Pulpit and Politics, by former MP and award-winning blogger Dennis Gruending, is a provocative exposé of the competition between religious progressives and conservatives for power and influence in Canadian politics. Here is a sample

1. Pulpit and
Politics
COMPETING
RELIGIOUS
IDEOLOGIES
IN CANADIAN
PUBLIC LIFE
Dennis Gruending

2. Pulpitand
Politics

3. “Dennis Gruending brings both insight and hands-on experience to that
fraught crossroads where faith and politics intersect, helping to trace
not only the rise of a Canadian religious right but also the first stirrings
of a reawakened religious left. His collected contemplations in Pulpit
and Politics are a must-read for anyone who wishes to grasp the spiritual
tensions at play behind Stephen Harper’s majority government.”
—MARCI MCDONALD, JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR OF THE ARMAGEDDON FACTOR
“Dennis Gruending’s well-informed observations on the role of faith in
politics, and the politics of faith, are an insightful guide to the current
political landscape.”
—REV. BILL BLAIKIE, MANITOBA GOVERNMENT CABINET MINISTER AND FORMER MP
“Faith communities that espouse a social compunction to serve must
constantly reflect on the political dimension of loving our neighbours.
Dennis Gruending not only lends his considerable journalistic talents
to this task; he’s focused like a laser on the analytical heart of today’s
burning issues.”
—JOE GUNN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CITIZENS FOR PUBLIC JUSTICE

4. Pulpit and
Politics
COMPETING
RELIGIOUS
IDEOLOGIES
IN CANADIAN
PUBLIC LIFE
Dennis Gruending

5. Copyright © 2011 Dennis Gruending
All rights reserved. Published in Canada and the United States by
Kingsley Publishing
www.kingsleypublishing.ca
Cover and interior design: BookWorks
Front cover image: iStockphoto
Printed in Canada by Friesens
2011/1
First Edition
Ordering information
www.kingsleypublishing.ca
www.alpinebookpeddlers.ca
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Gruending, Dennis, 1948-
Pulpit and politics : competing religious ideologies
in Canadian public life / Dennis Gruending.
Bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-926832-07-4
1. Religion and politics—Canada. 2. Religion and state—Canada.
3. Conservatism—Canada—Religious aspects. 4. Religious right—Canada.
5. Liberalism—Canada—Religious aspects. I. Title.
BL65.P7G78 2011 322’.10971 C2011-905208-3

6. To Martha, Maria, Anna, & our good times together
Also by Dennis Gruending:
Gringo: Poems and Journals from Latin America, 1983
Emmett Hall: Establishment Radical, 1985
Promises to Keep: A Political Biography of Allan Blakeney, 1990
The Middle of Nowhere: Rediscovering Saskatchewan, 1996
Great Canadian Speeches, 2004
Truth to Power: The Journalism of a Benedictine Monk (editor), 2010

7. pulpit and politics
Contents
Acknowledgements and a Disclaimer / IX
Preface / X
Introduction: Competing Religious Ideologies / XII
Political and Religious Polarization in 2011 / 1
The Harper Majority / 1
Make Climate Change an Election Issue / 5
Canada Celebrates Israel: Christian Zionism and the Election / 8
Former MP Tony Martin Pushes Poverty Elimination / 11
Religious Right / 15
Religious Right Growing in Influence / 15
Charles McVety in the Halls of Power / 19
Catholics, Evangelicals Make Common Cause / 22
See How They Pray: Ottawa’s National House of Prayer / 24
The CRY: Young Conservatives and End Times / 27
NHOP Promotes Israeli Prayer Walk / 30
The Armageddon Factor Traces Religious Right / 32
The Armageddon Factor and Its Critics / 35
See How They Vote / 38
Frequent Churchgoers Vote Conservative / 38
Lakoff Says Conservatives Use Family Metaphor: Elections 2008 / 41
My Questions for Election 2008 Debate / 43
Churches Weigh in on 2008 Election / 46
Canadian Evangelical Voting Trends / 49
Religious Progressives / 53
Churches Publish A Health Care Covenant / 53
Reverend Lois Wilson on Sacred and Secular / 55
Citizens for Public Justice Questions Oil Sands / 58
Douglas Roche and Creative Dissent / 61
Citizenship as Ministry / 64
vi

8. seen from abroad
MP Paul Dewar Says Faith Is Political / 68
Canadian Churches and the US Health Care Debate / 71
Politics and Pulpit / 76
NDP Creates Faith and Social Justice Commission / 76
Harper Promotes Religious Rightists / 78
Richard Colvin and Afghan Torture / 82
KAIROS Fights CIDA Cuts / 85
Jason Kenney as St. Francis of Assisi (Not) / 88
People First and Toronto’s G20 Summit / 91
Selling Potash Corp: Greed and Market Fundamentalism / 94
Conservatives Attack the Long-gun Registry / 98
Bev Oda Ignored CIDA, Betrayed KAIROS / 101
Dirty Tricks at Rights and Democracy / 104
Bev Oda and the KAIROS Fiasco / 108
Remembering My Friend, Allan Blakeney / 110
Catholics Left and Right / 115
Journeys to the Heart of Catholicism / 115
Morgentaler’s Order of Canada Ignites Culture War / 117
Gerwing Family Returns Order of Canada Medal / 120
Gunn Says Catholic Social Teaching a Well-kept Secret / 122
Development and Peace Attacked by Catholic Right / 125
Controversy Continues for Development and Peace / 129
Catholics and Child Sexual Abuse / 132
Women Priests and Pope Benedict’s Visit to Britain / 137
Father James Gray: Bush Dweller / 139
Peace and War / 145
John Dear: Non-violence or Non-existence? / 145
Murray Thomson Says No to Militarism / 148
COAT versus CADSI: Ottawa Arms Bazaar / 151
vii

