By Dennis Gruending

 Peter Harder was at the centre of government decision-making in Canada for more than 30 years prior to leaving the civil service in March 2007 to become the senior policy advisor in an Ottawa-based law firm. He served as a deputy minister in various government departments and worked for five prime ministers. Mr. Harder spoke to participants in our Faith and Public Life course at the Ottawa Lay School of Theology on January 19th. It was an address rich in its knowledge and conviction but in its subtlety as well. Rather than analyzing or parsing remarks (the kind of thing that I do often in this space) I will, after brief introductory remarks, let Mr. Harder speak for himself by lifting (with his permission) extensive quotes from his address.

Harder began by saying that issues of faith and public life are all around us. “Virtually every newscast, whether we acknowledge it or not, is in some form, a variation of ‘faith and public life’. Elections around the globe, revolutionary movements, decisions by governments, actions of civil society, even the marketplace — all speak to this interaction.”

He spoke briefly about being born into a Mennonite community – he now attends a United Church. “I owe much to my Mennonite roots.  They are the community that formed me, the home which nurtured my thinking — the values of community, caring, honesty and integrity, family and work, that has been essential to my career, as they are to an authentic life. As we shift between the spiritual and secular worlds, between community and formal organizations, between professional and religious values, we come to understand more fully how each nurtures the other. I have learned that I must walk both ways across the bridge.”

As a student at the University of Waterloo, he said, he encountered the writing of Bonhoeffer, Gish, Bruegeman and Reinhold Niebuhr, who would stir in him an appetite for public life informed by faith.

“The strongest intellectual influence on me was Niebuhr, the great American theologian who identified, more clearly than any other writer of the last hundred years, the lessons to be learned from the appalling slaughters of the 20th century.  His central thesis can be stated succinctly: human beings cannot find their ultimate fulfillment in the political realm, and yet there can be no real salvation apart from a life of political commitment. As a student, I wrote out the following quotation from Niebuhr, ‘Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.’ These words came to me when I signed the memorial book at the great holocaust memorial in Jerusalem as deputy foreign minister, and thirty-three years after first reading them that quote still sits on my desk.

My time on the Hill only made me appreciate more the work our parliamentarians do on our behalf.  I learned some lessons then, that have stayed with me ever since. First, politics is a rough game, but it is played by surprisingly decent people.  I say ‘surprisingly’ because it is so easy to superimpose our own cynicism about politics onto the people who actually work at politics full-time. Our Members of Parliament — be they ministers or backbenchers — are, by and large, not cynical.  They believe in what they are doing, and they believe it is worth doing well.  Part of doing it well is making the daily compromises and deals that are the stuff of political life; cynics call this ‘selling out’ but it is actually the heart and soul of democracy.

Second, our MPs are surprisingly representative of Canada.  Despite all the stereotyping, the reality is far more reassuring. Our MPs are like us, and getting more like us every day as more women enter politics and Canadian pluralism increasingly reflects itself in public life. Third, our MPs work hard — long hours punctuated by lengthy trips home for the weekend where they run from mall openings to baptisms to bar mitzvahs, meeting the folks and, perhaps once again surprisingly for the cynics, listening to the folks as well, and then bringing those voices back to the national debate.

Beyond the political theatrics, beyond the hard work of democracy, there are other attributes — call them second-order attributes that are woven into the fabric of our democracy. Attributes like restraint, or more accurately, self-restraint. There is the democratic spirit of inquiry and curiosity, of taking positions and standing your ground. Add to the list patience, persistence and passion, not to mention tolerance and tenacity. We are talking about what the philosophers would call civic virtue. It is an important idea, the understanding that democratic governance is far more than a matter of technique; a vibrant and healthy political community needs the active participation of its citizens, and that participation must be grounded in civic virtues that contribute to the maintenance of an active public sphere. It may not be faith-based, but it does build political community. By that I mean more than simply an assembly of people living within a common geographic space.

A community, must hold certain things in common. As a general proposition, the more tightly-knit a community, the easier it will be for that community to agree on issues that affect all its members. This is quite distinct from personal faith. How far can we dilute that sense of commonly-held things before the very idea of community begins to fall apart?  What about a group of people where very little is held in common.  Is that a real community, or just some kind of loose association? This has become one of the most critical issues in the world.

