By Dennis Gruending

Former Reform Party leader Preston Manning gathered members of the Canadian political and religious right for talk fest in Ottawa recently to strategize about how to win the nation for conservatism. Macleans magazine columnist Paul Wells wrote a piece about it called Hard Right Turn, which is where the Conservatives appear to be headed.  Another piece on the event that caught my eye was one by Lloyd Mackey, a journalist who writes mainly for evangelical Christian publications from his perch in the Parliamentary Press Gallery. I find Mackey’s columns interesting because he has good connections in the Conservative Party and with a segment of Canada’s Christian churches. Mackey was close to Preston Manning and once edited the Reform Party’s publication. He has also written books about Manning and his father Ernest, the late Social Credit premier of Alberta.

Mackey’s report from the Manning Centre hobnob began by invoking St. Francis of Assisi, who early in the 13^th century is said to have written one of history’s most famous prayers. “O Divine Master,” he wrote, “grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love.” Mackey picked up on St. Francis’ line about placing the understanding of others above being understood yourself. He then applied this wisdom to a recent controversy enveloping most of Canada’s mainline churches and the Conservative government.

Mackey describes how the topic arose in a conversation at Manning’s networking conference. “The subject, at that particular point,” Mackey wrote, “ was a recent conflict between a faith-based advocacy group and a government agency which had turned down funding for that particular group.” Mackey doesn’t name the group but it is KAIROS, the ecumenical justice and human rights organization, and the unnamed government agency is CIDA, which on November 30 suspended funding for KAIROS projects between 2009 and 2013. Mackey continues, “The speaker quoting St. Francis was trying to make the point that the advocacy group in question was more interested in getting its own viewpoint understood than it was in understanding the viewpoints of the people on the other side of the table.”

Mackey does not identify the speaker in this encounter either, but concludes: “He was putting forward the seemingly preposterous notion that an advocate should seek divine guidance in the quest of understanding an opposing viewpoint. And, if an advocate can get his or her mind around that humility-based concept, it could go a long way toward the accomplishing of goals that come out of reasonable compromise.”

Ah yes, but this does gloss over some other rather important details. CIDA’s removing of KAIROS funding is one thing. But Jason Kenney, the Immigration Minister, was not content to leave things rest there. Speaking at an international conference in Jerusalem on December 16, Kenney accused KAIROS of being anti-Semitic. This, one assumes, makes it rather difficult to turn the other cheek or to forgive someone seventy times seven. Kenney later insisted that he had not actually accused KAIROS of being anti-Semitic. His remarks, however, were recorded in audio and video. Listen to them here and judge for yourself.

KAIROS and its member churches have chosen not to go quietly into the night regarding the blowing up of their partnership with CIDA after 35 years of co-operation in the case of some of member organizations. The KAIROS response, however, has been quite conventional. The organization has asked people in member churches and organizations  — Catholic, United, Anglican, Presbyterian, and Lutheran churches, as well as the Mennonite Central committee and the Quakers – to write or send emails to their local MPs, the Prime Minister, and CIDA minister Bev Oda. Leaders from the KAIROS coalition also held a news conference on Parliament Hill, and member organizations have lobbied dozens of MPs, focusing mainly on the Conservatives. The delegation that met with Transport Minister John Baird included his former Sunday school teacher.

The Mackey article continues: “But my speaker friend who was interpreting St. Francis was exercising a different kind of thinking. Admittedly, advocates — and their sometimes symbiotically-linked cousins, absolutists — would find that difficult, particularly if their work and stances come out of a narcissistic mindset.” This is a rather odd non sequitur, but being called narcissistic is likely far less painful for KAIROS staff and member churches than being called anti-Semitic.

Unfortunately, no one has applied an analysis of Franciscan precepts to Jason Kenney. One fine Franciscan line that comes to mind is: “Lord make me an instrument of your peace.” Mr. Kenney is allegedly a devout Catholic so he should know all about the peace and love advocated by St. Francis. Kenney attended Notre Dame, a Catholic college at Wilcox, Saskatchewan, so he cannot plead ignorance on these matters. 

Kenney has been an MP since 1997. He used his contacts in the Christian right in 2000 to organize on behalf of Stockwell Day for his campaign against Preston Manning for the leadership of the Canadian Alliance party. Day won but suffered a self-inflicted meltdown and Stephen Harper defeated him in  yet another leadership convention in 2002. When the Harper-led Conservatives became the government, Kenney became a trusted attack dog, a kind of Churchill without the wit. Kenney was also given a key responsibility in winning over new Canadians and certain religiously identified groups to support the Conservatives.

