Canada's very own James Dobson.
A few days ago, a friend joked to me that today's U.S. is the only Western democracy in which "separation of church and state" is basically a question of protecting the state from the church rather than vise-versa. Well, maybe it's not just the U.S. anymore, if this mildly terrifying article in today's Globe and Mail is any indication of future trends.
The article profiles Orthodox Presbyterian Reverand Tristan Emmanuel, who, though I can't vouch for the quality of his theology, seems to be angling politically to become Canada's version of James Dobson:
GUELPH, ONT. -- This, maybe, is the new face of Canadian politics: In the large, modern church in Southern Ontario farm country outside Guelph, there's a sign behind Rev. Tristan Emmanuel's right shoulder that reads, "How can we obey our government when it 's trying to destroy us? ".
Just last week, of course, the government continued to "destroy" the church by (wisely, in the real interest of the separation of church and state) amending C-38, the gay marriage recognition bill headed for third reading if the government doesn't fall tomorrow night, to ensure that any church that refuses to perform homosexual unions not risk losing its tax-exempt charitable status.
The article continues:
...And then he gets to the meat of his message: why does Jesus command Christians to be politically engaged?
Because, he says, it is an act of worship. Because Christians who allow the state -- Caesar -- to exert authority beyond its jurisdiction do not render unto God what is God's, and thus do not worship God in the totality of their beings.
It is this message, he says, that he now preaches two to three times a week in conservative evangelical churches throughout the country. He proclaims it at public rallies opposed to same-sex marriage (he organized the successful May 23 rally in Toronto that attracted 3,000 people). He delivers it at fundraising gatherings for people charged before human-rights tribunals for alleged discriminatory speech and actions against homosexuals.
In other words, he raises money for anti-gay bigots. There's more:
Three years ago, he endorsed U.S. evangelist Franklin Graham's definition of Islam as an evil and wicked religion and called sharia law perverted.
He has referred to homosexuals as "sexual deviants" and to their sexual intercourse as sodomy, and he has opposed the extension of anti-hate laws to include homosexuals.
In 2003, he organized a "Canadians for Bush" rally in defence of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The rally site he chose was in Queenston Heights, Ont., the site of the Canadians' victory over U.S. invaders in the War of 1812.
And on the subject of tolerance, he has written: "Tolerance stops far short of complete capitulation. Tolerance doesn't mean we'll empty our minds and suddenly be overwhelmed with warm fuzzies for the opposition. It does not mean that we'll shut up, zip up and go away. And tolerance doesn't mean we'll stop being political and use the democratic process to gain the upper hand, influence society and see the dawn of civility return to America or Canada."
If all that doesn't sound lovely enough, Emmanuel is also the author of a book, Christophobia: The Real Reason Behind Hate Crime Legislation, which, according to a sympathetic reviewer, "examines the lethal threat to religious liberty posed by the rising demand for special 'hate laws' to protect homosexuals. Emmanuel explores the terrible paradox wherein gays, who no longer suffer any measurable discrimination at all, angrily seek to suppress the most basic rights of Christians, who on all sides are openly defamed, deplored, mocked and marginalized."
Whether homosexuals in Canada "no longer suffer any measurable discrimination" isn't really a matter for me, living as I do in left-liberal yuppieville, to judge (although I can attest that it certainly wasn't the case ten years ago when I was in high school in New Brunswick.) But you've got to love how opposition to official recognition and tolerance for the homosexual lifestyle has united practitioners of so many diverse (and, apparently, in some cases "wicked") religious lifestyles. (It's obligatory to point out here that the other side -- which is to say militant secularists -- can also be pretty bad on these sorts of issues). According to the Globe article, Emmanuel is charismatic and very smart (he's currently working on a Masters degree). He's loudly and proudly Canadian. But like his breathern down south, he's a tad, uh, eccentric:
He scoffs at the single-issue candidacy charge pointing out that candidates' position on marriage generally reflect where they stand on other issues. He says: "This is democracy in action. We [conservative Christians] have not been in the public square for at least a generation. We've been engaged in saving souls and waiting for the Great Rescue. And because we haven't been involved, people are suspicious. The fear is about our newness. We haven't been there [politically]." [emphasis mine.]
...Asked if Emmanuel -- it means "God with us" -- is his birth name, he replies: "That's an area I don't want to get into."
