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It was probably inevitable, especially on the cannabis-loving West Coast.

A Christian church has been turned into a marijuana dispensary.

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The quaint building that used to house Shawnigan United Church on Vancouver Island has now been “re-christened” the Green Tree Medicinal Dispensary.

There is symbolic power in the transformation. And, depending on your tastes, the metaphorical shift is positive or negative.

The anti-religious might cheer that a church, which many stereotype as a bastion of supernaturalism and conservative social morality, has finally joined the live-and-let-live West Coast zeitgest.

Others might lament how a sanctuary where people once talked of support for the common good and transcendent values now represents tuned-out hedonists.

Or maybe there is a more in-between way to see it.

Firstly, the United Church is no fortress of the religious right. It’s particularly known for its liberal, social democratic values, having ordained homosexuals back in 1990 and women many decades earlier.