By Dennis Gruending

I reported earlier in December that the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) had cut off all funding to the ecumenical justice group KAIROS. I speculated that likely it happened because KAIROS was challenging the government’s support for rapid development in the heavily polluting oil sands in Western Canada. But alert readers raised another possibility for the government’s action. Emily Dee wrote to the Comments section of Pulpit and Politics on December 12: “I agree that the criticism of the tar sands was no doubt a factor, but I think there was another reason — both Jason Kenney and Stockwell Day claim that KAIROS was anti-Semitic because they criticized Israel.” In fact, on December 16, Kenney, the Immigration Minister, was to level just such charges against KAIROS in a speech that he made in Jerusalem at a global forum for combating anti-Semitism.

Kenney is now denying that he said KAIROS was anti-Semitic, but says he made the more limited accusation that KAIROS was supporting efforts to apply economic sanctions against Israel. But for the record, here is what  the Conservative-friendly National Post quotes Kenney as saying in Jerusalem: “We have articulated and implemented a zero tolerance approach to anti-Semitism. What does this mean? It means that we eliminated the government funding relationship with organizations like for example, the Canadian Arab Federation, whose leadership apologized for terrorism or extremism, or who promote hatred, in particular anti-Semitism. We have ended government contact with like-minded organizations like the Canadian Islamic Congress, whose President notoriously said that all Israelis over the age of 18 are legitimate targets for assassination. We have defunded organizations, most recently like KAIROS, who are taking a leadership role in the boycott.” A videotaped version of Kenney’s remarks is also available. Obviously, one must assume that Kenney meant what he said and knew that it would be reported, even though he is now backpedalling.

Bullying KAIROS

KAIROS was surprised when its funding for international projects was cut off but now the organization and its church sponsors are outraged at having Kenney accuse them of being anti-Semitic, a heavily-loaded phrase that carries with it the dark resonance of the holocaust. “Minister Kenney’s charge against KAIROS is false,” KAIROS said in a statement released on December 18. “Two points need to be made: Criticism of Israel does not constitute anti-Semitism; and CIDA was developed to fund international aid and not to serve political agendas”.

Many organizations and governments have criticized the state of Israel for its long-standing and illegal occupation of Palestinian land and its continued harsh treatment of Palestinians. However, for Kenney and others any criticism of Israeli government policies is quickly branded as anti-Semitism. Ironically, there is a freer and much more robust debate within Israel’s own media and among its citizens than is possible in North America with its active pro-Israel lobby.

Church leaders speaking on behalf of faith groups that belong to KAIROS have denounced the government cuts of $7 million. Writing in The Globe and Mail, Michael Valpy reports that, in protest, members of congregations in 250 church groups across Canada “banged bells and pots and pans at their gathering for worship [on December 13].” Valpy also reports church leaders are telling him off the record that they are worried that the controversy will endanger harmony between Christians and Jewish groups.

KAIROS acts on behalf of 13 of Canada’s major churches or church-based organizations, and it includes under its umbrella the Anglican, Catholic, Christian Reformed, Lutheran, Presbyterian and United Churches, as well as the Mennonite Central Committee, the Quakers and others. KAIROS, or its predecessor groups, have received money from CIDA for 35 years to support partners working in some of the world’s difficult trouble spots, including the Middle East. When KAIROS was told on November 30 that it had been cut off, no detailed explanation was given. CIDA’s minister Bev Oda, when questioned in the House of Commons, said KAIROS lost its funding because of shifting priorities at CIDA. She said nothing then, or later, that would indicate that she believes KAIROS is anti-Semitic.

