View cases - Stewart McKelvey

- 36 -commands of their common faith. Courts are not arbiters of scripturalinterpretation.The narrow function of a reviewing court in this context is to determinewhether there was an appropriate finding that petitioner terminated his workbecause of an honest conviction that such work was forbidden by hisreligion. [Emphasis added.]This view was repeated in Frazee v. Illinois Department of Employment Security, 489U.S. 829 (1989), at p. 834, where White J., for a unanimous court, stated:2004 SCC 47 (CanLII)Undoubtedly, membership in an organized religious denomination,especially one with a specific tenet forbidding members to work on Sunday,would simplify the problem of identifying sincerely held religious beliefs,but we reject the notion that to claim the protection of the Free ExerciseClause, one must be responding to the commands of a particular religiousorganization. Here, Frazee’s refusal was based on a sincerely held religiousbelief. Under our cases, he was entitled to invoke First Amendmentprotection. [Emphasis added.]46 To summarize up to this point, our Court’s past decisions and the basicprinciples underlying freedom of religion support the view that freedom of religionconsists of the freedom to undertake practices and harbour beliefs, having a nexus withreligion, in which an individual demonstrates he or she sincerely believes or is sincerelyundertaking in order to connect with the divine or as a function of his or her spiritualfaith, irrespective of whether a particular practice or belief is required by officialreligious dogma or is in conformity with the position of religious officials.47 But, at the same time, this freedom encompasses objective as well aspersonal notions of religious belief, “obligation”, precept, “commandment”, custom orritual. Consequently, both obligatory as well as voluntary expressions of faith shouldbe protected under the Quebec (and the Canadian) Charter. It is the religious or spiritualessence of an action, not any mandatory or perceived-as-mandatory nature of its