By Dennis Gruending 
 
Stephen Harper is poised to call a fall 2008 election whether Canadians need one or not. Pollster Andrew Grenville said that in 2006 the vote of evangelical Christians and Catholics who attend church services on a weekly basis was instrumental in the election of a Conservative minority government.  Mr. Harper, MP Jason Kenney and others have continued to work assiduously to build a coalition of conservative Christian and Jewish voters. It will be interesting to monitor the messages of churches and various religious organizations in the coming campaign, and to see whether people in the pews take the advice of those who claim to lead them.

I have received some informative comments that urge caution about polls and what is read into them. Bill Stahl, a sociologist from the University of Regina, writes: “It is true that the Evangelical Protestants overwhelmingly support the Tories, just as they supported the Alliance.  What is different from the US is that in Canada Evangelical Protestants make up only 8% of the population, as opposed to 40% in the US.  There just aren’t enough Evangelicals in Canada to play the same kind of role as they do in the US.  That does not mean they cannot play a decisive role in an otherwise close election, but since they have voted overwhelmingly for the Alliance/Tories for some time they are not a place where the Tory vote is going to grow.  They maybe locally important, but national elections are decided by others.”

Marc Zwelling, president of Vector Research in Toronto, also cautions that some observers read too much into the evangelical vote. “You’re talking about a slim slice of the electorate. I am not convinced the religious right in Canada – being concentrated in a few ridings, probably – will have that much influence in federal elections.” Zwelling had this comment on the Catholic vote: “The Conservatives’ recent support from Catholics seems to be an artifact of the Conservatives’ growing support in Quebec – you get Catholic voters when you do better in Quebec but probably not because they’re Catholics.”

With those cautions in mind, let’s turn to what churches and religiously based organizations might say and do during the campaign. There is a common perception in society that same sex marriage and abortion are the two issues that really matter for churches and religious organizations. The religious right has been successful in framing the debate about “family values” around these two questions, and a few others. Mainstream organizations such as the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada  issued reasoned statements during the 2006 campaign, but  have invested much of their effort in court interventions opposing same sex marriage. Catholic clergy have denied full participation in the church to several Catholic NDP parliamentarians because of their party’s position on same sex marriage. Some Catholic bishops still threaten to deny the sacraments to any legislator who does not support the church’s position on abortion. No MP has been sanctioned, however, for supporting a war in Afghanistan – in fact, the bishops have had little of substance to say about that war.  

There are other religiously based organizations that can make no claim to be widely representative. The Defend Marriage Coalition distributed a pamphlet in churches during the 2006 campaign. It was a bogus “report card” on the policies of the various parties, and alleged that Liberal and NDP candidates “support physician-assisted suicide”, and that the NDP “supports defences for the possession of child pornography”. The Conservatives, however, were treated gently.  Defend Marriage includes groups such as Campaign Life, Real Women of Canada, the Catholic Civil Rights League and the Canada Family Action Coalition, which is led by Charles McVety of Toronto. These groups would all have been considered on the right wing fringe a few years ago but are now being courted by the Harper Conservatives.

The Conservatives have also been courting a Jewish constituency whose over-riding priority is to have Canada support Israel. Dr. Stephen Scheinberg, an historian from Montreal and a former long-time officer of B’nai Brith, writes about how that organization has forged an alliance with the Christian right, including McVety, who is also the Canadian chair of a group called Christians United for Israel. Scheinberg writes that B’nai Brith has thrown its weight behind the Conservatives.

What will religiously based organizations – mainstream and fringe – have to say in the coming campaign? Those who talk about family values might want to revisit the ones outlined by Senator Barack Obama in his recent convention speech in Denver: “… so many children to educate … so many veterans to care for … an economy to fix and cities to rebuild and farms to save … so many families to protect and so many lives to mend.”

There are religious organizations in Canada proposing action on those values but they have had trouble getting noticed. During the 2006 campaign, Anglican and Lutheran leaders urged their church members to question candidates closely about putting a priority on the needs of children and families living in poverty. The United Church raised environmental issues and those of peace. Citizens for Public Justice, a small but effective religiously based organization issued a special election issue of its magazine discussing what it really means to “vote Christian”. The publication talked about public responsibility, taxes, poverty, homelessness, the environment, fairness for aboriginal people and the treatment of refugees. 