Kenney, however, is a more powerful and rigidly ideological minister. He worked in 2000 to organize the religious right on behalf of Stockwell Day in his campaign against Preston Manning for the leadership of the Canadian Alliance party.  Day won but when his leadership imploded and Stephen Harper succeeded him in 2002, Kenney became a trusted operative. When the Harper-led Conservatives became the government, Kenney was given a key responsibility in winning over new Canadians and certain religiously identified groups to support the Conservatives. One imperative has been to woo Jewish voters and their financial support. Kenney and the Conservatives have clearly chosen sides – supporting Israeli no matter what actions it undertakes. This unflinching support also plays to the fringe elements of the Christian right – who believe that Armageddon in the Middle East would fulfill what they believe is a biblical prophecy that End Times and the rapture are drawing near. Arab and Muslim Canadians have not been amused by the Conservatives’ unwavering support for Israel, but Kenney and Harper have chosen their ground deliberately.

Wedge and conquer

One would expect a national government to promote unity rather than discord, but that faint hope does not account for how the Conservatives do politics. No party in Canada is likely to receive support from a majority of voters in a country beset by regionalism and fractured parliaments. In this context, it is seen as important to mobilize and maintain your core support. One way to do it is to use wedge issues to create division and provoke  anger.  The Conservatives have used a wedge and conquer strategy in their campaigns against same sex marriage and the gun registry to name just two issues. They are using the same tactics against KAIROS and in the way they treat any criticism of the war in Afghanistan. Personal attacks are a staple against any person or group that disagrees with the government lines on anything.

Bullying Richard Colvin

I reported on November 30 about Richard Colvin, a Canadian diplomat who served in Afghanistan, and who has blown the whistle on the government’s complicity in the torture of Afghans taken prisoner by Canadian soldiers and turned over to Afghan prison authorities. The Conservative government responded by denying Colvin’s allegations and attacking his integrity. The Prime Minister and Defence Minister Peter McKay both described Colvin as essentially a dupe of the Taliban. Those ministers and Transport Minister John Baird meet most questions from the opposition parties by accusing them of sullying the integrity and efforts of Canadian soldiers. The strategy is to attack anyone who questions the actions of the military high command or the government’s behaviour as being disloyal and unpatriotic.

Colvin was a trusted civil servant and following his tour in Afghanistan he was assigned as an intelligence officer at the Canadian embassy in Washington. He made his comments when summoned to testify before a Parliamentary committee. He is being punished by the Conservatives for his diligence and honesty and his career may well be in jeopardy as a result. A group of 133 retired Canadian ambassadors has taken the unprecedented step of circulating a petition defending Colvin from his attackers. The former ambassadors say that the Conservative government is politicizing the civil service and that Colvin’s treatment will intimidate all public servants whose job has been traditionally to provide honest advice to the government and its ministers.

Haroon Siddiqui, a Toronto Star columnist, describes the government’s action in the following way: “The extent of Harper’s misuse of power becomes clearer when you realize that the Conservatives are replicating some of the worst practices of the Republicans under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney: Consolidating executive power; eviscerating the legislative branch; operating under extreme secrecy (by keeping an iron grip on information, through endless court challenges and censoring/redacting documents); riding the coattails of the military and questioning the patriotism of political opponents; and forcing out public servants who refused to fall in line.”

KAIROS and its supporters in numerous Canadian churches have chosen not to fall in line. KAIROS is continuing with its campaign to have the CIDA funding cuts restored. See their petition here. Please consider signing it.

And Merry Christmas, happy holidays – really!

By Dennis Gruending

In October, I attended a fund raising dinner and auction at an Ottawa church to support development of a legal clinic to assist women in eastern Congo. In some of their stories, captured on a brief video, the women describe how they had been gang raped and brutalized by young men who fight in armies and militias. These women were the lucky ones. They talked about how others had been murdered during their ordeals or left to die afterward. The goal on that October evening was to raise $25,000, enough money we were told to support the clinic for one year. People that night dug deeply into their pockets for $22,000 and we were asked to make our cheques to KAIROS, the Canadian ecumenical social justice group. Now, a scant six weeks later, we learn that Bev Oda, the minister in charge of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), has cut all funding to KAIROS. The news arrived in a terse telephone call from a faceless official who said that the organization’s projects do not fit with CIDA’s criteria. Tell that to women in the Congo.

