even more inclusive, something would be lost. The newer lyric says something significant that the older version, written at the turn of the "Canadian Century," does not: that Canada's glory and freedom needs protecting. And this is a truth worth noting!
Certainly, we can debate about who protects Canada's glory and freedom.
I, for one, believe that this task falls to its citizens. The request that God keep our land free need not (indeed, does not) abrogate our responsibility to an unknown, unseen force.
Rather, it reminds us, every time we sing our national anthem, that there is something very precious about Canada that requires our labour to protect. In an age of increasing fundamentalisms (religious, secular, and otherwise), this particular statement of God's work in our land seems particularly fitting. The "God" we sing about reminds us to keep Canada and Canadians free.
The removal of "God" from the national anthem would be another step in the evacuation of religion from the public sphere.
The so-called separation of church and state is an American invention that has no real place in Canada's heritage. And we have only to look to the United States to see how ineffective such a vision is.
Canada, on the other hand, should continue to maintain a respectful balance where religion is welcomed in the public domain (in schools, etc.), so long as it is not evangelistic and harmful.
This is the kind of freedom that makes Canada the fine country it is and well worth singing about.
Lorna Dueck: I am sorry I'm going to be answering this important debate on my BlackBerry as my husband drives me to Ottawa so I can finally sing O Canada on Parliament Hill.
We've long wanted to co-ordinate summer travel around the ceremonies in the capital, so we're on our way. As the fireworks burst over the Jacques Cartier Park, I will pray that God would keep our land glorious and free.
That would include a freedom which allows people of faith to vocalize their belief in God in our national anthem. Asking, as it were, for help in defending glorious freedom that humanity has shown it is incapable of maintaining.