9. pulpit and politics
Bible References Found on Gun Sights / 154
Izzeldin Abuelaish and Remembrance Day / 158
Accommodation / 161
Will Kymlicka on Multiculturalism / 161
Shafia Deaths Stir Immigration Debate / 164
Demographic Winter and the Religious Right / 168
Banning the Veil / 171
Seen from Abroad / 176
Mahatma Gandhi: Revered but Ignored in India / 176
Obama, McCain, and Canadian Religious Politics / 179
Obama Hikes Religious Vote in Election / 181
Ms. Penelope’s Vatican Tour / 183
Obama’s Inaugural Speech Will Draw on Lincoln, King / 188
Karen Armstrong, Tim Flannery, God, and Climate / 191
Carter, Mandela, Elders Say Religion Oppresses Women / 195
Christians Fleeing Middle East, Says William Dalrymple / 199
Mark Juergensmeyer on Religion and Global Rebellion / 202
Tony Blair and Christopher Hitchens Debate Religion / 208
Coptic Christians, Al-Qaeda, The Looming Tower / 212
Gabrielle Giffords, Tucson, and the Gun Culture / 218
Epilogue / 222
Select Bibliography / 226
Index / 230
About the Author / 238
viii

10. seen from abroad
Acknowledgements and a Disclaimer
T here is a long road to travel in conceiving and writing
a book. The task involves the work of many hands and
minds. The ideas I deal with here arise largely from a blog called Pulpit and
Politics, which I have been writing since late 2007. It explores the connec-
tions between religion and public life in Canada and elsewhere. My friend
David Blaikie helped me set up the blog and continues to assist with the
choice and look of photos. My wife, Martha Wiebe, reads everything that
I write before it is published and always provides wise counsel, not to men-
tion her constant love and support. Readers of my blog have contacted me
with constructive criticism and ideas for stories that I might pursue. Many
of those suggestions have made their way into this book. Charlene Dob-
meier of Kingsley Publishing Services is a project manager without peer and
the source of much practical advice. Meaghan Craven is an astonishingly
good editor. Lyn Cadence of Cadence PR is an expert at promotion and
knows how to get results. I should mention that the opinions I express in
this book are my own and not necessarily those of anyone with or for whom
I have worked.
ix

11. pulpit and politics
Preface
O ver the past few years I have been struck by the grow-
ing competition between religious progressives and
conservatives for power and influence in Canadian politics. This is an his-
toric rivalry and one that will become even more pronounced now that
Stephen Harper has won a majority government in 2011, partly through
the efforts of religious conservatives. Their political agenda is anchored in
opposition to abortion, same-sex marriage, publicly funded childcare, a dis-
like of many social programs, and a general suspicion of government. Since
its inception in 2006, the Harper government has courted conservative
evangelicals, along with some Catholic and Jewish voters, to join a political
coalition that would change Canada into a leaner and meaner state, albeit it
one with more prisons and a larger military.
I will look closely at their political ideology and tactics in these pages,
but that is only half the story. I will also report on efforts by religious pro-
gressives who are struggling to have their voices heard on issues of equality,
justice, human rights, and peace. This is an effort that plays out on Parlia-
ment Hill, as well as in church basements, synagogues, and temples. It is not
merely a topic of casual interest; the consequences for our future are poten-
tially dramatic. Religious faith informs political decisions about the division
of wealth in our society, education and race relations, immigration, respect
for democracy, foreign policy, and environmental issues, to name just a few.
The following pages also examine religiously inspired ideas and
events elsewhere that are having an impact in Canada. We cherish our
reputation as a peaceable kingdom, but we are not immune to religious
fundamentalism, even extremism. The bombing of Air-India Flight 182
bound from Toronto to New Delhi in 1985 killed 331 people, making it
the most widely felt terrorist attack in Canadian history. It was planned
and executed by Sikh religious extremists living in Canada. There are
no tranquil islands in an increasingly globalized world of ubiquitous jet
x

12. preface
travel, round-the-clock news feeds, and secured Internet chat rooms.
There is a fine body of research and writing in the United States and else-
where about the importance of understanding the motivation and tactics of
religious groups involved in public life. Far less attention has been devoted
to the topic in Canada. I am determined that Pulpit and Politics will help
to fill this gap.
xi

13. pulpit and politics
Introduction
Competing Religious Ideologies
T here was a time when religious denomination was the
major fault line in Canadian society. When Métis lead-
er Louis Riel, a devout, if erratic, Catholic, was on death row in Regina
following the Northwest Rebellion in 1885, there were impassioned pleas
from Quebec to spare his life. John A. Macdonald, a Protestant prime min-
ister, was famously quoted as saying: “He shall hang though every dog in
Quebec bark in his favour.” Riel’s execution sealed the political fate of the
Conservatives in Quebec for more than a century.
But in twenty-first-century Canada, the old religious divisions have
largely given way to new polarizations that fall along a conservative to lib-
eral religious spectrum rather than among denominations. The competition
now is increasingly found between religious conservatives and progressives.
For example, conservative Catholics and evangelical Protestants make com-
mon cause on issues like same sex marriage and publicly funded childcare.
In fact, they often feel more at home with one another than they do with
the liberal members in their own congregations. There is an enduring con-
test between religious conservatives and progressives over who should wield
the greatest influence in Canadian public life.
Faith and organized religion are deeply embedded in Canadian culture.
Beginning in the early 1600s, religiously motivated leaders, such as Samuel
de Champlain, along with Catholic priests and religious sisters, were the key
to the French colonization of North America. We have only to think of the
Grey Nuns hospitals and Catholic schools and universities, not to mention
the Catholic missionary efforts of the Jesuits, Oblates, and others.
The Protestant presence in Canada gained momentum as the British
secured a foothold in the Atlantic Provinces in the 1700s, especially after
the fall of Quebec in the Seven Years War, which ended in 1763. Later, a
xii

