By Dennis Gruending

An exit poll conducted by Ipsos-Reid following the January 2006 Canadian election indicated that, outside of Quebec, people who attend regularly at evangelical churches were four times more likely to vote for the Conservatives than for Liberals or the New Democratic Party (NDP). This result was markedly different from that of Catholics and mainline Protestants, whose vote was divided much more evenly among the parties. A question in these waning days of the 2008 campaign is whether evangelicals will continue to provide overwhelming support to Stephen Harper and the Conservatives. Evangelicals account for only eight to 10 per cent of the population but their vote could well be important in close election races, particularly in suburbs and smaller cities. A second significant question is how Catholics and mainline Protestants will distribute their vote.

Professor Barry Kay, a political scientist at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, says the large sample in the Ipsos-Reid poll makes it a useful analytical tool. The poll was able to show, for example, that the vote among mainline Protestants in the United and Anglican churches was similar to that of Catholics. Those Catholics who were frequent church frequent attenders gave 36 per cent of their vote to the Conservatives, 34 per cent to the Liberals and 24 per cent to the NDP. In the United Church, the numbers were 38 per cent, 34 per cent, and 23 per cent respectively. Interestingly, Catholic, United Church and Anglican adherents voted for the Conservatives in roughly the same ratio as the voting population as a whole. The vote by Catholic, Anglican and United Church adherents for the Liberals and the NDP was actually four to six percentage points higher than it was among voters as a whole.

The results among evangelical voters, however, were radically different. “It is among the smaller churches, many of them more conservative doctrinally,” Prof. Kay writes, “where there is a much stronger trend to voting Conservative, by proportions approaching 4 to 1 Conservative to Liberal in 2006.”  Among evangelicals, 63 per cent voted for the Conservatives, compared to 16 per cent for the Liberals and 17 per cent for the NDP. Prof. Kay said in a telephone interview that polling in both the U.S. and Canada has shown consistently that most evangelicals vote for the Republicans or the Conservatives. Polls undertaken by the Pew Forum, an American research institute, show that in the U.S. white evangelicals are the single most supportive constituency for the Republicans.

A flurry of American media stories in 2007 and early this year reported on divisions and a changing of the guard among evangelicals in the U.S. An emerging group of leaders wanted to embrace issues such as poverty and climate change in addition to the old staples such as abortion, same sex marriage, and the teaching of intelligent design (creationism) in schools. But Pew now reports that any such movement appears to have stalled. “The selection of Sarah Palin as the Republican Party’s vice presidential candidate and Catholic bishops’ criticism of Joe Biden’s comments on when life begins have increased the attention paid to culture war issues,” Pew says in a recent posting.

In this country, the largest evangelical organization is the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. The EFC’s election kit pays attention to matters such as poverty and climate change, even as it maintains its traditional emphasis on issues such as abortion. There is no hint of nuance among other organizations, however, including the Canada Family Action Coalition, Campaign Life and a group called Defend Traditional Marriage and Family. They continue to insist that the issues such as abortion, euthanasia, and same sex marriage, are “non-negotiable” and should be ranked above all others in the political debate. It’s worth noting that these organizations are not members of the EFC.

Mr. Harper sees evangelicals and the religious right as essential to the conservative coalition that he wants to build. He has courted them by chopping women’s programs that many of his supporters considered feminist; shelving a universal child care program negotiated by the previous Liberal government and provincial-territorial leaders; allowing several private members bills to come forward regarding abortion; and presenting legislation to censor publicly-supported film projects that the government deemed morally offensive. These moves have, in turn, alienated Canadians who profess no religion, and many others who profess a more moderate and inclusive religious faith than that of religious conservatives. This is hurting Harper politically so he has taken to sending mixed messages. He promised during this campaign that he will not introduce or allow new legislation recriminalizing abortion. Following his recent ill-advised goading of the arts community, he has promised to withdraw his film censorship legislation.

If one is to believe right wing newspaper columnists and pundits, many religious conservatives feel betrayed. Rev. Alphonse de Valk, the editor of a magazine called Catholic Insight, says that Harper should be defeated in his riding and removed as Conservative party leader. David Warren, a self-described socially conservative columnist for The Ottawa Citizen, calls Harper “gutless” and predicts “there are several million electors of genuine conservative tendency who feel disenfranchised, and hesitate to vote for him even when the alternatives look worse.” This expressed disappointment could soften the social conservative and evangelical vote for the Conservatives on October 14. Religious conservatives may well conclude, however, that despite their disappointment with Harper the Conservatives remain a better option than the rest.

Churches that belong to KAIROS, an ecumenical social justice coalition, are urging their members to focus on questions of social and economic justice. The organization has issued a four-page election resource kit that highlights poverty, aboriginal rights, peace and the environment, particularly climate change. KAIROS includes mainline Protestant churches, as well as the Catholic bishops, Quakers, the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada. They easily comprise a larger group than do the evangelicals, a gentle sleeping giant if you will. KAIROS makes no partisan declarations, but a close reading of the KAIROS election kit provides little succour for the Conservatives.

