Canada and the World
Current Events with a Canadian Perspective
Last update
19 November 2010
Canada is a secular nation; that means its government and all its public functions are separated from religion; that which is secular is concerned with the worldly not the spiritual.
Religion Appears in State
But, the secular and the spiritual are always crossing each other’s path. Canada’s Head of State, The Queen, is accorded her position “By the Grace of God.”
God makes an appearance in our national anthem and in the Constitution. Every day before activity can start in the House of Commons the Speaker reads a prayer that begins, “Almighty God, we give thanks for the great blessings which have been bestowed on Canada and its citizens...”
Christian Prime Ministers
Our prime minister, Stephen Harper, is a Christian as are many other Members of Parliament. There is a Christian Caucus of MPs in Ottawa, although it keeps a very low profile. There are also Sikhs, Muslims, and Jews in the House of Commons. Can these people keep their faith from influencing their decisions as they are supposed to do?
Pierre Trudeau (right) seemed able to do it. He was a devout Roman Catholic and Prime Minister of Canada, with a brief time out of office, from 1968 to 1984. He believed that faith is irrational and therefore should have no place in the governing of the country. He put this belief into practice. He went against his church’s teaching by making divorce laws more liberal and by legalizing homosexuality.Likewise, Stephen Harper says that his religious faith does not interfere with his governing. He is a follower of the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada. This is an evangelical association that believes that “The Old and New Testaments, [are] inerrant as originally given, were verbally inspired by God and are a complete revelation of His will for the salvation of people.”
But, Mr. Harper has opposed the teachings of his place of worship. He has taken the abortion debate off the table in Canada and says, while personally opposing same-
Prime Minister Harper a Fundamentalist
Left-
He cites as evidence “the extent to which retribution is at the core of this man (Mr. Harper) that strikes me as one the most disturbing aspects of his government, because it is so at odds with the values of the vast majority of Canadians.”
This, says Mr. Dobbin, shows up in policies such as the Conservative government’s efforts to close down Vancouver’s safe injection site for drug users.
Right-
There are even stronger echoes in the Conservative Party’s program of “Getting Tough on Crime.”
Stockwell Day’s Literal Bible Belief
Mr. Dobbin says the appointment of Stockwell Day as Minister of Public Safety is another example. Mr. Day is a fundamentalist Christian who believes the world is 6,000 years old and that humans and dinosaurs co-
In 1997, Mr. Day caused an uproar by suggesting child killer Clifford Olsen ought to be put into the general prison population, where he would almost certainly be killed. “Moral prisoners,” he said, “will deal with it in a way which we don’t have the nerve to do.”
Other members of the Conservative government can be just as hard on those they see as an insult to society. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, when he was Attorney General of Ontario, suggested making it illegal to sleep on the street. Those who did, he said in March 2002, should be jailed.
Michael Wagner sees things differently. In his 2008 book Standing on Guard for Thee, Mr. Wagner says the Christian right in Canada has suffered 50 years of defeat. He chronicles loosing battles over feminism, the sexual revolution, abortion, multiculturalism, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, stem-
Right Wing Christian Values in America
If right-
In his 2004 book, Plan of Attack, journalist Bob Woodward writes that Mr. Bush describes himself as a “messenger” of God who is doing “the Lord’s will.”
And, here’s an October 2005 report from The Guardian (U.K.) on a meeting Mr. Bush had with a Palestinian delegation: “One of the delegates, Nabil Shaath, who was Palestinian foreign minister at the time, said: “President Bush said to all of us: ‘I am driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, ‘George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan.’ And I did. And then God would tell me ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq.’ And I did.” ”
Pastor John Hagee is one of the people who was close to President Bush. Reverend Hagee heads up the 18,000-
According to End Time belief, an Israel/Iran war would probably go nuclear and bring about the Rapture, Tribulation, and Second Coming of Christ.