14. introduction
flood of United Empire Loyalists streamed into Canada during and after the
American revolutionary war in the years 1775–83. These migrations and
others from both the US and Europe attracted people from many faiths,
including itinerant Protestant preachers who staged popular revivalist meet-
ings. Evangelical influences, thus, also run deeply in Canada.
The Catholic Church occupied the (unofficial) position of state
church in Quebec until the 1960s, when, of necessity, it began to accept a
much more modest role. During its reign, however, the Catholic hierarchy
and clergy interfered regularly in politics. The bishops were opposed to the
Liberals, who they believed were kissing cousins of the revolutionaries in
France, and so in Quebec the Church supported the Conservatives until
the execution of Riel. This clerical activity is documented in a wonderful
but virtually unknown book called The Race Question in Canada, written in
1906 by a French academic named Andre Siegfried. According to Siegfried,
a local priest in Quebec said this during a by-election campaign in 1876:
“Do not forget that the bishops of this province assure you that liberalism
resembles a serpent in the earthly paradise which creeps close to men in
order to bring about the fall of the human race.” Siegfried also wrote that in
1878 Bishop Ignace Bourget of Montreal said: “No Catholic is allowed to
call himself a liberal, even a moderate liberal.”
Wilfrid Laurier was elected to the Quebec provincial assembly in 1871
and the House of Commons in 1874. He was a marvellously gifted politi-
cian, but the bishops attacked him with a vengeance because he was a Lib-
eral. In the longer term, however, Laurier was more than their match and
he won every federal election he contested between 1874 and his death in
1919. During his time most Quebecois became Liberal supporters. Catholi-
cism and Protestantism both changed greatly during the settlement of the
Canadian West, when people from many Protestant denominations and
sects, as well as Catholics from a variety of European backgrounds other
than French, immigrated and took up lands. Canadian Christianity began
to develop along sectarian lines, with Catholics competing with Protestants,
and a variety of Protestant faiths competing with Catholics and with one
another. For example, the Catholic and Protestant missionaries who arrived
xiii

15. pulpit and politics
with the English and French fur traders vied for the attention of Aboriginal
peoples in eastern and northern Canada, at times creating competing mis-
sions in the same settlements. Religion, on this competitive basis, remained
a strong presence in Canadian society throughout the nineteenth century.
The twentieth century dawned with Catholics forming a solid major-
ity in Quebec and a minority throughout the rest of Canada, where they
were not very influential politically. Protestants were a minority in Quebec
and the majority elsewhere, but they were divided. In English Canada, it
was the mainline Protestants, including Anglicans and Presbyterians, who
constituted the political class.
There has been an abiding chasm among Protestants since the early years
of the twentieth century, and it continues to this day. Mainline Protestants
came to embrace modernism and liberal ideas—for example, an attempt to
reconcile Christianity with the rationalist and scientific thought that arose
from the Enlightenment. They came to practice “high criticism” of the Bible,
teaching that it could be interpreted critically, just as one might approach
any other document. They believed that critical reading allowed the Bibli-
cal story of creation to coexist with scientific theories of human evolution.
The acrimonious debate about evolution in the 1920s and beyond became a
flashpoint, which led to a bitter division between liberal and fundamentalist
Christians, who upheld a strict and literal interpretation of the Bible.
Many mainline Protestants also embrace the social gospel, which rests
on the premise that Christianity must seek to realize the kingdom of God
in this world. This agenda led them to promote reforms leading, for ex-
ample, to Canada’s universal health and social programs. Fundamentalists
and many evangelicals, however, believe that a personal conversion to Jesus
Christ is the only means to salvation. They mistrusted the state and resented
its incursions into health, education, and social assistance—endeavours that
conservative Christians believed should remain the responsibility of church,
family, and the individual.
The competing tendencies of these two Protestant groups can be per-
sonified in Tommy Douglas and Ernest Manning, two western Canadian
preachers who became premiers. Douglas was a Baptist pastor in Weyburn,
xiv

16. introduction
Saskatchewan, and responded to the Great Depression by becoming in-
volved with the Farm-Labour Party and later the Cooperative Common-
wealth Federation (CCF). The West’s social gospel tradition had its practi-
tioners in people such as Douglas, J.S. Woodsworth, and Stanley Knowles,
who all had been propelled into politics through religious conviction.
Ernest Manning was raised on a Saskatchewan farm and experienced
a religious conversion while listening to the radio broadcasts of Alberta’s
William Aberhart. Young Manning presented himself to Aberhart in Cal-
gary and soon became his mentor’s right-hand man. Aberhart decided to
insert religion directly into politics and became the Social Credit premier
of Alberta in 1935. When Aberhart died in 1943, Manning succeeded him.
Throughout his years as premier, Manning continued to appear as a lay
preacher on Back to the Bible, the religious radio program he inherited from
Aberhart and which prompted his conversion. On occasion Manning re-
cruited his son, Preston, to stand in for him on the show.
Ernest Manning ruled Alberta from the right, particularly after the
discovery of oil in the 1950s. He grudgingly introduced welfare measures,
such as building homes for the aged, but believed none of that would be
necessary if people shouldered their Christian duties to care for one another.
In Saskatchewan, Douglas ruled more from the left and his party intro-
duced North America’s first state medical care insurance program in 1962.
When Ottawa proposed Medicare for all Canadian provinces later in the
decade, Manning was opposed. His political tradition has been carried by
his son, Preston, who led the Reform Party (1987–2000), by Stockwell Day,
a former Conservative Cabinet Minister, former Alberta MLA, and the first
leader of the Canadian Alliance, and Stephen Harper: all are also evangelical
Christians. People like former MP Bill Blaikie, or current MPs Joe Comar-
tin and Charlie Angus, have kept the Woodsworth-Douglas tradition alive,
but its flame is flickering.
Despite Ernest Manning’s political prominence, most fundamental-
ist and evangelical Christians responded to the modernist-traditionalist de-
bate early in the twentieth century by retreating into their own communi-
ties of faith. By the 1960s, however, they had moved from the margins of
xv