In some countries, fractures occur along racial or ethnic or religious or economic lines; in other cases, it is a fatal collision between the forces of modernity and tradition.  In all cases, there are not enough things held in common to overcome the divisions that separate, and the result is chaos and catastrophe.

More than any other country, Canada has gone down the multicultural path with eyes wide open.  We have overcome a number of difficulties, and will undoubtedly face many more in the future.  We have made mistakes, and there have been false starts and wrong steps. But I also think we have probably done better than any other country to continually remake ourselves, to expand our notions of what it means to be a good Canadian, to meet demands for inclusion and resist calls for exclusion.

More than any other country, we have taken up the challenge of shaping our political community to the emerging realities of the future. The single biggest political challenge of the 21st Century will be the effort to knit together political communities out of diverse populations that draw on very different traditions and hold very different beliefs. Look around the world, and reflect on how unusual it is that Jews vote for Sikhs to represent their interests, that Muslims vote for Jews, that Christians vote for Buddhists. And yet there are still parts of the developed world where it is almost unthinkable for a Protestant to vote for a Catholic.

This brings me to my final point, the need for greater public integrity.  And here, frankly, I’ve learned a tremendous amount from His Highness, the Aga Khan, Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims, and someone I’ve had the privilege of knowing for over eighteen years. In his convocation address at Columbia University last year, His Highness spoke to this issue with his customary eloquence.  He observed that expanding the number of people who share social power is only half the battle. The critical question is how such power is used.  How can we inspire people to reach beyond rampant materialism, self-indulgent individualism, and unprincipled relativism?

The Aga Khan goes on to suggest that one answer is to focus on personal prerogatives and individual rights. This could include a passion for justice, the quest for equality and civic culture of which I spoke earlier.  But he points out that the right of individuals to look for a better quality of life within their own life-spans — and to build toward a better life for their children  — these are personal aspirations which must become public values.  This sense of public integrity, His Highness argues, will be difficult to nurture over time without a strong religious underpinning. In the Islamic tradition, the conduct of one’s worldly life in inseparably intertwined with the concerns of one’s spiritual life — you cannot talk about integrity without also talking about faith.

From that perspective, I would put high among our priorities, both within and outside the Islamic world, the need to renew our spiritual traditions. To be sure, religious freedom is a critical value in a pluralistic society. But if freedom of religion deteriorates into freedom from religion — then I fear we will soon be lost on a bleak and barren landscape — with no compass or roadmap, no sense of ultimate direction. I fully understand the West’s historic commitment to separating the secular from the religious. But for many non-Westerners, including most Muslims, the realms of faith and of worldly affairs cannot be antithetical.  If ‘modernism’ lacks a spiritual dimension, it will look like materialism. And if the modernizing influence of the West is insistently and exclusively a secularising influence, then much of the Islamic world will be somewhat distanced from it.

A central element in any religious outlook (says the Aga Khan) is a sense of human limitation, recognition of our own creaturehood — a posture of profound humility before the Divine.  In that sensibility lies our best protection against divisive dogmatism and our best hope for creative pluralism. For me, the Imam of the Ismaili community has pretty well summed up my Mennonite/United Church faith and public life.

Over the past 29 years, I’ve had the pleasure of working for leaders of the opposition and one deputy prime minister. And as deputy minister, I’ve served five prime ministers and twelve ministers in five departments.  More importantly, I’ve worked beside thousands of public servants seeking to build a better Canada, a more just world and, if not the Kingdom of God, at least a bit of the new Jerusalem.”

Note: If you have any comments to make about Mr. Harder’s presentation, please write them into the Comments section below.

By Dennis Gruending

I have been curious about where Barack Obama will find the antecedents and inspiration for his inaugural speech on January 20. American writer Kathleen Hall Jamieson is an expert on rhetoric, particularly that of presidents. Jamieson says that while modern speeches may contain some new content, they always draw upon a stock of earlier speeches and existing rhetorical forms. Northrop Frye, the late Canadian literary critic, made much the same point. Inaugural addresses exist as a genre. They are a new president’s opportunity to set a tone, to think big and to talk in terms of lofty vision.