Under Stephen Harper, with Kenney running interference, the Conservatives have clearly chosen sides in the Middle East conflict – supporting Israeli no matter what actions it undertakes. There is no subtlety here. Question the policies of the Canadian government and you will be punished. Question the policies of the Israeli government and you are called anti-Semitic.

Canada’s respected Rights and Democracy organization found that out early in 2010. The Conservatives appointed new board members who forced the resignation of the organization’s president Rémy Beauregard at a tense board meeting. Mr. Beauregard died of a heart attack later the same day. Conservative appointees to the board of Rights and Democracy accused the organization of being anti-Israel, a charge similar to that launched by Kenney against KAIROS. The research, if it can be described as such, for both of these charges may have arisen from one source – a right wing Israel-based group called NGO Monitor. In an investigative piece, Macleans’ Paul Wells reports that Gerald Steinberg, an Israeli political scientist, also runs NGO Monitor. Steinberg published an Opinion Editorial in the Jerusalem Post congratulating the Canadian government for its actions against both KAIROS and Rights and Democracy. Wells writes: “Steinberg’s list of organizations he regards as anti-Israel is long. In one publication he decries CIDA aid to what he calls ‘extremist political groups’ opposed to Israel, among which he counts Médecins du Monde, Oxfam, and the Mennonite Central Committee of Canada.”

Whoops! The Mennonite Central Committee? Extremist? I beg your pardon. These attacks are over the top. I am not a Mennonite but my wife is and I have often attended church with her. If there is any organization that exemplifies the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi, it is the Mennonite Central Committee. Kenney may well find that he has over-reached by deliberately putting a stick in the eye of Mennonites, Quakers, Catholics and mainline Protestants. I am told the KAIROS protests will continue, with homilies, public meetings, lobbying, musical events, even a photo contest – all done quietly, gently, and firmly, in a Franciscan manner. 

By Dennis Gruending

I have reported previously about the National House of Prayer (NHOP) in Ottawa. As I write this, Rob and Fran Parker, the husband and wife team who lead NHOP, are planning what they describe as a prayer walk to Israel in late March into April. On March 13-14th the Parkers are also guest speakers at a Calgary conference of a group called the International Christian Chamber of Commerce.

Mr. Parker has written on the NHOP’s blog in recent weeks about his plans. “Recently God has confirmed to me it is now time to Prayer-Walk Israel,” he wrote in February. “It seems that everywhere you turn these days you are hearing that there’s a growing sense of acceleration of God’s purposes. Many Christian leaders are preaching that we have entered into the ‘Signs of the Times’ that Jesus referred to around his Second Coming. In different ways in Canada we believe we are ‘touching’ things for God’s purposes that are massive in light of the days we are living.”

This is not the first time that the Parkers believe they have been called by God to undertake a project. Ron Parker has a long association with Watchmen for the Nations, a pro-Israel Christian right group based in the U.S. and Canada. After a Watchmen gathering in 1996, Parker organized a prayer-walk from Calgary to Ottawa. He and his wife felt they were being called to set up an intercessory house of prayer in the nation’s capital. In 2004, they purchased a former convent not far from Parliament Hill for $900,000. They’ve added staff and volunteers and regularly host groups, including youth, from across the country to engage in formation as prayer leaders and also to visit select MPs. The NHOP personnel appear to have ready access to Parliament Hill. They attend Question Period, sit in on parliamentary committee meetings and lead parliamentary prayer groups. The people who organize the National Prayer Breakfast, held by parliamentarians once a year, have invited the Parkers to lead workshops following the meal.

Parker, in his blog postings, described the focus of the upcoming Israel walk in the following ways: “To pray for a preparation around the events of the Second Coming of Christ. For a blessing on all those who live in the land and on those who labour for God’s kingdom in Israel. To pray for the safety for the people of Israel as they face any possible threats of war from nations hostile to them.”  There is no mention, however, of praying for those in the region who are threatened by hostile actions at the hands of the Israeli military.

