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

 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

Bill Janzen, the respected face and voice of the Mennonite Central Committee Canada office in Ottawa, is retiring at the end of July after 33 years. Janzen has been a quiet but significant presence, working with politicians of all stripes, with civil servants and with a variety of church and secular organizations on a range of issues, including refugee and immigration policy, war and peace, food and famine. Lloyd Axworthy, Canada’s former minister of foreign affairs, said in an e-mail interview, “In the years I worked with Bill Janzen, he was always a source of good advice based upon a sound set of values which provided assistance for countless people around the world.” Bill Blaikie, the longest serving MP in the House of Commons and a United Church minister, says, “I always found Bill to be a voice of calm, reflective reason in the Ottawa tempest. He is one of the best examples I can think of for Christian witness and advocacy in the political process.”

Asked what he has found most satisfying about his work, Janzen points to a number of projects. “In the fall of 1978 a civil servant named Gord Barnett and I drafted and negotiated Canada’s first master agreement for the private sponsorship of refugees, although I should add that after it was signed I was less involved in the actual work with refugees.” The agreement was widely used to provide sponsorships for Indochinese boat people in 1979 and other refugees in subsequent years. Janzen also mentions his involvement with inter-church and secular coalitions, including Project Ploughshares, Kairos, the Canadian Council for International Cooperation, the Commission on Justice and Peace of the Canadian Council of Churches, and the Social Action Commission of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada.

Janzen refers as well to a letter that he drafted on behalf of MCC Canada in 2002, urging then Prime Minister Chretien to stay the course in refusing Canadian support for a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. “People in Iraq and in the region are very worried, as are many in Canada,” the letter said. “The present situation is certainly not ideal but, in our view, a war would make things much worse. We pray that God will give you wisdom and courage as you deal with this and other issues that face our country and our world.”
Janzen says, “The ideas in that letter contributed to the broader inter-church voice on that issue and when Jean Chretien decided not to support that invasion, he said the voice of the faith community had been significant in his decision.”

Janzen mentions his advocacy in helping Low-German speaking Mennonites whose families had emigrated to Latin American to recover their Canadian citizenship. “This is a long and involved story but in 1976, after I submitted a substantial appeal, the government agreed to interpret one discretionary provision in the Citizenship Act in a broader way. In my opinion some 75,000 of those Mennonites, and an untold number of other people, now have Canadian citizenship as a result.”

About 80 friends and colleagues gathered at the Ottawa Mennonite Church in June to pay tribute to Janzen. One of those to speak was Bert Lobe, who has a long association with the international and North American work of the Mennonite Central Committee. Lobe grew up near Janzen’s home community of Blumenheim, a small Mennonite village north of Saskatoon. Lobe said that Janzen, one of 11 children, was a good athlete who excelled as a fastball pitcher and hockey player.

Janzen went on to post-secondary studies at the Canadian Mennonite Bible College in Winnipeg, the University of Ottawa and Carleton University, where he received a PhD in political science. He turned his thesis into a book titled Limits on Liberty, which was published by the University of Toronto Press in 1990. In it he describes conflicts that occurred with Canadian governments when some Mennonites, Hutterites and Doukhobors attempted to live communally and apart from the rest of society. A second book, Sam Martin Went to Prison, tells the story of Martin and other conscientious objectors who chose to go to jail rather than serving in the Canadian military during the Second World War. “Thanks for that book,” Lobe said to Janzen. “We still use it in our schools.”

The words most often used at the Ottawa event to acknowledge Janzen were integrity, trust, competence and respect for others. Lobe gave the final word to Janzen’s elderly parents, who still live at Blumenheim. “Just pat him on the shoulder,” his father Abram told Lobe, “and say well done.”  Janzen now plans to focus attention on writing that he has been too busy to complete.