Delivering an historic speech about what George Bush Sr. called the “vision thing” is not easy. Most inaugurals are forgotten almost as soon as they are delivered. Only a few survive the test of time and enter the nation’s literature, to be quoted in generations to come. John F. Kennedy’s speech in the 1960 inaugural is recalled as a classic. “Ask not what your country can do for you,” he said, “but what you can do for your country.” Kennedy was America’s first television age president and like Obama, he was elegant and articulate – but Obama is unlikely to draw heavily upon Kennedy in the inaugural speech.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s speech in 1933 was another a classic. The Great Depression confronted him when he took office, much as Obama is beset by a raging economic crisis today. When Roosevelt delivered his speech on March 4, people were gripped by fear and anxiety. Roosevelt told them: “Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear it fear itself…” He promised decisive action to put people back to work and he launched the New Deal, a massive program of public works – what today we would call infrastructure. Expect some echoes of Roosevelt’s steely determination in what we are going to hear from Obama, but he won’t be a major source either.

It is clear that, among presidents, Obama has chosen Abraham Lincoln, a man from Illinois and the emancipator of slaves, as his touchstone. Obama and his family took the train on January 17 from Philadelphia to Washington with six stops along the way, just as Lincoln did nearly 150 years ago. Obama also decided to swear his oath on the same Bible that Lincoln used for his.

The power and cadence of Obama’s speech, however, will likely owe at least as much to Martin Luther King, someone never elected, but rather a pastor and prophet whose destiny was to speak poetic truth to those in power. Obama’s focus on Lincoln allows him to complete the great American narrative of race and justice that runs from Lincoln the emancipator, through King the prophet, to Obama in whom the prophecy is fulfilled in almost religious terms. Obama, a black man, has become president in what was an apartheid-like state, but only after Martin Luther King paid with his life for his prophecy to that state and its citizens. I am a fan of Roosevelt’s but somehow his New Deal, as important as it is, does not have the same narrative power as that of the progression from Lincoln to King to Obama.

Lincoln made several speeches that have become deeply embedded in the American psyche and the country’s narrative. He won the 1860 election and delivered his first inaugural on March 4, 1861 when the storm clouds of secession and civil war were gathering. He opposed slavery but for him the paramount issue was that of national unity. He agreed that the founding fathers had condoned slavery in existing states, but argued that a proper reading of the constitution forbade slavery in the new territories that were opening up. A number of southern states threatened to secede from the union over the issue but in his speech Lincoln insisted on majority rule and said that he would not allow secession. But he ended his speech on a conciliatory note. “I am loath close,” he said. “We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.” Although slavery has long been banished, Obama has made it a priority to reach out to opponents, much as Lincoln did to his. Listen for that in his speech.

The Southern states did secede and the war was fought. On November 19, 1863, Lincoln made a short speech at the dedication of a cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where thousand of soldiers had been slaughtered in several days of intense fighting. Lincoln’s 266-word Gettysburg address is legendary in the United States and elsewhere. He used the consecration of a graveyard to rededicate the nation to its founding principles. “…that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Obama is not likely to talk too much about war, but he will echo Lincoln on freedom and democracy.

Lincoln’s second inaugural address occurred on March 4, 1865. The cruel war was still raging and Lincoln wondered aloud if the Almighty was punishing the nation for its offences. Wearily, but firmly, he promised to prosecute the war to its completion but even in its midst he offered a conciliatory gesture that he knew would be needed in the future. “With malice toward none, with charity for all … let us finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who will have borne the nation’s battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

In the 150 years since the Civil War, that American promise has been badly, some would say hopelessly, tarnished. The beacon of equality, freedom and democracy lived on in the mind of Martin Luther King and countless others, and it was King’s stirring oratory that captured the dream. He spoke on August 23, 1963, appropriately from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. during a peaceful civil rights rally. One hundred years after the Civil War, King said, “we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free.” King spoke with a sense of urgency about what must happen. He used the familiar phrase about the American dream to rhyme off eight parallel constructions about his own dreams for the future, including this one: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Many of the abuses that King described have been overcome; others remain; and King was assassinated for holding the dream that he did. Obama is seen as tangible fulfillment of King’s promise of a better day. No matter how good a president he is, he is bound to disappoint these almost messianic expectations once he has to make hard decisions about taxes, wars and social justice. But as he places the finishing touches on his inaugural (and he will write it mostly on his own), Obama has a rich tradition of American oratory upon which to draw.