The Pulpit And Politics

Raised by Monks, later an MP for the New Democratic Party, Dennis Gruending writes Pulpit and Politics, a blog about the state of (what I would call) SoCon politics in Canada. A small-town Catholic himself, Mr. Gruending is far more sympathetic to their cause than I am. But that's fine. His latest is here, and an excellent piece on the spread of U.S. style Conservative think tanks can be found here.

And a nifty piece on Charles McVety:

McVety is a religious entrepreneur of the American variety. The creation of overlapping coalitions and organizations (such as the Canadian Family Action Coalition) is another tactic long used by the religious right in the U.S. It aims at garnering publicity and creating the impression of numbers and momentum. Such groups are now becoming increasingly common in Canada. All of this must be frustrating for mainstream organizations such as the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC), which was created in the mid-1960s to represent evangelicals in the halls of power. The CFAC does not belong to the Evangelical Fellowship and nor does McVety’s Christian College. Don Hutchinson, an EFC director, has been quoted as saying: “There’s a broad spectrum on the evangelical meter. Charles may be the representative of one end, probably the extreme end, of that spectrum.”

Interesting how the same tactics are employed by AGW denialist groups (which, when you scratch them, are often part of the same networks that Mr. Gruending is concerned with).