The Bible on the Hill – Christian Language at Canada’s Parliament Buildings

In April 2020 I started exploring Parliament Hill, the site of Canada’s federal legislative activities. COVID-19 had emptied ‘The Hill’ of its usual springtime energy, and the landscape was a transient combination of pearly-white snow, the icy sides of the Ottawa River, and patches of grass in mud. The decade-plus construction project that closed Centre Block added to the moment’s uniqueness.

Some things hadn’t changed, though – including the Bible verses etched into stone, visible from the Hill’s front lawn. Since Centre Block was rebuilt after a fire in the 1920s, a stone inscription of Psalm 72:1 has arched over the main entrance. It reads ‘Give the king thy judgments, O God, and thy righteousness unto the king’s son’. Psalm 72:8 and Proverbs 29:18 adorn the east and west windows of the Peace tower, respectively. Overall, there are well over a dozen instances of Biblical-Christian language and imagery in Centre Block. The language pulls from both Old and New Testaments, though not from Apocryphal books, and, unusually for a Canadian federal building, is mostly unilingual in English.

And so as waves of COVID-19 rolled onto Canadian shores, I wondered, how do Canadian evangelical Christians today think about and use the Biblical language and imagery of Parliament Hill? And, what can we learn from that about memory, morality and materiality? Those questions drove me to study three evangelical pamphlets on the subject. Two are produced by an organization called Christian Roots Canada (CRC), and are intended to be read together. The first book from CRC, ‘The Biblical Legacy of Canada’s Parliament Buildings’, analyzes the material in its historical and Biblical contexts, while offering contemporary application as well. The second CRC booklet, ‘The Legacy of 25 Scripture Verses on Parliament Hill: A Companion Guide to The Biblical Legacy of Canada’s Parliament Buildings’, augments the first book by analyzing the federal government’s evaluation of the material, as well as providing more visual photography. The other booklet, ‘Tracings of the Canadian Soul: Scriptures Set in Parliamentary Stone’, is published by the Canadian Bible Society in conjunction with a federal Member of Parliament Kathy Wagantall.

As I read and re-read these pamphlets, I thought about the idea of a moral trajectory, which I had explored for my Master’s thesis on morality and hockey. The idea flows from existing anthropological and multi-disciplinary work on cultural constructions of time (Gell, 1992; Munn, 1992; Rudiak-Gold, 2014; Stewart 2016). I define moral trajectory as a directional, cosmic arc in which incidents have definition and the self has a place. It gives some analytical rigour to the basic idea that people make meaning by telling stories about how things change or not over time, and that that change means certain things and not others. While progress and nostalgia are probably the two most common entities which function as moral trajectories, I want to focus here on constancy, which rejects change altogether. Constancy underpins the moral claim ‘that’s the way things are’. It does not come up explicitly but is clearly a part of how these pamphlets evaluate the Biblical-Christian language and imagery on Parliament Hill. Constancy manifests both in the materiality and the divine origins of this language. The ‘Tracings’ pamphlet opens by noting that Centre Block will be closed by 2020 for a decade’s renovations; there is no hint of concern, though, that this language and imagery found on etched stone and in stained glass windows will be effaced or permanently removed. These are Scriptures carved in stone, not a plastic Christmas tree in a Member of Parliament’s office.

            Ultimately, the constancy in these pamphlets though is more than any stone; it is a never-changing and sovereign God. A repeated refrain of the ‘Tracings’ pamphlet is a constant reminder that political authourity exists under and as a result of divine authourity. Page 13 reads, “The inscriptions [say nothing] about rights, but instead point to a higher authourity to which even government is subject”.  Within a constancy trajectory, these verses have an eternal meaning, because they are related to God.

            ‘Both the ‘Legacy’ and the ‘Tracings’ pamphlets tell the origin story of these verses in terms of a sovereign God working in and through people. They’re quick to point out that the language and imagery here was not commissioned, and was in fact resisted, by the Parliament of the day. The ‘Legacy’ pamphlet cites the transcript of Parliamentary debate from May 27^th, 1921, where the Speaker of the House informs the House that, after discussion, he has ordered the Biblical-Christian inscriptions to be “removed” (16). However, the inscriptions were already completed and so it was decided to not have them removed. Hence the ‘Legacy’ pamphlet calls the Bible verses on Centre Block “the finger of God – the Word of God – carved into the architecture of the buildings which symbolize our national government…regardless of the particular convictions of the governments and political leaders who come and go.” (17) Here we see how a moral trajectory has implications for the individual – a constancy trajectory limits the self’s role in producing and sustaining moral goodness. The good work for us to do within a constancy trajectory is to not take too much responsibility upon ourselves, to let God be God. Within this literature it is ultimately God and not human will that can bring Canada and its peoples into fellowship with Himself.

            The comfort that God’s constant sovereignty can bring is clear. However, on its own the trajectory can hamper audience mobilisation. It can be difficult to see the point of personal action if the will of God is going to be accomplished regardless. This hampering is not inevitable, however; a constancy trajectory is compatible with a God who always uses people to accomplish divine purposes. Moreover, constancy is not the only moral trajectory at play in this literature. Beyond the scope of this piece lay a more detailed exploration of how this and other literature interacts with moral trajectories to inform, comfort and mobilise evangelical Canadians.

3 April 2025

Works Cited

Gell, Alfred. The Anthropology of Time: Cultural Constructions of Temporal Maps and Images. Oxford: Berg Publishing, 1992.

Munn, Nancy D. 1992. “The Cultural Anthropology of Time: A Critical Essay.” Annual Review of Anthropology 21: 93–123.

Rudiak-Gould, Peter. 2014. “Progress, Decline, and the Public Uptake of Climate Science.” Public Understanding of Science 23 (2): 142-56.

Stewart, Charles. 2016. “Historicity and Anthropology.” Annual Review of Anthropology 45 (1): 79–94.