17. pulpit and politics
Canadian society toward its centre. They were increasingly well educated
and prosperous, but they retained their religious beliefs.
In the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, Pierre Trudeau became a symbol of every-
thing that many evangelical and fundamentalist Christians found wrong
with society. Trudeau liberalized laws regarding divorce, abortion, homo-
sexuality, and the dissemination of birth control information (promoting
birth control was illegal well into the 1960s). What appeared to many to be
an overdue modernization of Canadian legislation was to others a sign that
Canada had formally ceased to be a “Christian” nation. The 1970s and 80s
saw the emergence of a growing network that supported a religiously and
socially conservative worldview. In the 1980s the Evangelical Fellowship of
Canada (EFC) opened an office in Ottawa under the effective leadership
of Reverend Brian Stiller, a Pentecostal minister. The EFC began to lobby
governments on issues like abortion, Sunday shopping, and gay rights.
When Preston Manning created the Reform Party in the 1980s, it
resonated well with conservative Protestants. Manning is an avowed and
proud evangelical Christian, and with his arrival evangelicals had a new
option. Religious historian John Stackhouse writes in a book called The
Canadian Protestant Experience 1760 to 1990 that, “Not one but two politi-
cal parties (Reform and Christian Heritage) were formed with evangelical
support in the late 1980s and fielded dozens of candidates in the federal
election of 1988.”
Political scientist David Laycock profiled the rise of the Reform and
Canadian Alliance Parties in his book, The New Right and Democracy in
Canada: Understanding Reform and the Canadian Alliance: “With their
evangelical Christian leaders,” Laycock writes, “Reform and the Alliance
have also appealed to social and moral conservatives uncomfortable with
what they have seen as an over-secularized society. Such voters have wor-
ried about the threats both to the traditional family and to citizens’ sense of
personal responsibility that they attribute to the modern Canadian welfare
state.” By the 1990s Canadian evangelicals had arrived on the public scene,
and they brought their worldview and a growing political sophistication
along with them.
xvi

18. introduction
During the Trudeau era, the Catholic bishops were also shifting to the
right. In the liberalization that followed the Second Vatican Council, the
Church in Canada began to participate in coalitions with mainline Protes-
tants on a range of social justice initiatives at the national and international
levels, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. Those efforts have largely been
replaced by the Catholic hierarchy’s growing partnership with religious
conservatives on so-called family issues. The Harper government has been
eager, where possible, to oblige these groups, hoping to win favour with
religious conservatives in order to form a permanent political coalition.
These trends have been building for years—the decline of mainline
Protestantism, the emergence of evangelicals, the Catholic hierarchy’s
move to the right and its growing cooperation with evangelical groups—
but until recently they have gone largely unnoticed. Most academics and
journalists believed that secularism reigns and that religion has become
largely irrelevant in the public sphere. Writing in the Canadian Journal of
Political Science in September 1974, political scientist William Irvine said
that the persistence of religious affiliation as a factor in voting behaviour
had come to be treated “as a moderately interesting, but strikingly peculiar,
houseguest who has overstayed his welcome.” Researchers may well have
attempted to show this houseguest the door, but it would appear that he
has returned—if ever he had left—and interest is now reviving. A group
of Canadian academics has collaborated in a project called the Canadian
Election Study (CES), which analyzes polling data to explain how people
vote in each federal election. Theses academics include, among others, An-
dré Blais of the University of Montreal and Elisabeth Gidengil of McGill
University, and they have begun to include information on religion as one
determinant of voting behaviour.
Churches and religious organizations are not monolithic in their think-
ing and action. Many evangelicals, for example, are considering whether
their agenda should remain narrowly focused on the personal sphere, or
if they should place more emphasis upon issues like climate change and
poverty. Catholics are easily the largest and most diverse religious group in
Canada, but many of them do not agree with the increasing focus of the
xvii

19. pulpit and politics
hierarchy on moral conservatism. Add to these factors Canada’s increasing
ethnic and religious diversity. This country attracts about 250,000 immi-
grants every year. They are drawn from many races and creeds, and most
politicians recognize that religion generally plays a more prominent role
in the lives of recent immigrants than it does in the lives of native-born
Canadians. There is a lively competition among political parties for what
is known as the “ethnic vote.” Religion appears poised to play a larger role
on Canada’s public stage in the foreseeable future than has been the case for
many years, but there is no way to predict with any certainty which faction
will exert the greater political influence.
xviii

20. political and religious polarization in 2011
Political and Religious Polarization in 2011
The connection between religious faith and politics did not
often make headlines in the 2011 federal election campaign,
but it is real and it was present. Religious conservatives and
progressives look at the world in significantly different ways.
Progressives gathered in church basements to talk about how to
convince politicians to combat climate change and eradicate
poverty. In other churches and synagogues, people with a
different take on faith were meeting to promote the interests
of Israel, with a little help from Conservative politicians. The
election is now history. The Conservatives won a majority,
and the religious right helped them to do it. We are witnessing
a growing polarization and the competition among religious
ideologies will continue with an enduring intensity.
The Harper Majority
S tephen Harper won his long-coveted majority govern-
ment in the May 2011 federal election, receiving just
under 40 per cent of the votes cast by the approximately 60 per cent of
eligible Canadians who bothered to show up. An exit poll of 36,000 voters
conducted by Ipsos Reid on May 2 yielded some predictable results based
on the religious affiliation of voters, but it also served up some surprises.
One thing to note is that 55 per cent of Protestants voted for the
Conservatives, a figure far higher than the number of Protestants who sup-
ported other parties. This is not a surprise because evangelical Protestants
in particular have provided strong support to the Conservatives in a string
of elections.
1