George W. Bush is out of office, so none of this matters anymore. But according to the Barna Group there were 101 million born-
These are the people who follow the teachings of Reverend John Hagee and many others like him, such as Rod Parsley, Gary Bauer, and Janet Parshall.
Canada has its own version of right-
Author and former MP Dennis Gruending says Mr. McVety has considerable access to the highest levels of Canada’s government. “He writes that Charles McVety’s apparent cultivation by the Harper government raises questions about how much influence social and religious conservatives have with the prime minister.”
Image credit
Chiloa
Sources
“Stephen Harper and the Theocons.” Marci McDonald, The Walrus, October 2006.
“God’s Wrath and the Tories’.” Murray Dobbin, The Tyee, May 26, 2008
“George Bush: ‘God Told me to End the Tyranny in Iraq.’ ” Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian, October 5, 2005.
“Pastor Strangelove.” Sarah Posner, The American Prospect, May 21, 2006.
© Canada and the World, March 2009
Updated July 2010
All rights reserved
Tony Blair was Britain’s
prime minister from 1997 to 2007. He was known to be a man of Christian faith but he kept his conversion to Roman Catholicism secret until after his resignation from the prime ministership.
In 2003, Vanity Fair reporter David Margolick asked Mr. Blair about his Christian faith. Before he could answer, Mr. Blair’s Director of Communications, Alistair Campbell, jumped in saying “I’m sorry, we don’t do God.”
However, in a 2006 interview on a British television network, Mr. Blair talked about praying before deciding to join the United States in its invasion of Iraq in 2003. He said, “In the end, there is a judgement that, I think if you have faith about these things, you realize that judgement is made by other people…and if you believe in God, it’s made by God as well.”
THEOCRACY
Some states are governed by the word of God. There have been many of these through history; fewer today. In ancient Rome some emperors were considered to be gods. During the Middle Ages many of Europe’s absolute monarchs were thought to be divinely appointed.
Probably, the best known current example of a theocracy is Iran. The President of the country is elected, but to run he (shes are not allowed) must be approved by the Council of Guardians, led by Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (below), the current Supreme Leader of Iran.
The Council is a group that ensures candidates will follow, to the letter, the ideals
of the Islamic revolution. Muslim clerics hold most senior government positions.
Under the Taliban, Afghanistan was a theocracy operating under an extremely conservative reading of Islamic law. The Taliban want to bring this back, while Canadian soldiers and troops from many other countries are trying to nurse the country along to a democratic system.
DOCTRINE OF
THE TWO KINGDOMS
Martin Luther (left) was a rebel. In 1517, the German monk started a revolution that
changed Western civilization for all time. His legacy is not just the splitting of
Christianity into the Protestant and Catholic faiths. His influence extends into
government as well.
In his book, On Secular Authority, Luther said it was wrong for human authorities to force people to follow certain spiritual beliefs. Worship of God, he said, was a personal and voluntary matter. Such principles of freedom of thought were revolutionary for the time.
Luther said that civil government had the responsibility to maintain peace and had no business getting caught up in matters of spirituality. This was his “Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms.”
He said that God rules in two ways. The left-
Almost 500 years later, Martin Luther’s doctrine is enshrined in the constitutions of most Western nations separating church and state.
Philip Jenkins is described by The Economist as “One of America’s best scholars of religion.” The magazine quotes him as saying that historians will look back at the 20th century and view religion as “the prime animating and destructive force in human affairs, guiding attitudes to political liberty and obligation, concepts of nationhood, and, of course, conflicts and wars.”
“The Christian Right is an authentic voice in the
Canadian social fabric, but a
small voice that possibly has won more media attention
than its numbers can lay
claim to because of the media’s addiction to controversy and because
of the size of the American Christian Right next door.”
Michael Valpy,
Literary Review of Canada, September 2008
“We separate religion
and politics…and because
we do, Canada has escaped the religious and ethnic strife that defaces other countries.”
Opposition leader
Michael Ignatieff