Deep In The Heart Of Ottawa

...sits the National House Of Prayer, lodged in an abandoned convent.

Another in X-NDP MP Dennis Gruendling's excellent series on the intersection of "Pulpit and Politics" in Canada. In this edition he teases out the agenda behind NHOP. Who are they praying for, in other words? Here's a sampling:

The most prayed for piece of legislation in 2008 has been MP Ken Epp’s Bill C-484 (The Unborn Victims of Crime Act), which would create a separate offence for killing or injuring a fetus during an attack on a pregnant woman.

[...]

Earlier in 2008 another blog entry requested prayers for passage of Bill C-2, the federal government’s anti-crime bill.

And of course my favorite:

Another entry requested prayers for “a total overhaul or abolition of the current human rights councils in this country” and referred readers to conservative pundit Ezra Levant’s articles for further information. The case provoking the prayer request involves a human rights complaint into comments made about Muslims by writer Mark Steyn in Macleans magazine.

It is astounding, frankly, how much time and effort Canadian Conservatives are wasting over this issue. For one thing, the only real political chess piece on the board now, or at any time in the near future, is M-446 which, being a private member's motion, rather than a bill, has zero in the way of consequences.

And perhaps this explains the Tories inaction over the course of the past Parliamentary session. They look to their political base and they see madness. They scour the realm of the doable, and see nothing that can appease their political base, and much (like adopting a real climate change plan) that will inflame them. Hence the waffling and empty posturing.