21. pulpit and politics
Secondly, the NDP did well among Catholics, winning 39 per cent of
their vote, compared to the 30 per cent of Catholics who voted Conserva-
tive and 16 per cent who voted Liberal. The NDP vote rose dramatically
in Quebec where a large percentage of people identify as Catholics even if
they seldom attend religious services. It is highly likely that those people
were voting primarily as Quebecois who were not impressed by what they
saw in the Conservative, Liberal, or Bloc Quebecois Parties. It is unlikely in
this case that they were voting based on strongly held religious preferences.
Catholics had moved to the Conservatives in significant numbers in
the 2006 and 2008 elections, but that trend may now be in question. Of
course, a big story in the 2011 election was the huge losses endured by the
Liberals. They had long been the party of choice for Catholics in Canada,
but their poor overall performance in the 2011 election was also reflected
in the party’s results among the Catholic constituency. The Catholic vote is
now up for grabs and the stakes are high. Catholics constitute more than 40
per cent of the Canadian population.
This may be why Minister of Immigration Jason Kenney quickly held
a meeting with Monsignor Patrick Powers, the general secretary of the Ca-
nadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) in Ottawa and planned to
meet with the CCCB president, Most Reverend Pierre Morrisette, in June.
Perhaps the bishop could begin by asking Kenney about his public letter
in December 2010, which stated that “ideological bureaucrats” were re-
sponsible for a CCCB letter criticizing the government’s human smuggling
legislation. Was Kenney implying that the bishops do not have an analysis
of their own or that their staff is out of their control?
A third observation based on the Ipsos Reid exit poll is that the Con-
servatives did well among Jewish voters in the 2011 election but that they
did poorly among Canadian Muslims. Among Jewish voters, 52 per cent
voted Conservative, compared to 24 per cent who voted Liberal and only
16 per cent who voted NDP. The Harper government has courted Jewish
voters by offering uncritical support for Israel, replacing the more balanced
policy toward Israel of previous Liberal administrations. Jewish voters have
in the past been strong supporters of the Liberals, but Conservatives have
2

22. political and religious polarization in 2011
been eating into that support for several elections. It is worth noting, how-
ever, that Jewish voters are not of one mind because almost half of them did
not vote Conservative in 2011.
There is another reason for the Conservatives to be cheerleaders for
Israeli government policies. A committed fringe element of Christian fun-
damentalists is the Christian Zionists, who believe that Biblical prophe-
cies are being fulfilled by the creation of Israel and its hegemony in the
Middle East. In supporting Israel’s government, the Conservatives play to
both Christian fundamentalists and some Jewish voters. Early during the
election campaign, a series of gatherings occurred in four Canadian cities.
They were thinly disguised political events and featured former Conserva-
tive MPs Stockwell Day and Jim Abbott among their guest speakers.
We can expect more of the same from the Conservatives regarding
Israel. Following the election in May, Prime Minister Harper stood alone
among G8 leaders meeting in France in his opposition to the release of a
joint statement calling on the Israelis and Palestinians to negotiate a two-
state solution on the basis of Israel’s borders before the 1967 Six-Day War.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has flatly rejected that pro-
posal, and the newspaper Haaretz reported on May 31 that he spoke to
Harper about the matter. Haaretz says that the G8 works on consensus, so
based on Harper’s opposition the group’s final statement removed any refer-
ence to the 1967 borders. The prime minister received quick praise from
fundamentalists for his actions. The National House of Prayer in Ottawa is
one such group. On May 27 the organization’s website offered the following
prayer: “That Stephen Harper will be given courage and wisdom regarding
Canada’s stance towards Israel and will continue his stance to see the 1967
borders fall out of debates.”
Harper is isolating Canada internationally and he also forfeits the vote
of Muslim Canadians, but that is a price he appears prepared to pay. Among
those Canadian voters who identified as Muslims, only 12 per cent voted
Conservative. Significantly, 46 per cent of them voted Liberal in an elec-
tion where the party’s vote dropped to historic lows. The NDP received
38 per cent of the Muslim vote, and presumably the party will attempt to
3

23. pulpit and politics
improve on that performance. There are three times as many Muslims as
there are Jews in Canada, but the Muslim groups are not as well established
and influential as those of the Jewish population. Christians, of course, ac-
count for the bulk of the Canadian population. Statistics Canada reports
that more than 75 per cent of Canadians identify themselves as Christians.
A fourth observation regarding the Ipsos Reid exit poll deals with the
growing political polarization between voters who identify as religious and
those who say they have no religion. The Conservatives drew the support
of 50 per cent of those voters who said they attended a church or temple
at least once a week. The NDP received the support of only 24 per cent of
that group. Many polls taken at different times in both Canada and the US
indicate that regular church attenders are more likely to vote Conservative
(or Republican) than are people who attend a church less often. The reasons
why would merit a chapter on their own but likely mean that people in
closely knit groups tend to influence one another in voting behaviour, in
this case in a conservative direction. On the other hand, the NDP won the
vote of 42 per cent of the no religion group of voters in the 2011 election,
while the Conservatives received only 27 per cent of that vote.
Reginald Bibby, a University of Lethbridge sociologist, has com-
mented on the growing number of people who say they have no religion.
That group, Bibby says in his recent book, Beyond the Gods and Back, is
more numerous than any single religious denomination in Canada, save
for Catholics. The no religion group is highly represented among younger
people and is poised to grow as a percentage of the population. One ques-
tion is whether there will be growing friction and disrespect between those
who follow a religious faith and those who do not. In strictly political
terms, the no religion group is amorphous and unorganized while frequent
church attenders are easier for political parties to reach because they belong
to communities that are often tightly knit.
The coming polarization promises to be both religious and political.
The NDP is a social democratic party that trends to the left of the Liberals
and certainly to the left of the Conservatives. It has a strong base among
people who profess no religion, as well as considerable support among those
4

