EFC Vice-President, lawyer Don Hutchinson is not happy with CBC coverage of government consultations on the proposed Office of Religious Freedom.
Well, there you have it. I’ve been outed by the CBC. Yes, it’s true. I was a panelist at the Department of Foreign Affairs consultation on establishing an Office of Religious Freedom. I don’t know the selection process for attendees or for the panelists either. The panelist bios might give a hint and the CBC has conveniently published them for ease of reference.
My selection might have to do with being a lawyer who works a great deal in the field of religious freedom and my employer, The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, alone and in conjunction with the World Evangelical Alliance, has been directly engaged in this area since the 1990s. It could be that I have been a member of the Religious Liberty Commission since 2006 and its chair since 2008. Perhaps, it’s related to my being a member of Advocates International’s Task Force on Religious Freedom (Advocates is active in over 100 countries) or a member of the board of directors for Voice of the Martyrs Canada (part of an international network supporting persecuted Christians around the world). Maybe, everyone ahead of me on the list said no. I didn’t ask. They didn’t tell.
While I don’t disagree with Hutchinson on how media portrays evangelicals, media is not the only one to fault. If Canadian evangelicals start the martyrdom/victimization meme we see from the religious right in the US and from our religious right (Charles McVety) and if Canadian evangelicals adopt a defensive stance with media, reporting is not going to improve.
Much of what is good and true about Christianity doesn’t make news, and that makes sense. Christianity is relational; love God, love others as yourself. Christianity’s positive effect on society and on government policy also doesn’t get much ink, air time or pixels and that also makes sense. Where I think we continue to struggle as evangelicals, is in self-awareness, self-policing and public honesty about the flaws in our variety of institutions, range of beliefs and bad behavior by individuals.
I appreciate the blog Get Religion, which works to educate media in religious reporting. Less sarcasm, complaining and fluff and more educating networking with media and individual journalists will help Canadian evangelicals get their message out before guys like Charles McVety hog the spotlight.
When McVety and his cohorts claim that Christians are the last group in Canada for which prejudice is tolerated, I get annoyed. I think that he confuses criticism with prejudice. Any person, any religion, any sect, any culture, etc. are open to criticism. Not only should this criticism be tolerated, but it should be protected, if not encouraged. Logical, unbiased, and constructive criticism is one of the best ways to improve things.
But McVety doesn’t want criticism and open discussion; he wants everyone to share his opinions, and laws to enforce them.
I must admit that my opinion of evangelicals is probably biased by the fact that the evangelicals that get the most press are the crazies like McVety, Falwell, Haggee, Van Impe, Bakker, Swagart and their ilk. Maybe if the “mainstream” evangelicals were more vocal in their denunciation of these huxters, I might have a very different opinion. Unfortunately, these voices of reason appear to be few, or maybe just very shy.