Speaking Of Trips To Israel

Gruending on the National House of Prayer's (NHOP) walk to Israel. they're off to prepare for the end times. Yippy! Gruending manages to work this fact into the context of the Harper's govs. recent actions re KAIROS and Rights and Democracy:

The government’s ham-fisted actions against KAIROS and Rights and Democracy have sent an intended chill through Canada’s church and development communities. Question the policies of the Israeli government and you are called anti-Semitic. Question the policies of the Canadian government and you will be punished. These attacks have led others, including former Canadian diplomat Harry Stirling, to question why the kind of debate that occurs regularly within Israel about the country’s policies toward its neighbours is labelled as anti-Semitic when it occurs in Canada.

A common analysis is that in its policies and practices the Harper government is attempting to win the support of Jewish organizations and voters in this country. It may be, however, that an even more important reason for the government’s one-sided policy is its desire to appease its base among the Christian right – those who actually believe that a biblical prophecy of end times will be fulfilled by the Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.

Of course, Christian reconstructionists like the folks at NHOP believe that only those who have accepted Christ as their personal saviour will be saved in the Last Judgement. So, presumably, when the last trumpet sounds, the majority of Israelis are going to be screwed.

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.