...He has run for Parliament and for the Ontario Legislature as a candidate for the Christian Heritage Party and the Family Coalition Party, but now he thinks third parties are political dead-ends.
Emmanuel claims to be non-partisan, but he also endorsed three Christian right candidates who will run as Nova Scotia Tories in the next federal election -- Andrew House in Halifax, Rakesh Khosla in Halifax West and Paul Francis in Sackville-Eastern Shore. Amidst Steven Harper's various other headaches, it's really questionable whether the Tories want to get too close to this sort of thing. The G&M's Jeffrey Simpson recently reminded us of how, in the last election, a few blurted wingnut comments from Conservative back-benchers near the end of the campaign gave credence to the Liberal "hidden agenda" warnings and helped ensure that the Martin Liberals maintained a plurality of seats.
Of course, I'm quite happy for the Steven Harper Tories to never come to power in Canada -- no, actually make that delighted, relieved, overjoyed at the prospect of the Steven Harper Tories never coming to power in Canada. And it's a decidedly good thing to live in a country where it's the organized right, rather than the organized left as in the U.S., that is so weak and spans so much ideological space -- from Belinda Stronach to Travis Emmanuel -- that it's always in danger of splintering into its little interest groups. It's also a much better deal to have wingnut duties delegated to a guy like Emmanuel who finds it "somehow offensive to be told that my approach is ipso facto American. I'm proud of my country. I love Canada", than to have the U.S. exporting the services of its own wingnuts up here.
Still, living next to a country where the contenders for the 2008 GOP nomination actively fight for kudos from the religious right leads even the most milquetoasty Canadian liberals, like me or the editors of the Globe and Mail, to get serious willies when we observe any hint of the waxing prominence of the Perpetually Persecuted Bible Thumping Right and its borderline hate-mongering agenda (I especially love Emmanuel excusing his "wicked Islam" remarks as a regretable 911-induced flight of "rhetorical" fancy.) As a matter of politics, I've always been iffy on same-sex marriage -- particularly since a majority of Canadians, whose members aren't all wingnuts, still opposes the bill but probably won't if Parliament gives the issue another year or two. But the more I hear of Emmanuel and his "family values" agenda, the closer I get to the sordid embrace of the "radical homosexual agenda" and the more I like watching Paul Martin (assuming he survives tomorrow's confidence votes) stick it to the social-con right.
The article profiles Orthodox Presbyterian Reverand Tristan Emmanuel, who, though I can't vouch for the quality of his theology, seems to be angling politically to become Canada's version of James Dobson:
GUELPH, ONT. -- This, maybe, is the new face of Canadian politics: In the large, modern church in Southern Ontario farm country outside Guelph, there's a sign behind Rev. Tristan Emmanuel's right shoulder that reads, "How can we obey our government when it 's trying to destroy us? ".
Just last week, of course, the government continued to "destroy" the church by (wisely, in the real interest of the separation of church and state) amending C-38, the gay marriage recognition bill headed for third reading if the government doesn't fall tomorrow night, to ensure that any church that refuses to perform homosexual unions not risk losing its tax-exempt charitable status.
The article continues:
...And then he gets to the meat of his message: why does Jesus command Christians to be politically engaged?
Because, he says, it is an act of worship. Because Christians who allow the state -- Caesar -- to exert authority beyond its jurisdiction do not render unto God what is God's, and thus do not worship God in the totality of their beings.
It is this message, he says, that he now preaches two to three times a week in conservative evangelical churches throughout the country. He proclaims it at public rallies opposed to same-sex marriage (he organized the successful May 23 rally in Toronto that attracted 3,000 people). He delivers it at fundraising gatherings for people charged before human-rights tribunals for alleged discriminatory speech and actions against homosexuals.
In other words, he raises money for anti-gay bigots. There's more:
Three years ago, he endorsed U.S. evangelist Franklin Graham's definition of Islam as an evil and wicked religion and called sharia law perverted.
He has referred to homosexuals as "sexual deviants" and to their sexual intercourse as sodomy, and he has opposed the extension of anti-hate laws to include homosexuals.
In 2003, he organized a "Canadians for Bush" rally in defence of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The rally site he chose was in Queenston Heights, Ont., the site of the Canadians' victory over U.S. invaders in the War of 1812.
