Gruending In the Hill Times

A nice interview occasioned by the publication of his new book , Pulpit and Politics (which doesn't seem to be up on Amazon with his other stuff yet). The Hill Times interview is fairly substantive. In my favorite bit, he talks about the influence of the Religious Right in Canadian politics:

Well, they believe they have much more traction with the Harper government than they had with the Liberals. I have seen a number of statements to this effect. But they win some and they lose some on the issues. The Institute of Marriage and the Family provides research and strategic advice for conservative causes and lobbied hard on the issue of same sex marriage, but they lost that one.

“They did win, however, on having the Conservatives ditch the public childcare initiative negotiated by Paul Martin with the provinces and territories, replacing it with a tax credit to middle class and wealthier families. REAL Women lobbied the Conservatives to have the Court Challenges Program eliminated and it was. They also wanted the Status of Women offices shut down. The Conservatives did not eliminate Status of Women entirely but they did cut them back severely and weakened their mandate. Religious conservatives seem to be getting pretty well everything they want on crime and Canadian support for Israel.

“But they should be careful. They have cast their lot with the Mr. Harper but he is playing a game with them. He wants them to think he is solidly on their side but he can’t give them everything that they want because that would turn off a majority of Canadians who want nothing to do with religious conservatives or with their agenda. Mr. Harper has disappointed religious conservatives on both the same-sex marriage and abortion issues. Some of them are beginning to believe that he is taking them for granted.”

Which is pretty much in line with my own thinking on the matter, and perhaps less in line with the more alarmist views expressed by Marci McDonald in her  The Armageddon Factor.

The Armageddon Factor: Dennis Gruending Weighs In

Probably the best response to the charge that Marci MacDonald is "demonizing" Christians:

One might ask, and some of McDonald’s critics have, what is wrong in having a group of people motivated by conservative religious principles engaging in public life? The answer is that there is nothing wrong with it, but it is also completely legitimate for a journalist to cover that phenomenon, as McDonald has done. If religious faith were simply a matter of personal piety or private devotion, it would demand far less scrutiny. But faith is inherently social, and, yes, political. Ultimately, the question to be answered is where these people want to move our nation. I believe that they want a leaner and meaner state where individuals and religiously based organizations take back much of the responsibility for education, adoptions, social welfare and many other services, and do it on their own terms. On these and other policies, whether it is their response to global warming, to crime, or to our government’s policy toward Israel, the religious right can be judged both on what it says and what it does.

Dennis Gruending is, of course, this guy.

On The Christian Right In Canada

Firstly, I should say that I haven't yet read Marci McDonald's The Armageddon Factor, but I have read the original Walrus article upon which it is based, and I've followed many of smartest writers on the intersection of Pulpit and Politics that Canada possesses. Furthermore, over the course of the years I myself have written frequently and extensively on many of the same people that appear in the pages of Ms. McDonald's book.

So, that said, when it comes to her main contention: that the Christian Right is "on the rise" in Canada, I have to conclude with Mr. Brian Lilley. It isn't, really:

While McDonald details the organizations that these two and others work with, she really fails to make the case that they are having an impact on government policy. There is an attempt to link the Universal Child Care Benefit which pays parents $100 per month for each child under six to the religious right by showing that social conservatives supported it. That's hardly a stellar case. She also attempts to show failures such as the Unborn Victims of Crime bill and an attempt to restrict government funding to some films, as victories for these socially conservative Christians.

Yet ask social conservatives what they have been given by this government and they are hard pressed to think of much since the cancellation of the court challenges program in 2006. Even the G8 maternal health initiative, controversial with some for not including abortion has not changed overall government policy, a point made clear by Margaret Biggs when the deputy minister at the Canadian International Development Agency testified before a Commons committee recently.

Yes, Charles McVety gets an inordinate amount of face-time with the current Prime Minister; and yes it is infuriating that whether or not the Toronto Pride celebration gets federal funding depends on bible-waving hill-folk like Saskatoon—Humboldt MP Bradley Trost. But Mr. Lilley is correct in noting that the quality of the Christian Right's "victories" has been very poor, consisting largely of private members' bills that failed or were never voted upon, and tiny sums shaved here and there from organizations that will survive the cuts, and whose funding can be restored at the stroke of a pen when Harper and his gang are finally sent packing.

Let's walk through a concrete example: take the Maternal Health initiative that the Conservative government intends to unveil at June's G-8 summit, and particularly the kerfuffle over their refusal to fund abortion in that initiative.

How big a victory is this for the Christian Right?

Well, as I've explained previously, the Canadian position on the face of it is simply not acceptable to our G-8 allies. Secretary of State Clinton's intervention back in March made that abundantly clear. But there is room for compromise, and the compromise that seems very likely to emerge in June is as follows: Harper will propose a "framework" for action on Maternal Health, with this framework being divided into discreet little pots (as it were) named names like "training health care workers", "contraception" "safe abortions", "micro nutrients", and so forth. G-8 countries will be invited to drop money into one or more of these pots, with Canada assiduously avoiding the one marked "abortions".

But here's the point: abortion will still get funded--it will still be one of items contained within the framework. In fact, you could probably argue that Canada will still fund it, at least indirectly, as who can say where a dollar originally placed within pot labelled "micro-nutrients" will finally wind up? The "victory" here is merely the construction of an elaborate artifice to cover over these two facts, to make the government's capitulation to the G-8 majority a little less obvious to its supporters within the Christian Right , or at least easier for them to swallow.

And that's the kind of victory you get in lieu of something more substantial that your "Christian Friendly" government is politically unable to give you. It is surely not a sign of increasing influence; if anything, it is a sign of the sharp constraints placed upon this government's ability to please its TheoCon supporters.

So I'm afraid I am not as worried as Ms. McDonald.