Thomas Frank, in his excellent book What’s The Matter With Kansas?, writes about how the Republicans fight every election on family values but once elected they deliver only on neo-conservative economic policies. “Cultural anger,” writes Frank, ” is marshaled to achieve economic ends.” 

All too often religionists play along.

By Dennis Gruending

 John Dear, an American Jesuit priest and peace activist, gave an uncompromising address on non-violence to about 120 people in an Ottawa church basement on August 22. “Violence doesn’t work,” he said. “War doesn’t work. War is not the will of God. War is never justified. Peaceful means are the only way ahead.”  The message was stark in its clarity: there is no excuse for violence — ever; no just war theory; no supporting a war to end all wars. Rev. Dear has been arrested over 75 times in acts of non-violent civil disobedience for peace, has organized hundreds of demonstrations against war and nuclear weapons at military bases across the U.S. and worked to stop the death penalty. He is also the author/editor of 25 books on peace and non-violence. Archbishop Desmond Tutu nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008.

Dear spoke at St. Joseph’s Parish in Ottawa on a Friday evening, and then left for the Galilee Centre in nearby Arnprior to lead a weekend retreat on non-violence. He reminded those in his Ottawa audience that it was 45 years ago (on August 28, 1963) when Martin Luther King Jr led 200,000 people in a non-violent civil rights rally in Washington D.C., and 40 years ago that King was shot to death while standing on a hotel balcony in Memphis. Dear said that King’s last publicly spoken words were: “The choice is no longer between violence and non-violence. It is between non-violence and non-existence.”

“The world is a mess,” Dear said. “There are 35 wars going on right now. There are 20,000 nuclear weapons and no significant peace movement. The U.S. is building state of the art nuclear weapons and the Pentagon is itching to use them. In the American church we have developed a spirituality of violence and war. In Los Alamos, New Mexico the people who the build nuclear weapons actually believe that they are the peacemakers and our priests bless the bombs.”

“Martin Luther King was hopeful at the edge of despair,” Dear said, “and we have to do this as well. Non-violence is not only a strategy; it is a way of life. There is no cause for which we will support the taking of a human life. We are willing to take on suffering in this struggle without a trace of retaliation. It’s called the cross. We really have to work on inner non-violence. The starting point is in our heart, it is our doorway to peace and non-violence.”

Dear said that the future of the movement must be inter-faith. “Non-violence is the common ground of all religions. Jesus said love your enemy. He was meticulously non-violent but he was not passive, and if you are his follower you are non-violent. It is as simple as that.”

Dear concluded with a how-to list regarding non-violence:

- Be contemplatives of non-violence. Spend time every day with God, giving up your violence and anger so that you have something else to offer. “Radiate the peace personally that you want politically.”

- Be students and teachers – learn, then teach the methodology of non-violence. “Every level of our society has to be transformed.”

- Become activists. Get involved in organizations. Pick one or two big issues and have a hand in them. “Canada is critical here.” Dear said. “I worry about Canada but there is a lot that you could do here in Ottawa.”

- Be visionaries of non-violence. “Think of the abolitionists,” Dear said. “They announced that a new world was coming and that slavery had to end. We are the new abolitionists. A new world is coming and it’s not going to be John McCain’s (the U.S. presidential candidate’s) 100 years of war.”

- Become prophets of non-violence. “Demand end to the 35 wars and the abolishment of all nuclear weapons, and institutionalize non violence in our societies.”

- Connect issues such as war, poverty and environmental degradation. “Ask this — where is the money that has been stolen for weapons but which belongs to the poor of the planet?”

Dear took questions following his remarks. One person describing himself as a former diplomat said that Canadians are told that they are good guys who are in Afghanistan to fight bad guys. “Don’t believe it,” he said. “We are fighting on behalf of the winners in a civil war against the losers. What our troops are being asked to do is wrong. We have to stand up against it. Don’t wear red on Fridays whatever you do.”

The man also said that Canada’s super secret commandos in the Joint Task Force 2 (JTF2) have been sent to Afghanistan to kill people. “That’s what they do, they kill people.” He added that JTF2 is instructed in its deadly arts at Dwyer Hill Training Centre, just to the west of Ottawa.