By Dennis Gruending

There is much speculation about when we will have a federal election in Canada. Columnist Sheila Copps, a former MP, predicts that it will be before the snow flies. For who will people identifying themselves as belonging to a religion cast their votes? This is a question that most pundits and academics did not bother to ask for many years because they thought it was irrelevant, but that is changing. A new study called Canadian Evangelical Voting Trends by Region, 1996–2008 looks into the recent voting behaviour of evangelicals. The authors, Don Hutchinson and Rick Hiemstra are both associated with the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC).

The study begins on a defensive note, saying that some journalists and researchers borrow the concept of a “religious right” from the United States and apply it to Canadian evangelicals in an attempt to show that they form a “right leaning voting block”. Hutchinson and Hiemstra say those researchers exhibit a “misunderstanding of the changes in evangelical voting intentions [in Canada] over the past decade.” They include me as being among those who are attempting to force an American template on Canadian reality and of being one of those who does not understand. They cite, in a footnote, a paper that I delivered to an academic conference in 2008. Actually, they appear to misunderstand what I wrote. I do believe that there is a religious right in Canada but it not comprised only of evangelicals. It includes many evangelicals, to be sure, but also right wing Catholics, some Jews and others. Given that more than 40% of Canadians identify themselves as Catholics, the voting intentions of that group are potentially more significant than those of evangelicals, who comprise about 10% of the population. Hutchinson and Hiemstra focus on evangelical voters while my interest has been more broadly based.

Evangelicals voting Conservative

Beyond their initial observation about other researchers, Hutchinson and Hiemstra have a two-fold thesis. They admit that there has, indeed, been a growing support among evangelicals for the Conservatives and other parties of the right during the past decade, but they say this trend mirrors a growing support among other Canadian voters as well. In other words, evangelicals aren’t all that different in the way they vote. Secondly, they argue that evangelicals are more upset with the Liberals than they are predisposed to the Conservatives. Hutchinson and Hiemstra write, “The Liberal Party repeatedly tried to marginalize Evangelicals for short-term electoral gain, mocking their beliefs and styling those beliefs as a danger to ‘Canadian values.’” Since there is no disclaimer here, I must assume that they are speaking on behalf of the EFC when they describe the Liberals in this way.

To support their analysis of voting behaviour, the authors draw upon a series of electoral polls done by Ipsos-Reid and Angus Reid Strategies over the years. Those polls measure the voting intentions of individuals, and in other cases use exit polls to ascertain how individuals actually did vote, controlling for their religious affiliation.

Hutchinson and Hiemstra do not provide national data but rather focus on regional voting patterns. They admit that the poll samples were so small as to be potentially unreliable in Quebec (where there are few evangelicals) and in the sparsely populated Atlantic provinces.

Regional breakdowns

Let’s look, using Hutchinson and Hiemstra’s data, at how evangelicals voted in the 2006 and 2008 elections. In Western Canada, 69% of evangelicals voted for the Conservatives in 2006, compared to 49% among all voters. In the 2008 election, 71% of Western evangelicals voted Conservative, compared to 42% among all voters. These are 20% and 29% spreads respectively and represent a massive advantage for the Conservatives.

In Ontario, the Ipsos-Reid exit poll in the 2006 election showed that 55% of evangelicals voted for the Conservatives, compared to 35% among all voters, a 20-point spread. In 2008, Ipsos Strategies surveyed voting intentions prior to the election. Hutchinson and Hiemstra calculate that on Election Day “almost half [50%] of Ontario Evangelicals could be presumed to have supported the Conservatives.” The authors conclude that this decline in Ontario evangelical support, from 55% to 50%, is evidence that “Conservative evangelical support levels seem to have stalled or retreated from their 2006 highs.” Perhaps, but having 50% of evangelicals vote for the Conservatives in an election contested by three major parties and the Greens represents a huge advantage for the Conservatives.

In Quebec, 45% of evangelicals voted Conservative in 2006, compared to 25% among all voters, a 20-point advantage. In 2008, because of the small sample, the authors do not attempt to provide a comparable number for Quebec. In the Atlantic provinces, again with small samples, 54% of evangelicals voted Conservative in 2006 compared to 35% among all voters, a 19-point spread.  In 2008, the authors estimate that 30% of Atlantic evangelicals voted Conservative compared to 19% among all voters, an 11-point advantage.