24. political and religious polarization in 2011
religionists—Protestant, Catholic, and other—who attend church less of-
ten. The Conservatives have strong support among frequent attenders, par-
ticularly Evangelical Protestants, Christian fundamentalists, and Jews.
Some suggest that Harper is more of a social than a religious conser-
vative. He promised during the 2011 campaign that he would not allow
the abortion debate to be reopened and he appears to have put the issue of
same-sex marriage behind him in the previous Parliament. It is worth not-
ing, however, that Conservative backbenchers continued to bring forward
private member’s bills that could curtail a woman’s right to abortion. We
can expect religious conservatives to keep applying pressure, even as they
continue to support Harper as their preferred alternative. I received, by way
of example, an automated telephone call late in the campaign from Jim
Hughes, chairman of the Campaign Life Coalition, asking me to support
the Conservative candidate in an Ottawa riding. Shortly after the election
in May, a National March for Life event drew about 10,000 people to Par-
liament Hill in Ottawa. Their clear message to the Harper government was
that the abortion debate is on again.
Religious progressives should not expect to see action from this gov-
ernment on abolishing poverty, mitigating climate change, or pursuing nu-
clear deterrence, which are issues promoted by some mainstream religious
groups. They, too, will have to decide on their strategies. The next four years
promise to be intense, and progressives—religious and secular—will have to
decide how to respond if, as expected, Harper attempts to move the country
sharply to the right.
Make Climate Change an Election Issue
I was in an Ottawa church basement along with about
eighty other people a few days after the 2011 election was
called, listening to a panel called Environment & Climate in Peril. The
frustration was palpable. “Climate change is the key moral and ethical di-
lemma of our time and we have to engage it,” said Reverend Lillian Roberts
5

25. pulpit and politics
from the United Church’s Ottawa presbytery. “We are facing a developing
crisis and there is a need for an urgent response, but you won’t hear about
it on the leaders’ debates,” said David Selzer, executive archdeacon for the
Anglican Diocese of Ottawa.
Sadly, that turned out to be true. American economist William Nord-
haus has written that any politician who will not support placing a price on
carbon is not really serious about slowing climate change. This pricing can
come in the form of a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system, which allows
companies exceeding set carbon emission limits to buy credits from compa-
nies that create less carbon pollution.
In Canada this issue was sidelined after the 2008 election when the
Conservatives launched a devastating attack against Stéphane Dion’s Green
Shift plan. Dion proposed to tax carbon polluters and use the money col-
lected to reduce personal income and other taxes. The Conservative mantra
was that no tax is a good tax and that Dion’s proposals would ruin the
economy. The Harper government promised to introduce intensity-based
pollution targets for industry, but they are a joke. They might slow the rate
of increase in greenhouse gas emissions somewhat but will still allow pollu-
tion levels to rise for many years to come.
In the 2011 campaign, the Liberals announced that they would estab-
lish a cap-and-trade emissions system, but they did not say where that cap
would be set. The NDP said it would tax big polluters and leave individuals
alone, and that they would use the money collected from corporations to
invest in green programs and technology. So the Liberals offered an unde-
fined cap-and-trade and the NDP a tax on corporations. The Conservatives
oppose both of those.
Fortunately, most people are coming to accept the basic science of
climate change, and the number of deniers is thinning. Most now agree
that carbon dioxide and other gases being pumped into the atmosphere as a
by-product of fossil fuels consumption are heating up the planet. The Inter-
governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has predicted temperature
increases of between 2.5 and 10.4°C in the twenty-first century.
In his book Now or Never, Australian scientist Tim Flannery says the
6

26. political and religious polarization in 2011
IPCC estimates have proven to be too conservative and are already being
overtaken. He says that the difference between the low and high estimate
for warming temperatures is profound. According to Flannery, humanity
may be able to manage a warming of less than 3°C, but 10.4°C of warming
would be catastrophic.
The signs of what may come are all around us. My home insurance
rates increased by 20 per cent between 2009 and 2011 because of severe
storms and resulting flooding, but this pales compared to the deadly wild-
fires and flooding in Australia, widespread droughts and global food short-
ages, worldwide glacier melts, and a looming water crisis.
Canada is developing an international reputation as a laggard on policy
and action related to climate change. Our government’s negotiators played
an obstructionist role at recent international conferences in Copenhagen
and Cancun. They will have a chance to redeem themselves at another in-
ternational meeting in Durban in November 2011.
We have to modify our habits of consumption if we are to reduce
carbon emissions, but politicians are afraid to tell us that. In addition, the
carbon industry has an immense amount of lobbying power in Canada. It
effectively bankrolled the creation of the Reform Party, where Prime Minis-
ter Stephen Harper apprenticed in politics.
Back in the church basement, Archbishop Brendan O’Brien, from
Kingston, Ontario, called for asceticism. “We are in a critical situation, but
we have to find ways for people to incorporate all of this into their lives
in prayerful contemplation. We should appreciate what we have, but the
new way we seek is one of being restrained in our consumerism.” O’Brien
said a new asceticism would fit well with the Church’s prophetic tradition.
“Those involved in social movements talk of the impact of social and politi-
cal structures on people. The ecological situation we face will have its great-
est impact on the poor, and we must develop a prophetic sense about that.”
My question for all political leaders is borrowed (with a slight revi-
sion) from the ecumenical group Citizens for Public Justice: “Should a na-
tional carbon tax policy or a mandatory national cap-and-trade system be
imposed?”
7

