In our increasingly diverse societies, religious literacy is a valuable civic skill. By helping us better understand our neighbours, colleagues, and classmates, it helps build trust and, sometimes, relationships. JW Windland founded Encounter for this very purpose, namely to promote religious literacy and create opportunities for better relations amongst people. Religious literacy is generally valuable but there are some arenas of life where it has extra importance.
At Encounter, we have sometimes had the honour to work with health professionals who do critical work and deal with people at times of maximum vulnerability. It has been rewarding to interact with these professionals who show such commitment to providing the best possible care. And in a similar vein, one of the groups we always feel especially fortunate to work with are police.
Our interactions with police go back perhaps 15 years as officers began attending our annual Discovery Week. From there, some started inviting us to their headquarters where we have taught staff, organized tours of houses of worship for senior leadership, and crafted customized sessions for Victim Services units. The relationships formed from this work led us, in collaboration with some supportive and generous police officers, to create our annual 3 day Police Religious Literacy program that combines classes and visits and which was held earlier this month.
Image: 2026 Police Religious Literacy Program Attendees, Source: Brian Carwana
Police do a critical job of keeping us safe, helping people in difficult domestic situations, working with communities dealing with conflict, and much more. The job necessarily brings officers into varied neighbourhoods and homes and police today therefore need a set of tools or cultural competencies to a much greater degree than their predecessors a generation or two ago.
The police’s need for religious literacy is a symptom of a much broader need – namely that religious literacy becomes a critical competency in our public institutions (e.g. education, health care, policing, justice systems, etc.) which do so much to give shape to our society and to the sense of belonging. In what follows, let’s look at just one institution in our society and why religious literacy is so relevant to the work they do. The reasons are multiple.
1. Increasing Skill and Sensitivity
Religion is a critical aspect of life that impacts how we understand our bodies, our homes, and our lives. Interactions with police can be very sensitive. They can require the search of our bodies, the search of our homes, consoling someone who has lost a loved one moments ago, or observing the state of a marriage or parental relationship to try to discern if abuse is present.
Religious literacy in these instances becomes a vital tool. It benefits officers and officer-citizen interactions in many ways:
- It can help an officer correctly interpret that a woman avoiding eye contact may be doing this for religious or cultural reasons of modesty rather than guilt or nervousness;
- It can help an officer offer consolation in a culturally appropriate manner;
- It can help an officer who must search a Sikh’s turban to know how to do this in a way that will not humiliate the wearer and show respect and dignity to the person;
- It helps the officer understand the importance of having a body search done by someone of the same gender and, if that is really not possible, of knowing some language and techniques that will provide the maximum respect to the person;
- It familiarizes officers with articles on people’s bodies and objects in their home so officers respond with recognition and avoid subtle signs of incomprehension we sometimes give when something is “foreign” to us.
These interactions can spread verbally in the community and they can establish a reputation for the police as a service that has taken the time to know the community and can be trusted. Policing is safer and more effective when a community trusts and works with police and religious literacy helps to make this so.
Source: Canva.com
2. Incredibly Diverse Communities
Second, police are engaging with a more diverse citizenry and while this is true in many Western democracies, it is especially true here in Canada. The USA has also become far more diverse than it used to be but if you look at the number of religious minorities in Canada compared to the USA, there are far more here. The chart below uses the American numbers as the baseline (the yellow line) and compares Canadian numbers on a per capita basis (meaning it adjusts for population size). As you can see, Canada has fewer Jews (even on a per capita basis) but we have a lot more Hindus and Buddhists, far more Muslims and with Sikhs, the bar is off the page.
Image: Religious Minorities in Canada Relative to USA. Source: Graph created by Brian Carwana (data from Stats Canada and Pew Research Center)
So, Canadian officers are serving publics that are far more religiously diverse than their colleagues to the south or in the UK (versus the UK, individual bars would change but the story is similar). And of course, far more diverse than their predecessors a generation or two ago. In this new world of policing, religious literacy is a valuable skill to understanding the people the police serve.
3. Complex Dynamics and Topical Issues
In addition to dealing with more complex communities, there are also unique issues where cultural knowledge is really critical. One such issue is hate crimes. There has been a surge in hate crimes targeting religious groups in recent years in Canada such that the data is somewhat shocking.
Image: Religious Hate Crimes in Canada. Source: Graph created by Brian Carwana (data from Stats Canada)
We should acknowledge that some feel the growth over time might be partly skewed by greater attention to and tracking of these crimes but it is nonetheless widely accepted that the overall story – that hate crimes towards religious communities has surged – is undoubtedly true. We have seen multiple records set in recent years and police need background knowledge to understand these issues and motivations.
Another issue is that our more diverse communities means more diverse perspectives on global events. This can lead to peaceful protests but sometimes leads to vandalism against houses of worship or threats of violence. Religious literacy helps police to better understand these issues so they know why a protest is happening, what certain slogans might mean, and what’s at stake for various groups. All of this provides context to navigate these situations more skillfully.
4. Increasing Recruitment
In every profession, those responsible for hiring want to find talent. In addition, studies in business effectiveness have shown that diverse teams generally perform better (1, 2). Diverse teams have more divergent thinking which helps the team catch more risks, identify opportunities, and be more creative. We learn from one another but we learn more when we each come to the table with different backgrounds and skillsets.
A more diverse team of police officers is likely to have more cumulative and cultural knowledge and a greater ability to generate the divergent thinking that improves performance. Creating a diverse police service comes about partly by knowing how to make the workplace welcoming to someone fasting during Ramadan, or who has religious needs in their diet, or who wears religious garments.
Source: Canva.com
In addition, a diverse police service garners more trust. It really helps when a minority community has some members who are officers so the police are less “them” and more “us.” Those officers in turn can make introductions and open dialogues.
Religious Literacy and Modern Policing
Religious literacy helps officers do an incredibly difficult job with more skill and cultural sensitivity, more awareness of the issues, and with greater accumulated knowledge across the officer base. It helps police as they navigate a country that has different dynamics than were faced decades ago. And it helps to create a police service that draws from the talent and resources of all the members of the community.
What is true of policing is also true of all of our society. The better we can come together, understand one another, build trust and relationships, and capitalize on the talents and abilities of us all, the stronger and more cohesive our communities will be. Religious literacy is a crucial contributor for bringing this about in modern Canada (or the United States).