The NHOP exists within a fundamentalist and charismatic network known for its emotional and enthusiastic forms of worship, including speaking in tongues, holy laughter, and a belief in powers of prophecy and healing.  Many in the movement are Christian reconstructionists who believe that “God governs” and that government and all of society must submit to the bible’s moral principles. There are those who call this a recipe for theocracy. A good part of the ardour on display arises from a millenarian belief that we are approaching end times, when Christ will return to reward the righteous and punish sinners.

Reconstructionists believe that the return of Jews from around the world to Israel and establishing an Israeli state in 1948 were the fulfillment of a biblical prophecy, and a foreshadowing of the second coming. This unfortunate merging of biblical mythology about chosen people and nations with current political events explains the unyielding support for any and all Israeli state policies among Christian reconstructionists in the U.S. and Canada.

The NHOP first came to my attention in 2006 when it was advertising a tour to Israel in September-October of that year. The advertisement invited potential tourists to: “Ignite your passion and intercession for Israel, the land, the people for God’s end-time purposes.” The advertisement quoted Psalm 102, saying, “The appointed time to favor Zion has come.” The tour had to be cancelled because hostilities broke out between Israel and groups in Lebanon in the summer of 2006.

The Conservatives were elected in Canada in January 2006, and certain Christian groups made common cause with Canadian Jewish organizations in lobbying the Harper government to take a pro-Israel position in the conflict. The prime minister did not disappoint, when he described an Israeli campaign that took 1,000 lives as a “measured response” to the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers. The Canadian government has since 2006 jettisoned Canada’s previous role as an honest broker in the Middle East and has tilted our foreign policy entirely in Israel’s favour, including unconditional support for the deadly invasion of Gaza in January 2009.

Canada’s pro-Israel support has now worked its way back into our domestic politics as well, in the most unpleasant of ways. Late in 2009, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) abruptly withdrew funding and severed a long-standing relationship with KAIROS, an inter-church human rights group. Speaking at a conference in Jerusalem in December 2009, Jason Kenney, Canada’s immigration minister, accused KAIROS of being anti-Semitic and of supporting an economic boycott of Israel. KAIROS and its members, including Catholic, United, Anglican, and Lutheran churches, the Mennonite Central Committee and Quakers, hotly denied those claims.

Then, early in 2010 Canada’s respected Rights and Democracy organization imploded after new board members appointed by the Conservative government forced the resignation of the organization’s president Rémy Beauregard at a particularly nasty meeting. Mr. Beauregard died of a heart attack later that day. Conservative appointees to the board of Rights and Democracy accused the organization of being anti-Israel. Senior staff members have now been fired and Rights and Democracy has closed a Geneva-based office that which worked in proximity to several United Nations agencies.

The government’s ham-fisted actions against KAIROS and Rights and Democracy have sent an intended chill through Canada’s church and development communities. Question the policies of the Israeli government and you are called anti-Semitic. Question the policies of the Canadian government and you will be punished. These attacks have led others, including former Canadian diplomat Harry Stirling, to question why the kind of debate that occurs regularly within Israel about the country’s policies toward its neighbours is labelled as anti-Semitic when it occurs in Canada.

A common analysis is that in its policies and practices the Harper government is attempting to win the support of Jewish organizations and voters in this country. It may be, however, that an even more important reason for the government’s one-sided policy is its desire to appease its base among the Christian right – those who actually believe that a biblical prophecy of end times will be fulfilled by the Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.

Some of those people will gather at a weekend meeting sponsored by the International Christian Chamber of Commerce at the Hyatt Regency in Calgary on March 12-13th. They will talk about God’s plan for Israel and Rob and Fran Parker are featured as guest speakers. The ICCC advertisement invites registrants to: “Come and hear about our unique relationship with the government of Israel. Come and hear how you can stand in a practical way with Israel in Her call to be a blessing to many nations.” The ad quotes the bible’s book of Genesis regarding Israel: “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.’’

Interestingly, Christian reconstructionists believe that only those who have accepted Christ as their personal saviour will be saved in the Last Judgement. Others, and one assumes this includes people of Jewish faith, will be damned if they have not accepted Christ.  This is, to say the least, an odd basis for a pro-Israel coalition.

By Dennis Gruending

I have spent much of my time in the past months working on a book with an old friend, and I have been less active in the blogosphere as a result. The book will be called Truth to Power, and it presents the best from 21 years of journalism by Father Andrew Britz, a Benedictine monk at St. Peter’s Abbey in the hinterland of rural Saskatchewan, far from the centres of ecclesiastical and political influence. Kingsley Publishing of Calgary will release it in the fall of 2010.