KAIROS acts on behalf of 13 of Canada’s major churches or church-based organizations, and it includes under its umbrella the Anglican, Catholic, Christian Reformed, Lutheran, Presbyterian and United Churches, as well as the Mennonite Central Committee, the Quakers and others. KAIROS, or its predecessor groups, have received money from CIDA for 35 years to support partners working in regions experiencing some of the world’s most serious human rights violations. The work of KAIROS is highly regarded in Canada and overseas.

CIDA’s “priorities”

KAIROS worked with its global partners to develop a program for years 2009-2013, focussing upon human rights and ecological justice.  The budget was for $9.2 million over four years, with CIDA contributing just over $7 million of that amount. The proposal was submitted to CIDA in March 2009, where it moved through various levels of approval before arriving on Bev Oda’s desk in July 2009. There seemed to be little cause for concern. KAIROS had received a positive audit report for its 2006-2009 work and a good evaluation. When, in September 2009, the agreement had still not been signed, KAIROS was granted a two-month extension on a previous contribution agreement. Sources say it was then that people at KAIROS began to worry. They were hearing that there was “trouble at the top”, which meant the minister’s’ office, or more likely with this government, the prime minister’s office.

On November 30, KAIROS was told that it had been cut off. The organization says in a new release: “We asked for an explanation and were informed that our program did not fit the government of Canada’s priorities. This was the last day of an extension to our current proposal.  No written explanation has been provided.” In one telephone call, the Canadian government appears to have terminated a long-standing relationship between CIDA and KAIROS or its predecessor organizations. KAIROS says the decision, if not reversed, “would cut funds to 21 ecumenical and citizen’s organizations in Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and cut educational work that helps Canadians across the country to develop skills and knowledge in the exercise of their global citizenship.”

Minister Oda did not communicate with KAIROS about its fate — she rarely communicates publicly with anyone about her portfolio except in the most controlled of circumstances. But the “trouble at the top” may well have had more to do with the work of KAIROS within Canada than with its overseas projects. KAIROS has questioned, on environmental and hence ethical grounds, the rapid development of the tar sands in Western Canada. KAIROS hosted a forum in Calgary in October 2008 and organized a delegation of Canadian church leaders to visit the tar sands in May 2009. The Reform Party and the Canadian Alliance, prior to their takeover of the Progressive Conservative Party, were beneficiaries of generous support from the oil and gas industry. The Harper Conservatives exist on similarly friendly terms with the carbon industry and will not hear of any proposal that would scale back rapid development – despite the environmental problems such development is causing. The implied criticism from KAIROS may have excited the ire of Conservatives at the top, even though most of the KAIROS budget is provided by the organization’s own donors and not by CIDA.

Canada as petro state

The eyes of the world are upon Canada as 192 countries meet in Copenhagen to discuss measures that would start to slow the runaway train of carbon pollution that causes global heating. Canada, which used to be respected among nations, is becoming a pariah due to its stubborn insistence to do little to mitigate the creation of greenhouse gases – and the Canadian tar sands are among the largest emitters. George Monbiot, a columnist for The Guardian in Britain, recently wrote: “So here I am, watching the astonishing spectacle of a beautiful, cultured nation turning itself into a corrupt petro-state. Canada is slipping down the development ladder, retreating from a complex, diverse economy towards dependence on a single primary resource, which happens to be the dirtiest commodity known to man.”

The treatment of KAIROS is not only a punishment; it is a warning. Citizens for Public Justice, another fine ecumenical organization, has also questioned tar sands development, albeit in a polite and almost tentative way. Might CPJ expect repercussions? The Catholic aid agency, Development and Peace, has had a multi-year campaign to bring attention to the corporate behaviour of Canadian mining companies abroad. D&P receives CIDA funding. Should the organization be looking over its shoulder?