Hutchinson and Hiemstra reach the following conclusion based on their research: “While the voting tracks of Canadian Evangelicals and their regional neighbours still run more or less parallel, they have moved farther apart in 2008 than they were in 1996.” This is really quite an understatement. They go on to say that, “As of 2008 the growth in evangelical support for the Conservative Party appears to either have  reached a plateau or begun to decline.” I would argue, using the authors’ own numbers, that in 2008 the Conservatives remained overwhelmingly the party of choice for evangelical voters, particularly in Western Canada (71%) and in Ontario (50%). In fact, I would, indeed, characterize the Western Canadian and Ontario evangelical vote on behalf of the Conservatives in 2006 and 2008 as a “right-leaning voting block.”

Evangelicals and Liberals

I want now to return to the claim that evangelicals are not so much attracted by the Conservatives as they are repelled by the Liberals, who the authors say have ridiculed evangelicals for short-term political advantage and attempted to marginalize them and even to portray them as “un-Canadian”. The authors provide no evidence for this claim other than their own opinions and in one case an anecdote from radio talk show host Michael Coren. The authors recognize this deficiency, although they give it only a passing reference: “While the data are not available to tell us definitively why evangelical voter support for the Liberal Party fell off rapidly,” they write, “the most plausible explanation is a reaction to the party’s electoral tactics.” The authors provide six narrative examples of what they describe as “Liberal attempts to marginalize Evangelicals and stifle dissent for political gain…”

Among those examples is the Liberals’ handling of legislation regarding same sex marriage. By 2002, the courts had begun to rule that the existing definition of marriage was unconstitutional, or, described in another way, that the laws must be changed to allow for same sex marriage.  The authors say: “The government chose not to appeal the [court] decision and announced it would introduce legislation to redefine marriage. . . and the government became an advocate for the redefinition of marriage, contending same-sex marriage was a human rights issue and required by the Charter.”

Same sex marriage was (and remains) a contentious public policy issue but I fail to see why the Liberal government’s acting in accordance with the court rulings should be understood as an insult to evangelicals. To use a parallel example, many Christians are opposed to Canada’s war in Afghanistan, but should they consider themselves to be personally insulted because the Conservative government has not stopped waging the war?

The authors conclude that, “The Canadian Evangelical vote is currently fluid.” It is perhaps less fluid than they suggest, but I do agree that we cannot predict the future. Individuals and groups obtain influence by exercising what the sociologists describe as “agency.” We are not merely spectators in history but can have an impact on it. Religion appears poised to play a larger role upon the public stage in the foreseeable future than has been the case for a good number of years, but no one can easily predict the outcome of that activity.

I will, in a future posting, comment upon another study of religious voting behaviour, mainly as it relates to the Liberals. The authors are McGill University’s Elisabeth Gidengil and a number of her colleagues from different campuses who have co-operated through various elections in a project called the Canadian Election Study (CES).

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.

By Dennis Gruending

Barrack Obama won the recent American presidential election handily over the Republican Senator John McCain. Exit polls also indicate that Obama hiked the Democrats’ standing among most religious groups, significantly in some cases and marginally in others. Catholics swung back to the Democrats after supporting George W. Bush over John Kerry in 2004. White evangelical Protestants, however, continue their staunch support for the Republicans and voted for McCain in landslide numbers. Protestants, when analyzed as a single group that includes both the evangelical and mainline denominations, voted for McCain by a margin of 54-45%, while Jewish people voted for Obama by a margin of 78% to 21%. Those who profess no religious affiliation are a core support group for the Democrats and voted for Obama in about the same numbers (75% to 23%) as did Jewish voters. Numbers such as these indicate that the cultural wars in the U.S. may well continue despite Obama’s convincing victory.

The fact that information on these voting trends is available so quickly is a result of large exit polls of voters conducted via the internet on November 4, the day of the election. These results and accompanying analysis have been collected and posted online by The Pew Forum on Religion and Pubic Life.