Andrew was editor of the Prairie Messenger, a Catholic weekly newspaper that has been published by the monks since 1904. He was fearless in speaking truth to the powerful in church and society – to popes and prime ministers, capitalists and clerics. “It is not easy producing a prophetic paper year in and year out,” he writes in one of the editorials published in this book. “Prophets call us to a new age.”

The new age for him is one that resists an imperial papacy, one in which his church honours and takes seriously the gifts of all the baptized – lay people as well as clerics, women as well as men, and the poor, especially the poor. Andrew’s world is also one where the abuses of liberal capitalism are held in check, where militarizartion is curtailed, where the earth and all of its peoples are treated with respect, and one where all religions act in unity for the common good. Although he is best known for his provacative editorials, there is also a deeply contempaltive dimension to his writing, the legacy of his life as a monk and a trained liturgist who is deeply steeped in church history.

In his 21 years as an editor, Andrew wrote close to 2000 editorials. With some expert help from two associate editors, one former and one current, Andrew delved into the archive and sent me his first cut. We have worked from there and have chosen about 150 pieces.  In Truth to Power, Andrew confronts honestly and with clarity many of the issues that confront the church and the world. Here is a sampling:

The papacy: “Nothing that Christ said can be used to underpin the church’s hierarchical model of authority.”

The bishops: “The church needs some mavericks, even maverick bishops who do not hold exactly the ‘right’ position on celibacy, nuclear weapons, condoms and homosexuals.”

Lay people: “The laity is not present in the church for the clergy; the priesthood is for the people.”

Women in the church: “It is embarrassing to read what the great bishops and theologians of age after age in the church have had to say about women.”

Social justice: “The church seldom gets in trouble for proclaiming the importance of charity. Resentment mounts quickly, however, when the Gospel prompts its followers to strengthen the call for justice. ”

Economic development:  “Liberal capitalism, according to [Pope John Paul] cannot be trusted. It is not to be chosen as the model for socio-economic development.”

The environment: “A church based on sacraments should quite naturally be ecological.”

Abortion: “We like many Catholics have refused to see abortion as a single issue. We insist on keeping all the life issues [capital punishment, mindless militarization, nuclear war and terrorism] together in one ‘seamless garment’”.

Birth Control: “To shore up teaching contained in the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae (On human life), the church has centralized authority as it has never been previously exercised in the church.”

Ecumenism: “Gone – forever we hope – is the day in which we can boast that the Catholic church alone has the whole truth.”

Fundamentalism:  “[This] is about simple answers, answers freed from all humanization that comes from involvement in time and space, from dealing with life’s inevitable struggles.”

Christmas: “Jesus became flesh. That is what Christmas is all about. In doing so he gave infinite value to the lives real people live.”

Easter: “It is the celebration of community. The community itself is our sign (sacrament) of the Lord’s resurrection.”

Vatican II: “Brilliantly conceived but abysmally executed”

I first met Andrew in 1965. I was a student at St. Peter’s College, a boys’ boarding school that coexisted with the monastery at Muenster, about an hour to the north and east of Saskatoon — and he was a seminarian. I have been a reader of the Prairie Messenger for all of my adult life and have also contributed news stories and columns to the paper. So it was perhaps not surprising that Andrew and I are cooperating on this project. The wonderful and courageous writing is his. I am the book’s editor and will write an introduction provide biographical information about Andrew and background about the rich progressive tradition of the Prairie Messenger.

In addition, two prominent and knowledgeable Canadians will contribute their insights. They will comment on Andrew’s writing and why it remains important for church and society today. Dr. Mary Jo Leddy is a well-known author and activist, and Dr. John Thompson, a sociologist, is the former principal of a St. Thomas More College at the University of Saskatchewan. Thompson says this in his chapter analyzing Andrew’s work: “These editorials exhibit a powerful mind at work – informed, subtle, at home with complexity and uncertainty, compassionate and ethical, clear, and prayerful.”

Andrew was ordained a priest in 1966 and it was his fate to come of age during the Second Vatican Council. He immersed himself in that great reforming project, not yet completed, and he used his long tenure as editor to explore and promote the teachings of Vatican II. In it he finds the keys to justice and to right relationships. Stay tuned.