Fighting the cuts

KAIROS and its supporters are not going down quietly.  The organization is asking its people to contact their MPs, requesting that the decision be reversed. A variety of NGOs and churches, including the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, which does not belong to KAIROS, have criticized the government’s decision.

The issue appears to have some political legs as well. All opposition parties, including the Greens, who do not have a seat the House of Commons, have called for the move to be reversed. Liberal MPs Bob Rae and John McKay, as well as other opposition members, have raised the issue in Question Period in the House of Commons. As I wrote this, church and NGO Leaders  announced that they would convene a news conference on Parliament Hill to address what they call” the unprecedented decision” to cut all funding to the human rights program of KAIROS.

KAIROS is asking its supporters, in addition to contacting their MPs, to send email messages to: Prime Minister Stephen Harper, pm@pmo-cpm.gc.ca; Bev Oda, minister of international cooperation, oda.b@parl.gc.ca; and Margaret Biggs, president of CIDA, Margaret.Biggs@acdi-cida.gc.ca. KAIROS asks that those who write also copy their letters to KAIROS at info@kairoscanada.org.

By Dennis Gruending

(The following post was published in the 20th anniversary edition of The Hill Times newspaper on October 5, 2009):

 The Hill Times is a niche publication in the best sense of the word. It is preoccupied with everything that happens on (and around) Parliament Hill and that cuts a broad swath. I know, based upon my eight years as a staff worker and a Member of Parliament that the newspaper is read avidly by pretty well everyone in the precinct. The Hill Times is also characterized by a civility that provides at least some sense of community in a place where that is not easy to achieve. I have come to occupy a niche of my own since I left the Hill in 2004, returning to consulting, to writing books and now a blog called Pulpit and Politics. I am interested in the growing influence that religion is having upon politics and society in Canada and elsewhere. I am pleased that the Hill Times has published some of my articles on this topic.

God is back

In one of my first blog pieces in November 2007, I reported on a lengthy article carried in The Economist. The magazine’s editor John Micklethwait said, “In the 20th century people, particularly among the elites, tended to think that religion was disappearing. That obviously hasn’t happened.” This year Mickhlethwait has published a 400-page book called God is Back, in which he makes his point in even greater detail. Rather than fading away religion has come to play an increasingly prominent public role in contemporary societies. One has only to think about the Iranian and Nicaraguan revolutions; the impact of liberation theology in places such as Brazil; the role of the church in Poland; the rise of the religious right in the United States, Canada and elsewhere; the rise of militant Sikhism and Islamic extremism. If ever religion was a marginalized force, it has rebounded markedly and not always for the better. All too often, from Northern Ireland through Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Israel, religious intrusions have been violent and bloody. Canada, so far at least, is the peaceable kingdom but the culture wars so common south of the border have their echoes in this country as well.

Canada does not exist in a vacuum. An IPSOS-Reid poll reported, for example, that the vote of evangelical Christians and Catholics who attend church weekly was a deciding factor in the election of a Conservative minority government in January 2006. The question is whether that was a blip or an emerging reality in Canadian political life. The religious right is growing in its political influence. Mainline Protestantism has been in decline although it is showing some signs of revival. Conservative Catholics and evangelicals, who once disliked and mistrusted one another, are now engaged in a growing collaboration on issues such as same sex marriage. The Conservatives are assiduously courting those evangelicals, Catholics, and certain Jewish voters as well to join their political coalition. That has caught the attention of other parties. The NDP has responded by creating Faith and Social Justice Commission, which attempts to mobilize a religious constituency on their behalf. Michael Ignatieff has given Toronto-area Liberal MP John Mackay the task of reaching out on behalf of his party to evangelical Christians.

There is a good deal of research and reportage in the United States about the relationship between religion and politics. Journalists follow the power and the money and in the U.S. the religious right has been an important political player since the days of Ronald Reagan. Recently, for example, there has been coverage about what American religious groups are saying about President Obama’s proposed reforms to health care – the response from those organizations has, unfortunately, been mostly opposed to the reforms. Far less attention has been devoted to the relationship between pulpit and politics in Canada.

