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The Making of Moral Majority
It's time we realized there really are two solitudes in this country, – the religious and the secular.
By Lorna Dueck
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
From The Globe and Mail
The sleeping giant of Canada's God-conscious majority has begun to
apply itself to the business of who gets into political office.
In
the past 17 months, a stunning amount of money and machinery was put to
use in an effort to stop the Liberal government from cramming through a
redefinition of marriage. One coalition group, called Defend Marriage,
hosted 320 rallies (including one of more than 15,000 people on
Parliament Hill), made a million protest phone calls to MPs,
distributed 1.4 million brochures in five different languages, posted
50 billboards, 11 full-page ads, and united over 200 multifaith
organizations.
Supporters
of another organization, Focus on the Family, paid for even more
full-page ads, protest e-mails and radio broadcasts, and they've now
sponsored a policy institute in Ottawa and have a goal of raising
millions of dollars to be spent for TV.
Ask
yourself why the pro-life, pro-family website of Campaign Life is
getting more than 5 million Canadian hits a month? Why are more than
200 people a day e-mailing them news tips of Canada going to hell in a
hand basket? Last week, Jim Hughes, Campaign Life chairman, and one of
the longest serving and busiest Christian lobbyists in Canada, was
doing a training session at a Chinese evangelical church and discovered
that Muslims had also joined in.
Today, Ralph Reed, a senior adviser to the campaign of George W. Bush,
and a man Time magazine featured on its a cover as "The Right Hand of
God", is coming to Toronto to enlighten 500 leaders in faith-based
activism on how to sharpen their skills for this election.
Before
you run for the hills in fear that fire and brimstone is about to
engulf this federal election campaign, there is a better way to deal
with the two solitudes.
To
faith activists wanting to break the divide, I'd say watch out for the
alienation factor. The first thing to understand is that a negative
spin may work in political parties to a point, but not in allowing
faith to have any influence. It leaves the impression that instead of
serving in the needed role of moral conscience, we want in as lawmaker.
The Gospel metaphor for public communicating is salt and light, not
shrill and loud.
The
two approaches could be seen when Toronto's gun violence claimed a
recent victim on the steps of a church funeral: One pastor called for
the War Measures Act to be invoked, another said it was time for
pastors to get out from behind the pulpit and visit affected
neighbourhoods.
Second,
faith activists need to broaden their depth on the issues they tackle
and their reason for doing so. This seems to exist at the top among the
people who actually pray and theologize over voters' guides for the
faithful, but it rarely emerges from the cloister. The United Church of
Canada (representing 2.7 million voters, according to Statistics
Canada) and the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (estimated at more
than 3 million) each have more than a dozen issues on their voters'
guides. United Church spokesperson Richard Chambers says they "engage
in the politics of the day in order to seek justice, resist evil and
walk humbly with our God." At the EFC, president Bruce Clemenger says
their political action reflects the Christian concern to "value life,
care for the vulnerable, understand and foster family life, live with
diversity and difference in Canada and address unresolved regional,
linguistic and ethnic tensions, protect our freedoms and understand our
international responsibilities."
If faith interests in politics really are that broad, a strategy for getting it across to the public is needed.
As
for the secularists who cluster in the other solitude, a big step
forward would be to sincerely understand the religious heart and mind
that Canadians have. As political parties have a belief system to
protect, a reputation to uphold and a motivation to care for the public
good, so too do faith groups.
What
is their purpose and what are they actually doing in our country? There
are plenty of examples to learn from, such as the Salvation Army,
which, I'd say, is the faith group most involved in public policy. They
focus their efforts on their workload of heart to God, hand to man, but
persist in political influence out of the limelight. What motivates
this? What are they doing that gives them insight into our policies and
why do they care?
Others point to the legacy that even constitutional, representative
government is a fruit of Christian political thought: "Whereas Canada
is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the
rule of law" is the opening line of our Constitution. "Why do we think
it can get along without the continued nurturing by the tradition that
gave it birth, breath and caused it to flourish?" asks Russ Kuykendall
of the Work Research Foundation, an organization promoting Christian
work values.
Finally, practising the tolerance we demand from the faith community is
a two-way street. It seems the national press and evangelical
Christians have a huge gap to overcome in this area.
In
a Canadian book titled Hidden Agendas: How Journalists Influence the
News, researchers Lydia Miljan and Barry Cooper write that our top
journalists include the most irreligious and socially permissive people
in the country, quite unlike the church crowd who are just as sin-filled
but religious, and not socially permissive.
Getting
the two solitudes together for a beer after work to discuss mutual
interests is tough, but the holy grail of neutrality still needs to be
found in this domain. Last election, a CBC journalist told me at least
10 large evangelical churches had declined her request to interview
them on the election; they simply didn't trust the press could give
fair treatment to their sacred teachings that government is a gift from
God for our own well-being.
There
is repair work to be done on the place and purpose of publicizing
faith, one of the deepest and longest-held values of our nation.
A faith that believes there is more to this world than our own wisdom,
a faith that believes our lives do have a purpose bigger than our
lifetime, and faith that prays God will keep our land glorious and free.
Lorna Dueck
is executive producer of Listen Up TV, a weekly analysis of faith and
Canadian life seen Sunday mornings on Global TV, and on CTS, Salt and
Light TV, and the Christian Channel.
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