27. pulpit and politics
Stéphane Dion was right about the issue in 2008, but vested interests
prevailed. Who will now have the courage and wisdom to take the next
steps? Likely, it won’t be the new Conservative majority government. They
have a long and cozy relationship with oil and gas companies, and they
campaigned in the past two elections against a tax on carbon. The answer
to future action on climate change may well be found among those 60 per
cent of Canadians who voted for one of the other parties.
Canada Celebrates Israel: Christian Zionism and
the Election
O n day twelve of the 2011 federal election campaign,
Stephen Harper was in Markham, Ontario, pursuing
immigrant voters. That same evening in Ottawa, several hundred people
gathered at the Peace Tower Church, not far from Parliament Hill. There
they pledged fealty to the state of Israel and praised Prime Minister Harper
as that country’s benefactor. The event, called Canada Celebrates Israel, was
one of four that occurred in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver
within a few days in early April. The rallies featured three Israeli politicians
who are members of the Israeli Knesset Christian Allies Caucus, as well as
a cast of fundamentalist Christians from Canada. The four events received
virtually no coverage in the mainstream media, but an Ottawa-based stu-
dent newspaper did a look-ahead piece in March. In that story one of the
tour’s organizers is quoted saying that the events were an outreach effort to
Jewish and Christian communities to show support for Israel and that they
certainly were not political.
Perhaps. But the Conservatives just happened to be well represented
at the rallies. Jim Abbott brought greetings on behalf of the federal govern-
ment. Abbott was the long-time Reform, Canadian Alliance, and later Con-
servative MP for Kootenay-Columbia, but he chose not to run again in the
2011 election. Stockwell Day, the recently retired Minister of the Treasury
Board, had been billed as a guest speaker at the Ottawa event, but instead
8

28. political and religious polarization in 2011
he provided a message on videotape. However, Day was available in person
at the Canada Celebrates Israel event in Montreal on the previous evening.
The Canadian Jewish News reported on it and described Day as giving “a
strongly pro-Israel speech” that earned him a standing ovation. The news-
paper described part of his speech as follows: “Day earned wide applause
when he said Israel, as a Jewish state, has ‘an aboriginal right to exist’ and
that the Hebrew scriptures, written as far back as 1,000 years BCE, provide
historically accurate evidence of the Jewish presence in what is now Israel.”
According to the newspaper, the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus and
“several Canadian fundamentalist Christian groups” had organized the tour.
Those Canadian groups included Christians for Israel, For Zion’s Sake, and
Return Ministries, an Ontario-based organization whose website mission
statement says the group “encourages Jews and Christians to work together
to fulfill God’s plans and purposes for Israel and the nations according to
the Word of God.” These groups are Christian Zionists, who believe that
the return of the Jews to the Holy Land and the establishment of the state of
Israel are prerequisites for the Second Coming of Christ. They have found an
eager ally in the Israeli government, which is desperate to avoid being diplo-
matically isolated for its shabby treatment of Palestinians and its continuing
illegal occupation of their land. In Canada the Conservatives work hard to
attract both Christian Zionists and Jewish voters—hence the appearance of
Jim Abbott and Stockwell Day at a thinly disguised political event.
The Ottawa rally received little advance publicity, but the main floor
of the church was almost full and there was a scattering of people in the
balcony, as well, a testament to the networking ability of the groups in-
volved. A single bagpiper and a red-coated RCMP constable accompanied
the dignitaries—including Miriam Ziv, Israel’s ambassador to Canada—as
they walked to the front. There was a procession of flags, Klezmer music,
speeches, and two videos extolling the virtues of Israel. Near the end of the
evening, everyone was asked to stand and to recite in unison the “Canada-
Israel Declaration,” whose words were projected on a screen in the church.
People were also asked to sign a pledge sheet containing that declaration,
which occupied a table at the back of the church.
9

29. pulpit and politics
The “Canada-Israel Declaration” reads, in part:
Whereas we the undersigned, friends of Israel, affirm the eternal
and steadfast love of God for Israel and the Jewish People as
clearly decreed in the Word of God. “I have loved you with an
everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness.” (Jer-
emiah 31:3)
We affirm the noble stand that our Prime Minister, the Right
Honourable Stephen Harper has taken in support and solidar-
ity of Israel: “The Jewish state can expect the full support and
friendship of Canada.” Oct. 19, 2009, Toronto.
We affirm our Prime Minister’s explicit statement in his speech
addressing the delegation of International Parliamentarians and
global leaders at the International Conference to Combat Anti-
Semitism ...
We affirm, as stated in the Bible, that people, nations and lead-
ers will be blessed when they bless Israel. “I will bless those that
bless you (Israel) and whoever curses you (Israel) I will curse.”
(Genesis 12:3)
We affirm that the State of Israel, like Canada, has a right to ex-
ist, prosper, thrive and defend her people against the pernicious
onslaught of terror, racism and anti-Semitism targeted against
them.
We affirm the Abrahamic Covenant of God with Israel, and His
promises, and in the giving of the land to the Jewish People as
their everlasting homeland and eternal inheritance. “I will give
you this land as an everlasting possession to your descendants
after you.” (Genesis 17:8)
This declaration, of course, is a crude form of Biblical literalism, and Stock-
well Day’s remarks represented an equally crude historical analysis. The not-
ed writer William Dalrymple says that when the state of Israel was created
in 1948, an estimated 700,000 Palestinians (Muslim and Christian) were
10

30. political and religious polarization in 2011
driven from their homes and land. There was no acknowledgment of that by
Day, Abbott, or any of the presenters. During the pre-emptive Six-Day War
in 1967, Israel captured East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan,
and these territories were placed under a military occupation that persists
to this day. The Oslo Accords in 1993 set out a process and timetable for
peace negotiations and Palestinian self-government, but such negotiations
are rendered impossible by the relentless development of Israeli settlements
on occupied land. As veteran politicians, both Day and Abbott would know
this history, but they choose to ignore it.
The Canada Celebrates Israel rallies were no doubt planned prior to
the federal election being called on March 26, but despite their religious
trappings they were blatantly political. Their intention was to buttress sup-
port for the Israeli government and its policies, and to strengthen a political
coalition in Canada between the Conservatives, select Jewish organizations,
and Christian fundamentalists.
Former MP Tony Martin Pushes Poverty
Elimination
T ony Martin is a devout Roman Catholic who was a
three-term member of Ontario’s provincial Parliament
and the NDP Member of Parliament for Sault Ste. Marie from 2004 until
the May 2, 2011, election, when he was defeated by Conservative Bryan
Hayes. Martin had made it his political mission in life to fight poverty in
Canada. Shortly before the spring election campaign began, Martin spoke
to about seventy-five people at Centretown United Church in Ottawa. “I
want to eradicate poverty, not reduce it,” Martin said. He believes it can be
done if there is enough popular support for it and the political will. “Gov-
ernment has no greater responsibility than to look after people who are
marginalized,” he told his audience.
Martin described to them how he was eleven years old when he emi-
grated from Ireland to Canada with his mother and six siblings in January
11