It is also possible that the frightening financial crisis will cause voting shifts that had not been anticipated. Ipsos-Reid is planning an exit poll of 15,000 voters following the election on October 14 so we will soon have new information about the relationship between our religious convictions and our voting preferences. If you have any information or even educated guesses about how the religious vote is likely to play out on October 14, please write about it in the Comments section below.

By Dennis Gruending The federal New Democratic Party has created a Faith and Justice Commission as a forum for progressive people who come to politics from a faith based perspective [www.ndp-faith-justice-foi-npd.ca/]. Its chair is Joe Comartin, one of several Catholic MPs who were denied communion by the church because of their support for same sex marriage legislation. Comartin and fellow MPs Bill Blaikie, Tony Martin and Bill Siksay were among a group of 20 people who attended an initial Ottawa-area meeting in mid-December.

Pierre Ducasse, a former federal leadership candidate from Quebec and now a special advisor to NDP leader Jack Layton, has done much of the organizing work. Ducasse said it is a paradox that the NDP is seen as being a secularist party, “even though many of our members come from a faith perspective and for our founders, including Tommy Douglas, faith was elemental.”

There is frustration, even alarm, in NDP circles, not to mention Canada’s Liberals and among Democrats in the U.S., because neo-conservative parties appear to own religious support. The religious right in the U.S. has become the most important constituency in the Repubican Party. Research in Canada indicates a strong correlation between being an evangelical Protestant and supporting the Reform-Alliance and Conservative parties.

Following the 2006 federal election, an exit poll indicated that among regular church attenders an overwhelming majority of evangelicals voted for the Conservatives. The same poll revealed that more Catholics who attend church regularly voted for the Conservatives than for the Liberals. This broke a long-standing tradition of Catholic support for that party.

A group of Canadian academics who reviewed four recent elections were struck by the polarization between Reform-Alliance and NDP voters. The NDP did best among secular voters who take liberal positions on issues relating to sexual mores and lifestyles, while the Conservatives fared best with moral traditionalists.

“We have to combat the impression that religion is a right wing thing,” MP Bill Blaikie told the Ottawa gathering. Blaikie is a United Church minister and a willing heir to the social gospel tradition of Woodsworth, Douglas, Stanley Knowles and others. “It used to be okay to link faith and politics but now we have people in our own party asking us why we would bother belonging to a church.”

Joe Comartin admitted that when Catholic bishops and clergy cracked down on him and other Catholic MPs, they did not receive enough understanding and support from members of their own party caucus. “They just didn’t understand why this was so painful for us,” Comartin said. “Their attitude was more along the lines of ‘Why belong to that church?’”

Tony Martin, an MP from Sault Ste. Marie, was active in the Catholic Church for decades prior to entering politics. Martin told the Ottawa gathering, “In the church, I always had to hang up my political coat at the door. After I became an elected member, I had to hang up my faith coat at the political door.”

Indeed, the commission has created some controversey. In April 2006, the Toronto Star quoted Tarek Fatah, a Muslim and an NDP activist, as saying,  “We fear this is going to be a gateway to right-wing fundamentalists finding a toehold within the NDP. It’s a slippery slope which can have dire consequences.” The Star article also reported on a spirited debate that occurred on the rabble.ca website in the fall of 2006 regarding the faith and justice commission, “with most of the contributors … condemning the proposal.”

But Tony Martin said that the commission “is about reaching out” and it is decidely progressive. “Our party has an agenda on poverty, the environment, and on war. We want to see faith communities involved in those issues.” The commission, in a December 13 news release, said that it will “work with civil society groups, such as anti-poverty and human rights organizations, who share the desire for greater social, political and economic justice.”

Martin said that there is a big faith-based social justice initiative building in the U.S. “They recognize that all of their big movements, including the civil rights movement,  have been rooted in religious traditions. We have to try and do what they are doing.”

One participant at the Ottawa meeting in mid-December, whose wife is Muslim, said that the religious value of equality is a key to social justice. “Equality is a religious value. We are equal before God. We can use this value to build social solidarity and to offer hope. If this commission does that, I think we might find an echo.”

The social gospel tradition and that of social Catholicism lives on but its flame burns less brightly in contemporary Canada than it once did. For their part, progressive Christians, in Protestant, Catholic, and even some evangelical congregations, have been marginalized and are struggling to have their voices heard. There are many examples around the world where religion is used as the basis for hatred, coercion and violence. But there is also an opportunity in Canada for people of faith to participate in public life for the benefit of the common good. They do not have a monopoly on wisdom or truth but there is a rich well of wisdom and practice in their traditions that is worth sharing.