In
Zhang v. Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, (Fed. Ct., May 4, 2012), Canada's Federal Court ruled that it was improper for Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board to decide that an applicant for refugee status was not a genuine Christian, based on questioning about the applicant's knowledge of Christianity. At issue was a claim by Haixhin Zhang, who was in Canada on a visitor's visa, that he would be arrested if he returned to China because he regularly attended services of a house church in China. The Refugee Protection Division member who initially passed on the application found that Zhang had likely joined a Christian church in Canada to support a fraudulent refugee claim. The Federal Court said, however, that this conclusion is not defensible as a matter of either fact or law:
The transcript reads as a debate between scholars on the correct interpretation of Christian theology. Testing an applicant’s understanding of religious tenants is fraught with unaddressed extremely serious questions.....
If it is to be said that all Christians should know certain facts about the religion, there must be a verifiable way to establish this expectation. The expectation cannot be so established on a completely subjective basis by a decision-maker. Therefore, if a general expectation is established of persons who claim to be Christians, advance notice of the expectation must be given so the expectation is fair to all who apply....
[A] finding of implausibility that a certain person is not of a certain faith because he or she does not meet a certain subjective standard set by a decision-maker is indefensible as a matter of fact.... [K]nowledge of religious dogma, does not equate to holding religious faith. It’s not about the doctrines. The thing that is important is the ethic instilled by the religious teachings that a person takes and lives by. Attending church and quoting scriptures aren’t as important as how a person lives his or her life according to the morals and values learned....
The
National Post, reporting on the decision, says that other cases in recent months have similarly found that the IRB has imposed unreasonably high standards of religious knowledge on applicants claiming religious persecution.