And on the subject of tolerance, he has written: "Tolerance stops far short of complete capitulation. Tolerance doesn't mean we'll empty our minds and suddenly be overwhelmed with warm fuzzies for the opposition. It does not mean that we'll shut up, zip up and go away. And tolerance doesn't mean we'll stop being political and use the democratic process to gain the upper hand, influence society and see the dawn of civility return to America or Canada."
If all that doesn't sound lovely enough, Emmanuel is also the author of a book, Christophobia: The Real Reason Behind Hate Crime Legislation, which, according to a sympathetic reviewer, "examines the lethal threat to religious liberty posed by the rising demand for special 'hate laws' to protect homosexuals. Emmanuel explores the terrible paradox wherein gays, who no longer suffer any measurable discrimination at all, angrily seek to suppress the most basic rights of Christians, who on all sides are openly defamed, deplored, mocked and marginalized."
Whether homosexuals in Canada "no longer suffer any measurable discrimination" isn't really a matter for me, living as I do in left-liberal yuppieville, to judge (although I can attest that it certainly wasn't the case ten years ago when I was in high school in New Brunswick.) But you've got to love how opposition to official recognition and tolerance for the homosexual lifestyle has united practitioners of so many diverse (and, apparently, in some cases "wicked") religious lifestyles. (It's obligatory to point out here that the other side -- which is to say militant secularists -- can also be pretty bad on these sorts of issues). According to the Globe article, Emmanuel is charismatic and very smart (he's currently working on a Masters degree). He's loudly and proudly Canadian. But like his breathern down south, he's a tad, uh, eccentric:
He scoffs at the single-issue candidacy charge pointing out that candidates' position on marriage generally reflect where they stand on other issues. He says: "This is democracy in action. We [conservative Christians] have not been in the public square for at least a generation. We've been engaged in saving souls and waiting for the Great Rescue. And because we haven't been involved, people are suspicious. The fear is about our newness. We haven't been there [politically]." [emphasis mine.]
...Asked if Emmanuel -- it means "God with us" -- is his birth name, he replies: "That's an area I don't want to get into."
...He has run for Parliament and for the Ontario Legislature as a candidate for the Christian Heritage Party and the Family Coalition Party, but now he thinks third parties are political dead-ends.
Emmanuel claims to be non-partisan, but he also endorsed three Christian right candidates who will run as Nova Scotia Tories in the next federal election -- Andrew House in Halifax, Rakesh Khosla in Halifax West and Paul Francis in Sackville-Eastern Shore. Amidst Steven Harper's various other headaches, it's really questionable whether the Tories want to get too close to this sort of thing. The G&M's Jeffrey Simpson recently reminded us of how, in the last election, a few blurted wingnut comments from Conservative back-benchers near the end of the campaign gave credence to the Liberal "hidden agenda" warnings and helped ensure that the Martin Liberals maintained a plurality of seats.
Of course, I'm quite happy for the Steven Harper Tories to never come to power in Canada -- no, actually make that delighted, relieved, overjoyed at the prospect of the Steven Harper Tories never coming to power in Canada. And it's a decidedly good thing to live in a country where it's the organized right, rather than the organized left as in the U.S., that is so weak and spans so much ideological space -- from Belinda Stronach to Travis Emmanuel -- that it's always in danger of splintering into its little interest groups. It's also a much better deal to have wingnut duties delegated to a guy like Emmanuel who finds it "somehow offensive to be told that my approach is ipso facto American. I'm proud of my country. I love Canada", than to have the U.S. exporting the services of its own wingnuts up here.
Still, living next to a country where the contenders for the 2008 GOP nomination actively fight for kudos from the religious right leads even the most milquetoasty Canadian liberals, like me or the editors of the Globe and Mail, to get serious willies when we observe any hint of the waxing prominence of the Perpetually Persecuted Bible Thumping Right and its borderline hate-mongering agenda (I especially love Emmanuel excusing his "wicked Islam" remarks as a regretable 911-induced flight of "rhetorical" fancy.) As a matter of politics, I've always been iffy on same-sex marriage -- particularly since a majority of Canadians, whose members aren't all wingnuts, still opposes the bill but probably won't if Parliament gives the issue another year or two. But the more I hear of Emmanuel and his "family values" agenda, the closer I get to the sordid embrace of the "radical homosexual agenda" and the more I like watching Paul Martin (assuming he survives tomorrow's confidence votes) stick it to the social-con right.
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