Obama won 53% of the popular vote compared to 46% for McCain. This may appear to be relatively close but in what was essentially a two-candidate race it is a significant victory. Obama’s share of the vote was an improvement of five percentage points over the showing of Democratic contender John Kerry in 2004. Obama also won states in every corner of the country so it will not be convincing for critics to say that he represents only large urban areas on either coast. It is interesting to note that while Obama did extremely well among blacks and very well among Hispanics, he did not win the white vote. In that sense at least this American election is less historic and transformative than many journalists and pundits have described. McCain took 55% of the white vote compared to Obama’s 43%. Obama did win more of that vote than John Kerry did in 2004 and the support of whites was key in states such as Iowa and Indiana in 2008.

Catholics supported Obama over McCain by a nine-point margin (54% to 45%). Four years ago, they voted for George Bush over Kerry by a five-point margin (52% to
47%). Obama performed particularly well among Latino Catholics, capturing 67% of their vote. He did not win among white Catholics although he did improve the Democratic vote over that in 2004. White Catholics favoured McCain by a vote of 52% to 47%. White evangelical Protestants voted for McCain by a whopping margin of 73% to 26%, a ratio of 3 to1, but that still represented an improvement for Obama over John Kerry’s numbers in 2005. The Catholic population accounts for about 27% of the American electorate, and white evangelicals for 23%.

One reason for increased Democratic support among people of religious faith is a general one – many voters were disillusioned after eight years of George W. Bush and the Republicans. Americans are spooked by the financial and economic crisis and a majority of them trust the Democrats to manage the economy more than they trust the Republicans. But Obama, who has attended for years at a black church in Chicago, also appeared comfortable talking about his faith and its influence on him. His outreach to religious voters was also well financed and organized. According to one news report, the Democrats in 2004 had a religious outreach “staff” of one. Obama’s campaign had an entire religious outreach department, with money to spend and a candidate who was interested. This outreach may have paid off on election day. Some observers say that Obama’s improved standing among religious groups represents a significant cultural shift but others see it as less than that. “It really doesn’t look to me like a realignment,” says John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. “Rather,” he says, “Obama made religion work for him in a way other Democrats haven’t.”

Given the results of the election, the evangelical leadership and Catholic bishops may have some soul searching to do. Evangelicals voted overwhelmingly for McCain but it is Obama who will inhabit the White House. A majority of Catholics, in essence, bucked their bishops by voting for the Democrats. In 2004, the Catholic bishops were harshly critical of Kerry for his pro-choice position and in some cases they urged that he or even Catholics who voted for him should be barred from receiving communion. The bishops helped swing the election to Bush and many Catholics resented it. The hierarchy regrouped by releasing a document called Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship in November 2007. It was meant to guide Catholics but it stopped short of telling them how to vote. But in 2008, faced with the prospect of a victory by Obama, a sizeable minority of bishops began an aggressive push to encourage Catholics to make abortion their main issue.

The influential New York Times journalist Peter Steinfels writes that the bishops were big losers in this presidential election. “By appearing to tie their moral stance on abortion so closely to a particular political choice,” Steinfels asked, “have they in fact undermined their moral persuasiveness on that issue as well as their pastoral effectiveness generally?”

The American electors have spoken. Those religious leaders and organizations that were opposed to Obama will now have to decide whether their strategy will be one of
cooperation, coexistence or confrontation.

By Dennis Gruending

The electoral marathon between Barack Obama and John McCain has provided a unique opportunity to compare and contrast how Canadians and Americans approach religion and politics. What is striking about the American campaign is the extent to which religion intrudes into the political sphere. Obama and McCain made only one joint television appearance prior to being nominated by their parties in the summer of 2008. They were interviewed not by an anchor for a major news network, but by Pastor Rick Warren at his Saddleback mega church in Orange County, California. There were more than 5,000 church members in the audience and an unknown number of others watching the live broadcast at churches around the country.

Obama talked about his certainty that “Jesus Christ died for my sins, and I am redeemed through him.” McCain indulged in less God talk but did describe an encounter with a Vietnamese prison guard who discreetly revealed himself as a Christian when McCain was a prisoner of war. “For a minute there,” McCain said, “ there was just two Christians worshipping together.” John F. Kennedy, when he was a presidential candidate in the 1960s, said that, “I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair.” Kennedy was a Catholic trying to allay fears being stoked by the Republicans that he would take his orders from the Vatican. Kennedy also said, “I believe in an American where the separation of church and state is absolute.” American politics have obviously changed since Kennedy’s time, as the pilgrimage to Saddleback would indicate.