What the media misses

I have reported on my blog how several Catholic NDP MPs were denied full participation in their church because of their party’s support of same sex marriage legislation. This is an unfortunate regression on the church’s part to the 19th century when the bishops and clergy in Quebec tried to bring Wilfrid Laurier to heel. I have reported on the National Prayer Breakfast, which I believe should become an inter-religious rather than exclusively Christian event. Other of my blog stories have been about what churches had to say about issues in the 2008 election campaign; about how there has been a proliferation of socially and religiously conservative lobby groups in Ottawa in the past several years; about religion and multiculturalism; about how some MPs and senior bureaucrats see the connection between religious faith and their own public lives.

A story that the mainstream media both covered and missed was the Prime Minister’s promotion of two individuals to senior positions in the PMO in March 2009. Darrel Reid became chief of staff and Paul Wilson replaced him as PMO policy director. Reid and Wilson have deep roots in both religious and political organizations. Reid was chief of staff to Reform Party leader Preston Manning while he was leader of the opposition. Later he became the president of Focus on the Family Canada, a conservative Christian lobby group that has worked against public childcare, same-sex marriage, and against adding sexual orientation to a list of minorities protected from hate crimes.

Wilson has worked for Trinity Western University, which is based in Langley, B.C. and is one of the largest evangelical educational institutions in Canada. Trinity established an Ottawa “campus” in 2001 in an old mansion near Parliament Hill. It houses the Laurentian Leadership Centre, which places students as interns with Ottawa-based organizations, predominantly with MPs. Wilson co-ordinated that internship program but when the Conservatives won election in 2006, he left Trinity Western to become a senior policy advisor to Vic Toews, then the justice minister. Wilson later served in a similar policy role for Diane Finley, the minister of human resources.

There is nothing wrong with these individuals occupying senior positions but their combined political and religious connections are worthy of note and journalists reporting the promotions missed the religious side.

Potential stories

There are other potential stories that I have not had the time or resources to follow. For example, the government is rolling out grants under its infrastructure program and a number of them are going to religious institutions. These include grants to the above-mentioned Laurentian Leadership Centre, and larger one to its parent Trinity Western University. Other grants have gone to Atlantic Baptist University in New Brunswick, Redeemer University College in Ontario and the Briercrest Bible School in Saskatchewan. There is a long tradition in Canada of religious schools and hospitals receiving public support, but it would be interesting to see the full list of religious institutions receiving money under the economic stimulus package and a description of the projects involved.

Ultimately, I am interested in how religious faith informs our political decisions – the division of wealth in our society, education and race relations, the environment and foreign policy, to name just a few. People of religious faith should, like anyone else, be welcomed to participate in political debates and movements for the benefit of the common good. But that participation is worthy of journalistic scrutiny undertaken with a sense of detachment and at least some degree of skepticism.

By Dennis Gruending

The exercise of citizenship as ministry is rooted in the Biblical calling to do justice, says Kathy Vandergrift, an Ottawa-based Christian activist who has worked both within government and outside of it on behalf of religiously based and non-governmental organizations. She and William Janzen, long time director of the Mennonite Central Committee Canada’s Ottawa office, spoke to our Ottawa Lay School of Theology Faith and Public Life class on February 2. Vandergrift organized her thoughts under the rubric of what she called the Four P’s.

Principled engagement

Christians are called to principled engagement in public life. That engagement demands more, Vandergrift says, than just “working from the bleachers and voting every four years.” Principled engagement is more than mere action – it contains a qualitative dimension as well. “Elected politicians expect you to be self-interested and we are often conditioned in that way too. Look at coverage of the recent budget. Everybody responds on the basis of what is in it for them,” Vandergrift says. She adds that Christians can have a “profound advantage” if they choose to engage in a different way – on the basis of justice and not self-interest. But she warned against approaching politicians with pat solutions based on Biblical verses. “The Bible is not a political science manual. We have to be principled but not preachy.”

