I think a rant is forthcoming. Polite header, but yeah, here comes the rant.
Right off the top, if the Halifax Herald is going to write about Stephen Harper’s choice of denomination, then lets hear Duceppe’s, Layton’s, Dion’s.
On second thought forget it.
I don’t care.
I care that an elected official knows how to govern, how their religious beliefs shape their governance is secondary to the job they actually get done on our dime. Their religious affiliation may give me an indication of who they chose to hang out with, that’s about it.
This article is annoying.
It’s annoying because a mega church minister is looking to score some brownie points.
It’s annoying because Trask is doing exactly what is done in the US; lump Canada’s 2.5 million evangelicals into a monolithic block.
Notice in the article the Ottawa Christian and Missionary Alliance minister, Bill Buitenwerf has the decency and wisdom to keep his mouth shut.
So, what is RockPointe’s Brent Trask attempting to gain? The Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada does not have many mega-churches. (mega-church: a sustained average weekly attendance of 2000 persons or more in its worship services. Harford Institute) The sweeping statements Trask made:
Trask believes the more than 2,000 evangelical Protestants in his thriving church, as well as most of the 2.5 million evangelicals across the country, are enthusiastic supporters of his old friend, the prime minister.
Evangelicals like the Conservative leader, Trask says, because he’s a “small-c conservative” on moral issues, encourages followers to help the poor through Christian charity rather than government programs, trusts in the free market and shares the evangelical belief Jesus Christ is the route to salvation.
Evangelicals, Trask says, don’t want the state meddling in the sacred duty of raising children.
“Stephen is a personal friend of mine,” Trask said
“(Harper) didn’t just believe what he was told. He had to rationalize what he was hearing about Christianity. He wasn’t a blank slate. That’s the best way to come to faith,”
It takes a certain kind of person and personality to pastor a mega-church, it honestly does. And some of the traits that help these men and women build a large following are rather annoying.
Trask just showed his.
This is such a put down to faithful hard working ministers all over the country that are not interested in the standards of success most mega-church driven ministers attempt to attain.
Speaking for Canada’s 2.5 million evangelicals and bragging about friendship with a PM are two of them.
Given what we see daily in the news cycle coming from the US, I’m not surprised our view gets coloured:
A 2006 Ipsos Reid poll showed the percentage of Canadians willing to vote for a prime minister who is evangelical had fallen 17 percentage points in a decade.
Only 63 per cent of Canadians said they’d vote for a prime minister if he were an evangelical, below the 68 per cent who wouldn’t hesitate to vote for an atheist or a Muslim.
Pastor pal isn’t giving Canadians a clue about Harper’s beliefs, Pastor pal Trask is grabbing the spotlight. And it isn’t pretty. Generalizations and bragging never are.
I do not want politicians wearing their faith on their sleeve. Say what you are and be done with it, get on about the business of being a politician.
And on that level, Harper gets my applause.
His “God bless Canada” on election night, didn’t win him many brownie points, and some of the politically motivated fundamentalists who fall under the evangelical label have certainly done what they can to garner more power with Harper in office.
But they’d have been doing that anyway, we voters merely noticed a bit more.
Christian and Missionary Alliance had a lot going for it. It was orthodox, four square gospel, with a strong emphasis on community service and long term missions.
It did before I left. I left for a lot of the things I see Trask saying.
I left when when fundamentalist elements in my home church were not willing to concede the new minister was bringing in extra-biblical ideas along his own personality disorder. It got ugly and eventually there was a split. (The CM&A has always had tensions between it’s social gospel emphasis, mainstream orthodoxy and some of the Holiness/pentecostal influence) Since this church is subject to a denominational structure, to this day I hold CM&A superintendents and pastoral higher-ups accountable for the damage.
The church is still there, sitting on a prime piece of real estate in the city I grew up in.
It’s spiritually immature, and in religious language, dead.
Another CM&A church I attended in my travels brought in the Rick Warren, entrepreneurial style of church management. It too lost most of it’s best people.
The tensions that made this a thriving, serving denomination are swinging some of the churches back toward the holiness/pentecostal/fundamentalist. That’s my personal experience and it’s why I left. I think many of Canada’s CM&A churches still have solid well educated leaders and keep their focus on more than vacuous marketed outreach.
Do not swallow Brent Trask’s bits of wisdom. He made need his spotlight and his stage, but he does not speak for Canadian evangelicals.
He spoke for himself.
I have zero tolerance for anyone who says to media that a group of Christians lean toward a certain political party. Zero. Even when some groups do.
To do so is to negate, ignore and dismiss the rich and (even current) history of people of faith who serve well in all Canada’s political parties. To do so is to politicize faith. Trask may believe what he said to the Herald, but one doesn’t have to know beans about to Christianity to see his lack of integrity in doing so.
We are to pray for our country and our leaders, be we Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or a faith I’ve not mentioned in my irritation.
We don’t use God to score points.
Halifax Herald: Pastor pal gives clues to PM’s beliefs.
Well, no he didn’t.
A history of The Christian & Missionary Alliance - wiki
Christian & Missionary Alliance - Canada
2001 Stats Can census
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Before I became an enthusiastic atheist, I attended a CM&A church (for about 2.5 years) that subscribed to Reconstructionist theology. Srsly - shilling the works of Rushdooney and Gary North, extolling the primacy of Old Testament law, no citizenship for non-Christians (especially those ‘God is love/love ur neighbour/turn the other cheek’ heretics) - the whole nine yards.
Suffice to say, the spiritual foundation of the church was light years away from the Social Gospel (they probably think PM Stephen Harper is evidence of God’s providence in action - predestination FTW!)