31. pulpit and politics
1960. His father had arrived nine months earlier to find work. Martin re-
called for his audience how mother and children arrived in Sault Ste. Marie,
Ontario, in the dead of winter, then made an additional eight-hour train
trip to Wawa, the family’s new home. “I began my Canadian journey in a
community where people took care of one another,” Martin said. “That was
the kind of Canada that we came to know, but it is now slipping through
our fingers.”
Poverty has been a problem of long duration in Canada. One of my
first assignments in 1970 as a young reporter at the Prince Albert Daily
Herald in Saskatchewan was to cover a visit by Senator David Croll and
his Special Senate Committee on Poverty, which reported in 1971. Speak-
ing months later to a business audience at the Empire Club in Toronto,
Croll paraphrased the first lines in his Senate report. “It is obvious that the
poor do not choose poverty,” he said. “It is at once their affliction and our
national shame. The grim fact is that one Canadian in four lacks sufficient
income to maintain a basic standard of living.” The central recommenda-
tion of his report was for a guaranteed annual income based on need and
using the tax system to deliver it.
The guaranteed annual income strategy never happened, but Tony
Martin said that over the years other good poverty reduction programs have
been put into place. They have included medicare, introduced in the 1960s,
Old Age Assistance and Guaranteed Income Supplement programs for se-
niors, and a variety of federal and provincial housing programs. But Mar-
tin also noted that things have been going downhill since 1995 when the
federal government abdicated its responsibility by abandoning the Canada
Assistance Plan (CAP).
Introduced in 1966, the CAP required Ottawa to pay half the cost of
social assistance programs undertaken by provinces. That enabled the fed-
eral government to set national standards for social assistance and other pro-
grams in return for its financial contributions. Ottawa set a limit on those
transfers in 1991 and was soon paying only about one-third of the actual
costs for social assistance. The CAP was replaced in 1996 by a transfer pro-
gram that combined federal spending for health, post-secondary education,
12

32. political and religious polarization in 2011
and social assistance programs. Provinces could spend the money within
that envelope pretty well as they wished. Almost immediately after being
elected in 1995, the Mike Harris government in Ontario, for example, re-
duced the level of social assistance payments by 21 per cent.
Poverty is not as widespread now as it was in Croll’s day in the early
1970s, but Statistics Canada reports that nearly 3.2 million Canadians,
or 9.6 per cent of the population, were low income in 2009, the last year
for which figures are available.
Put another way, one can say the number of poor people in Canada in
2009 was almost equal to the number of residents in Alberta.
The Great Recession that struck in 2008–2009 hit the poor first and
hit them hardest, as recessions always do. The ranks of the unemployed
swelled but Employment Insurance benefits had been scaled back relent-
lessly since 1995, and the system was unable to cope. That, in turn, forced
many of the unemployed to rely on social assistance and food banks. Statis-
tics Canada reported 9.5 per cent of Canadian children lived in low income
families in 2009.
If poverty persists, so do the promises to eliminate it. In 1989 the
House of Commons passed a motion pledging to eliminate child poverty
by the year 2000, but that didn’t happen. In 2009 the House passed another
motion calling for an immediate plan to eliminate poverty in Canada. It
was in 2009 as well, about forty years after the Croll report was tabled, that
another Senate committee issued yet another document calling for mea-
sures to lift people out of poverty.
In addition, Tony Martin badgered his fellow MPs on the House of
Commons Human Resources Committee to look into poverty. They did
and by all accounts worked in a collaborative manner, something that has
been in short supply among Ottawa politicians in recent parliaments. The
committee tabled its report in November 2010. It calls for the federal gov-
ernment to commit to an action plan to reduce poverty and to back up that
action with a new federal transfer (a poverty-reduction fund) supporting
initiatives at the provincial and territorial level. The report also calls for a
comprehensive and long-term national housing strategy. For good measure,
13

33. pulpit and politics
in June 2010, Martin also tabled his own Private Member’s Bill, C-545: An
Act to Eliminate Poverty in Canada.
Martin told his church audience that the stars are aligning. A grass-
roots coalition called Dignity for All is campaigning for a poverty-free
Canada and has the support of 450 organizations and 7,800 individuals.
Dignity for All is calling for federal legislation to eliminate poverty and for
an integrated federal-provincial plan to pursue that goal: the committing of
sufficient resources, to be derived from “fair taxes,” which would pay for it.
A member of his Ottawa audience asked Martin whether creating jobs
would not be a better plan for eradicating poverty than putting money into
social security. He responded by saying it is tempting to believe that a job
is the best social program available. “But we cannot limit an anti-poverty
strategy to a labour market policy because it misses too many people. There
are thousands and thousands of people working full-time and still living in
poverty because they earn too little.”
Martin said that he saw little hope that the Harper government would
move on the poverty agenda. “They are focused on tax breaks to corpora-
tions. We all have to say to them, ‘No, not this time.’ The corporations are
doing all right and they don’t need tax breaks. There are people who need
help a lot more than the corporations do.”
Another questioner asked what people could do to push the anti-pov-
erty agenda. Martin responded, “You are doing it tonight. We are building
hope and momentum everywhere, including in church halls and church
basements. I believe that we can move on eradicating poverty after the next
election if we have a more progressive government that will make it a prior-
ity to look after people.” That election has now occurred: there is a Conser-
vative majority government and Tony Martin was defeated. It will be left
to others within Parliament and without to keep the eradication of poverty
on the agenda.
14