With only a few exceptions, Canadian political leaders have dealt with their faith in a very different way. We know that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is an evangelical Christian but he is extremely guarded in what he says about his convictions. Former Reform Party leader Preston Manning says that evangelicals dare not speak about their faith publicly for fear of being ridiculed. Perhaps, but there is a long tradition of discretion among Canadian leaders when talking about their faith, or lack of it. They have understood how religious divisions could stir up controversy and ill will in a country where Anglophone Protestants and Francophone Catholics had to coexist. Wilfrid Laurier made a celebrated speech in which he stared down those (including bishops) who supported the creation of a “Catholic” political party in Quebec in the 1870s.

I am researching former prime ministers for a book that I am writing on political speeches. One can read stacks material on Sir John A. Macdonald without finding any comments by him about religion. The Quebec bishops and clergy regularly pilloried Laurier as a liberal and a revolutionary. He continued to attend mass but refused to be drawn into any public discussion about his personal religious convictions. We know that Lester Pearson’s father was a Methodist minister, that John Diefenbaker was a devout Baptist, that Pierre Trudeau, to the surprise of many, was a committed (but private) Catholic. CCF-NDP leader Tommy Douglas was an ordained minister who continued to make hospital visits even after becoming premier. All of these people chose to say very little about their faith although they were no doubt motivated by it.

It is difficult to imagine anyone in Canada summoning political party leaders, as Pastor Rick Warren did, to appear at an evangelical church to be interviewed. The reasons are both cultural and demographic. In Canada, evangelicals comprise only about eight to 10 per cent of the population, compared to 20 to 30 per cent in the U.S. Catholics in Canada account for more than 40 per cent of the population but it is also difficult to imagine a bishop interviewing the leaders. The task is much better left to the CBC’s Peter Mansbridge or CTV’s Lloyd Robertson.

Much has been made in the American media about a new evangelical leadership coalescing around Pastor Warren and others. In the past 18 months, I have read articles with titles such as “The Evangelical Surprise” or “The New Evangelicals” in major U.S. magazines and newspapers. The thesis is that a new generation of leaders is replacing religious hardliners such as Pat Robertson and James Dobson. The new group is said to want to move away from the cultural wars and from a strict preoccupation with issues such as same sex marriage and abortion.  They want to add to those staples of the religious right their concerns about poverty, AIDS and climate change. There have been toxic battles within the National Association of Evangelicals and the Southern Baptist Convention over these questions. The emerging leadership is also said to be uncomfortable with the unwavering support provided by evangelicals to the Republicans since the days of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

The desire to become less vitriolic in posture, more inclusive on issues, and less predictably Republican was largely the result of disappointment with George W. Bush and the lack of a candidate of choice among Republican candidates for the presidency in 2008. Many evangelical leaders were lukewarm toward John McCain but much of that changed when he named Sarah Palin, a right wing Pentecostal, as his vice-presidential running mate. White evangelicals gave Bush 78 per cent of their vote in 2004 but it appeared that vote would soften in 2008. Palin’s appearance on the ticket appeared to solidify that vote again and it has ended, at least for now, most talk of a new evangelicalism concerned with a broader set of issues. A Pew Research Centre poll taken from October 23-26 reported that Obama was surging ahead across most voting blocs, but that McCain continued to lead among white evangelical Protestants by a margin of 65 to 22 per cent.

Evangelical churches in Canada lack the critical mass of those in the U.S. and have been less able, perhaps less willing, to become as deeply involved in a right wing political coalition. There is in Canada no apparent parallel to the divisive debate among evangelicals in the U.S. about whether to focus on a broader set of issues. A kit prepared by the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada for the 2008 federal election dealt with tried issues such as abortion but also posed questions about climate change and poverty. Yet in recent elections Canadian evangelicals have been almost as ardent in support for the Conservatives as their American counterparts have been for the Republicans. In the January 2006 election, 64 per cent of evangelicals supported the Conservatives, compared to about 16 per cent who supported each of the Liberals and New Democrats. The Ipsos-Reid polling company promised to  undertake an exit poll following the 2008 Canadian election. We will soon know whether the vote among evangelicals in Canada this year mirrors that in the United States.