The Rants of Issachar
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Hidden Agenda...
Gloria Galloway wrote an article in the Globe (mirror) that seems to have drawn some attention from few people I know including Christo on Potent Pew. Warren Kinsella commented as well and I can't say he's impressed me.
There's a couple of issues in the article that I want to address, but I'll start with the issue of ministers recommending political candidates.
That's a bad idea and any minister should know better. Purely from the a democratic perspective there's nothing wrong with it. In a democracy no one should be disqualified from recommending a candidate to anyone else. To suggest that a minister should be disqualified from suggesting that people vote a certain way is fundamentally undemocratic. The people who suggest things like that seem to motivated by the fact that ministers have influence over their congregants. But why does this form of influence disqualify them from offering recommendations and the influence a writer, an actor or a professional athlete does not?
But while ministers certainly have the right endorse candidates or nominees, I believe they should refrain from doing so. Endorsing a politician ties the reputation of Christ to the behaviour of that politician. If a minister says "so and so is a good man with good ideas, vote for him", and it turns out that so and so is not a good man or that he lies, or that he's simply incompetent, the message of the Church suffers and that's much more serious than any election.
Having said that I think it is a good idea for ministers to address the political issues. Christianity is not some esoteric mental exercise. It has very real practical implications. Divorcing morality and ethics from politics is a very bad move and a minister primary job is to spread Christ's message (including the practical applications), and to help and aid his flock be more like Christ. In a democracy every citizen can be involved in the political process and they should think about the moral implications of their choices. The Church is an important part of that. The separation of Church and State in Canada is designed to stop the establishment of a state religion. Not to make secular humanism the only acceptable religion.
The other problem I see in Galloway's article is the implication that the involvement of Christians in the Conservative party represents some hidden agenda. When you don't like someone I guess you can always rely on FUD. I'm sorry, but this is just insulting. Christians are involved in every major political party in this country. But it's their involvement in the Conservative party that is sinister. Thirty-four Liberals voted in favour of the Conservative ammendment that would have reaffirmed marriage as exclusively heterosexual, but it's only when the Conservatives are against homosexual marriage that it means the party is being infiltrated by zealots. The article seems to imply that it's a somehow a bad thing that new Canadians are joining the Conservative party. I'm pretty sure this is the very first time I've read anything in the Globe and Mail that suggested that immigrants getting involved in the political process was a bad thing. With stuff like this, someone could get the impression that the Globe is attacking a single political party and protecting another...
Finally I'm disappointed by the fact that some Conservatives "wished the party leaders had been more involved in the nominations". In other words, they don't like the people who got the most votes in the riding nominations and wished that the party executive had overruled the vote to parachute in their preferred candidate. What a brilliant strategy for democratic government.
There's a couple of issues in the article that I want to address, but I'll start with the issue of ministers recommending political candidates.
That's a bad idea and any minister should know better. Purely from the a democratic perspective there's nothing wrong with it. In a democracy no one should be disqualified from recommending a candidate to anyone else. To suggest that a minister should be disqualified from suggesting that people vote a certain way is fundamentally undemocratic. The people who suggest things like that seem to motivated by the fact that ministers have influence over their congregants. But why does this form of influence disqualify them from offering recommendations and the influence a writer, an actor or a professional athlete does not?
But while ministers certainly have the right endorse candidates or nominees, I believe they should refrain from doing so. Endorsing a politician ties the reputation of Christ to the behaviour of that politician. If a minister says "so and so is a good man with good ideas, vote for him", and it turns out that so and so is not a good man or that he lies, or that he's simply incompetent, the message of the Church suffers and that's much more serious than any election.
Having said that I think it is a good idea for ministers to address the political issues. Christianity is not some esoteric mental exercise. It has very real practical implications. Divorcing morality and ethics from politics is a very bad move and a minister primary job is to spread Christ's message (including the practical applications), and to help and aid his flock be more like Christ. In a democracy every citizen can be involved in the political process and they should think about the moral implications of their choices. The Church is an important part of that. The separation of Church and State in Canada is designed to stop the establishment of a state religion. Not to make secular humanism the only acceptable religion.
The other problem I see in Galloway's article is the implication that the involvement of Christians in the Conservative party represents some hidden agenda. When you don't like someone I guess you can always rely on FUD. I'm sorry, but this is just insulting. Christians are involved in every major political party in this country. But it's their involvement in the Conservative party that is sinister. Thirty-four Liberals voted in favour of the Conservative ammendment that would have reaffirmed marriage as exclusively heterosexual, but it's only when the Conservatives are against homosexual marriage that it means the party is being infiltrated by zealots. The article seems to imply that it's a somehow a bad thing that new Canadians are joining the Conservative party. I'm pretty sure this is the very first time I've read anything in the Globe and Mail that suggested that immigrants getting involved in the political process was a bad thing. With stuff like this, someone could get the impression that the Globe is attacking a single political party and protecting another...
Finally I'm disappointed by the fact that some Conservatives "wished the party leaders had been more involved in the nominations". In other words, they don't like the people who got the most votes in the riding nominations and wished that the party executive had overruled the vote to parachute in their preferred candidate. What a brilliant strategy for democratic government.
1 Comments:
Posted by: 
ChristoFUD, what a brilliant notion to use in analysing political issues.
ChristoFUD, what a brilliant notion to use in analysing political issues.