Did I mention that, at the time, I was a bisexual Marxist agnostic? Amazing what torture one will subject oneself to in the name of love. (She turned out to be [literally] psychotic - big surprise, that, considering.)
arr arrr arrrr!
Come to think of it, perhaps my memories are rosy-coloured, the last guy I saw in the pulpit was definitely untreated in the mental illness department.
You’d have been welcomed, it was a university town - you’d have had some grand debates with some smart, kind and mature Christians.:^)
Now? Nope.
Tozer’s work shaped me, solid bible exposition, no Rushdoony, North, LaHaye, Schofield or anything I’d have found in the local Assemblies of God.
The tension was always there, in so thoroughly dismissing some of the ‘rules’ nonsense I guess I didn’t see the damage.
We didn’t have the influences you had to go through, you seem to have come through it quite intact.
I’m amazed to read CM&A bloggers that believe in creationism or ID, reject civil equality for gays, abortion, are against immigration.
I’m angry about Trask’s political assumptions, he’s welcome to them, but I have a real problem with him shooting his mouth off to media.
Interesting the church I joined was planted by a homesick American. He was good people :^)
I have and will always have very mixed feelings about ever having been a part of the denomination.
Well, I am an evangelical and I can’t stand Harper. I suspect that there are evangelicals out there that feel the same way I do.
His dislike of gays, abortion, daycare are based on his “faith” and the attitude that social services should come from the church is very noble.
So knock one off the 2.5 million. Harper hasn’t won any brownie points with this Christian.
Bene - they never, ever saw the irony of a MISSIONARY ALLIANCE church that believed in Calvinist predestination (ie, no need to choose the grace of God - technically, you’re saved before you were even born!) So, um, if God has already decided who is ‘chosen’, and there’s no such thing as ‘free will’, then do you sponsor overseas mission trips to, er, save the unsaved? Of course, they were too busy trying to get me to renounce socialism (forget ‘love’, God is FREE MARKETS!) to answer any of my many, many questions.
That church was one giant spiritual paradox, an enigma wrapped in a mystery nestled between the pages of a Francis Schaeffer book (that, or ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’).
Speaking of politics, during the ‘95 Ontario General Election, one of the church members was the campaign chair for a very socially conservative (and exceedingly dense) local Ontario PC candidate (who eventually won - big ups teh Common Sense Revolution!) I knew I was at the wrong venue of worship when, prior to the election, the church allowed her to set up an information desk for her candidate during services. (Of course, they wouldn’t let me pass out pro-NDP literature). They also had us youth group members go door-to-door passing out Ontario Taxpayer Coalition propaganda literature (as a church-sanctioned youth event). And though my memory is hazy, I think I can recall several prayers for God’s hand to guide the big Blue wave.
So, when I say they would (and likely do) see Harper-as-PM as evidence of ‘God’s will’ I’m being entirely serious.
Yeah, luckily I came out of the experience with everything–my politics, my sexuality, my sanity–intact. Well, everything but my faith.
I appreciate your comment at the start, “if the Halifax Herald is going to write about Stephen Harper’s choice of denomination, then lets hear Duceppe’s, Layton’s, Dion’s.” I agree that if the press is going to report on the beliefs of one policitcal leader they should be unbiased and report on them all. This article first appeared in the Vancouver Sun on August 18th and has been picked up by affiliated papers since. I’ve yet to see someone else report on the other leader’s beliefs.
That said, I would caution you to not believe everything you read. The article was clearly written by someone with a biased opinion about Harper. I think the author set out with the premise that Harper is hiding something and did everything he could to prove it.
As a brother in Christ, I would urge you to be careful with your comments about another Christ follower. You comment that “Trask is grabbing the spotlight” is totally wrong. As someone who actually knows Brent Trask, I can tell you that he did not initiate the conversation with the reporter and declined to talk about Harper with the reporter, Trask’s only comment was that he is a friend–which is true. The reporter then went on to ask Trask what evangelicals thought about different topics. This all happened minutes after a worship service on a Sunday morning, after he introduced himself as a Sun reporter on vacation. He did not even ask if he could interview Brent. Hmmm, ambush, I think so.
For me this just reinforces that there’s two sides to a story and you can’t believe everything the media says.
It was interesting reading your thoughts and checking our your blog. If your ever in Calgary, I invite you to join us at RockPointe.
The reporters agenda is apparent, it’s a slow news cycle it makes copy. So what if the reporter is biased about Harper, or people believe there is reporter bias, I’m interested in what Trask did.
Harper hasn’t hidden anything, he stated from the get go he attended the CM&A reported by all kinds of media, those that understand evangelicals and those that don’t.
” I can tell you that he did not initiate the conversation with the reporter and declined to talk about Harper with the reporter, Trask’s only comment was that he is a friend–which is true.”
Most people don’t initiate a conversation with a reporter on location. If you do not want to talk to a reporter say so, say thanks, no, walk away. Our job is to get you to talk, everything is on record; you speak, you may wind up in the copy or on the air.
Pleading media naiveness doesn’t cut it.
“The reporter then went on to ask Trask what evangelicals thought about different topics. This all happened minutes after a worship service on a Sunday morning, after he introduced himself as a Sun reporter on vacation. He did not even ask if he could interview Brent. Hmmm, ambush, I think so.”
No excuse. If Trask felt ambushed he asks the reporters deadline and makes plans with the reporter to speak with Trask’s and Trask’s convenience.
If the reporter wants to interview him badly enough, that’s no problem. We can wait.
There are always more than two sides to a story.
“If your ever in Calgary, I invite you to join us at RockPointe.”
Your invitation is appreciated - if I am in Calgary during appropriate service times, I’ll try to join you at RockPointe, thank you!