Turning over rocks- centralizing posts on the Canadian religious right

There are terrific Canadian blogs doing top notch research on all kinds of topics, and while there are a few religious and faith blogs doing digging, occasionally they do.
It’s been awhile coming but I’ve found a kindred spirit. Rev. Dave at Terrible Depths is a crackerjack researcher; he doesn’t name call, he deals with facts, truths and connects dots.

There have been over 3 thousand comments here many informed from caring informed commenters, many on posts about Canadian religious news and personalities.

Terrible Depths is a better writer than I, covering more topics, and I look forward to and seek out his posts on the religious right in Canada because he follows the money. He’s Marci MacDonald with a blog, or a mirror of my favorite research blogger Buckets at Bouquets of Gray. Rev. Dave writes at Terrible Depths.

I have mentioned Focus on the Family Canada’s Institute of Marriage and Family, on more than one  occasion, tried to get a response from them with no success. I mentioned The Institute again a post below on the the social networking site HomelessCons. I wonder if this HomelessCon site is going to be a wealth of information in terms of connecting the dots in this specific religious area of research.

 Here is some of what Dave says:

So, who is the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, anyways? The connections it holds are intriguing and disturbing: American family groups, Canadian right-wing think tanks, and – wait for it – the Conservative Party of Canada, right up to the level of Stephen Harper:
The IMFC is the offspring of the American-controlled pro-family, anti-gay marriage lobby group, Focus on the Family, until recently controlled by evangelical power figure James Dobson. It was founded in 2006 with an agenda that could basically summed up as “everything the religious right cares about”: family laws, age of consent laws (those went up under the Conservatives, incidentally), divorce, euthanasia, taxes, and palliative care. Its founders gave some interviews to the sympathetic evangelical periodical Christian Week at the time, and the weekly reported that these positions would be approached “all from a Christian perspective.” Interestingly, the IMFC itself is no longer in any hurry to promote its Christian background; its official introductory pamphlet says merely that it exists to take “a growing body of scientific research” and turn it into “practical ideas.”

In 2006, the Edmonton Journal covered the creation of the new group and wrote that “their mobilization was not ignited by Harper.” Oh, really? Well, maybe not directly. But let’s move through the list of employees. The first is executive director Dave Quist. For six years, Quist was the executive assistant to Alliance and then Conservative MP and former Baptist pastor Reid Elly. He ran for the Conservatives in 2004, lost, and then spent a year working as Stephen Harper’s director of operations. There’s about a five-month gap between the time he left Harper’s office and the time that the new think tank was announced in the media. Quite a number of his old Conservative colleagues were in attendance at the grand opening, including Stockwell Day and Jason Kenney.

Mrozek, the author of the recent newspaper op-eds, is listed as the Manager of Research and Communications. Her background is in journalism, but her recent work was at the right-wing Western Standard (her bio on IMFC generalizes to only “an independent news magazine in Calgary,” just to make sure people don’t make that connection), and at the even more right-wing Fraser Institute in B.C.

The researchers are a mixed bag of right-wing evangelicals. Peter Jon Mitchell is actually imported from the parent Focus on the Family organization in the U.S. – he used to work at their Institute in Colorado. Kelly Dean Schwartz is a psychologist in Calgary. Frank Jones is a retired StatsCan number cruncher who is also listed at another religious right think tank, the Christian Commitment Research Institute.

There are other faith bloggers, Leighton Tebay of The Heresy, Dennis Gruending of Pulpit and Politics, Tim and Marina of The Miracle Channel Review. The Miracle Channel Review has slowed posting after years of exposing,  documenting, filing CRTC complaints and laying out clear theological issues.  Their work is a wealth of information. The former Blogs Canada and Garth Turner did a great deal to turn the spotlight on the EA at Canada Christian College: people, cyber squatting, political sponsoring, organizations etc. Bill Kinnon who is involved in mission blogging helped break the diploma mill, fake doctorate stories of ministries in Canada, and if it is his only contribution to this topic, it was a doozie. Ethics Daily in the US also helped.

The acceptance, respect for our diversities and similarities, the comments and linkage BDBO has received from The Progressive Bloggers, Lib Blogs and NDP blogs have been a God-send. The religious right in Canada is a shadowy place and it’s like peering into a black box. Anyone writing about this issue can  attest to that reality.

I want to name many of them who have faithfully plugged away across political party and denominational lines, but I’ll miss some, and I don’t want to leave anyone out.
You know who you are and I thank you.

I heard from a person in ministry in Canada awhile ago who made it policy to  stay out of politics. Despite that wise decision, and because of that prudent decision, some of the big guys in the US religious right got ticked, Not an uncommon occurrance, and while the Canadians will not deviate from their mission or get involved, my Canadian friends have questions as they carry on. I think a lot of people have questions - just look at some of the searches here at BDBO.

Canadian bloggers don’t have the longstanding religious/political research networks such as Talk2Action Public Eye, Religious Right Watch etc. but I have a proposition for my friends and colleagues in the Canadian blogosphere.
We can become more co-ordinated and centralized in getting out information on Canada’s religious right, which involves many branches.  We’ve proven we cover issues factually and fairly.

Perhaps it is time we reached out to each other with our posts?
Would you all be willing to have BDBO or another blog be a clearing house for this information we’ve collected over time, with full credit to your hard work of course? And it is hard work, following people, organizations, networks, and finances.

I’ve been in a lot of pain recently from a fall late last year and while pain is wearying and the healing slow, as I rest and take care of myself, I’ve been given the time and technology upgrade from Cre8d which can be used  to start co-ordinating posts bloggers have  written and gathered. The difficulty is arranging my own years of posts, I’m not a good list person.:^) The other difficulty is getting the word out to people who have done the heavy lifting.
So many Canadian religious right posts here at BDBO are archived and have fallen off the radar. Buried posts on our religious right exist on many outstanding blogs.

We can do this, I’ve been wanting to for quite awhile. While I have respect, admiration and love for faith bloggers, they don’t always have time to pursue these topics and may jeopordize their jobs doing so. They have different gifts.  
The  research posts cross partisan lines. I know faith bloggers and interested others would benefit from having outstanding posts categorized and collected. I certainly would, readers, bloggers and researchers would.

What say you?