Practical

“I am a strong believer in incrementalism,” says Vandergrift. “It is important just to put an issue on the public agenda and keep it there. For example, it is hard to get children onto the agenda now, hard to promote solidarity with Aboriginal peoples and with refugees.” Vandergift says that it is important for Christian advocates to pick just a few issues and to campaign for policy changes on them. “I also like to present positive policy alternatives,” she says.

Prophetic voice

“If we want to provide a faith witness we should choose issues that lead to catalytic change,” says Vandergrift. “Such a moment exists now [during a time of economic crisis]. Our witness will make people uncomfortable – but in this way Christians can actually redeem the field of politics.”

Persistent and strategic

“Working for justice is like playing chess,” Vandergrift says. “We have to be strategic. Sometimes pawns can topple kings.” It is not enough, she says, to expound on what is right or wrong, or even to write fine position papers on issues. “We need a strategy on how we are going to promote our issues.” She talked about four current issues that demand our attention:

Creation care: “It needs a lot of work.”

Christian approaches to human rights: “We have to lift up the social and economic rights of people who are disadvantaged.”

Justice rather than charity for the vulnerable: Vandergrift says, for example, that food banks were created decades ago as a temporary response to hunger but now they have become a mainstay. Food banks are an example of charity but the existence of hunger in our communities is a question of justice.

Dealing with a diversity of faiths and cultures: These issues will grow as Canada becomes even more multi-religious and multi-cultural, Vandergrift says. “We have seen some of this over the so-called accommodation debate in Quebec.” The question became how much, if any, accommodation should be made, to take but one example, for female Muslim students who wear headscarves in schools or in sports events.

Vandergrift also commented on the situation in Bountiful, B.C. where polygamous men take young girls as wives.  “When the issue is framed as a debate between religious freedom and polygamy,” she says “the abuse of children’s rights is ignored. That should be of concern to people of faith, but because it is a question of religious freedom, we are afraid to engage in the issue and its implications. Perhaps the time has come when people of faith need to pay closer attention to the relationship between religious freedom and other issues in Canada.”

William Janzen, in his remarks, said that Mennonites in Canada have held a theology that makes them different from many other faiths in their dealing with government. He says that opening of an MCC office in Ottawa in the 1970s was a pivotal point for Mennonites. “Prior to that we mostly lived within our own communities. What we wanted from government was to have our own land and schools, and to be allowed to be conscientious objectors in times of war. We were hesitant to participate in the task of governing the larger society.”

Janzen says that when Mennonites did decide to begin advocating to government they thought it best to speak out of their own experience. “We would speak about what we had learned, but we would stop short of telling government what to do.” One of those areas of experience was work on behalf of refugees. Many Mennonites had been refugees, particularly after the Russian revolution and the World Wars, and the Mennonite Central Committee was actually founded to support refugee work. Janzen says this experience was valuable when MCC helped to negotiate a master agreement with the Canadian government to sponsor so-called Boat People from Southeast Asia in the late 1970s.

Janzen also points to the Canadian Food Grains Bank, which he said arose from a desire by Mennonite farmers in Canada to send food abroad to people who were hungry. The CFGB now receives support from numerous Canadian churches and religiously based organizations.

Janzen says that the traditional Anabaptist belief in pacifism has also helped to inform MCC’s witness. “We came to believe that we had something to say to the government about war and peace.” He believes, for example, that work done by his office (and by other churches) played some role in convincing then Prime Minister Jean Chretien to refuse American entreaties for Canada to become involved in Iraq.

Janzen adds, “In general, I have not approached the government with a view that it should not use force at all, even as a last resort. But I do have a high respect for the argument that once you do rule out military force, it is then that you become creative in looking at the options.”