While in Catholic circles, a belief in intellectual excellence still exists (although it’s far stronger among Jesuits and Dominicans), evangelical culture has retreated from the world – and, perhaps more disturbingly, is working to erect a parallel one that is run according to its own laws and logic. Which is why we see a new wave of Christian high schools and colleges, and the inevitable debates. Witness the battle between Trinity Western University in Langley, B.C. and various law societies over that Christian college’s desire to start a law school whose students must agree to forgo sexual intimacy outside of heterosexual marriage.Or take the example of the Trudeau government’s decision to require groups seeking funding for the Summer Jobs Program to affirm their respect for a woman’s right to choose. The decision went to the epicentre of the church-state relationship (while also, it’s worth noting, making small-l liberal Christians feel almost anonymous). An attempt to prevent tax dollars ending up in the hands of extreme anti-abortion groups was clumsily handled by the government, and thus played into the persecution complex so relished by the Christian right.
What wasn’t made clear by those complaining of being victims of liberal “discrimination” was that many of these same people would be the first to refuse to hire openly gay students – or even straight students living with a partner to whom they are not married. It all seems so ugly, and lacking in the gentleness demanded by the rebel Jesus.
Indeed, perhaps nowhere is the modern-day Kulturkampf more pronounced than on the issue of abortion, a litmus test on which Catholics and evangelicals have forged a common ground against all liberal comers. It is a tragic intransigence, because here is an area where common ground is not only possible, but desirable.
All Christians, and most people for that matter, would like to see abortion rates decline. That could be achieved, and has been achieved, by making contraceptives readily available, by insisting on modern sex education in schools, by reducing poverty, by funding public daycare and by empowering women more generally.
And yet, Catholics insist on remaining opposed to “artificial contraceptives” and, alongside their Protestant allies, lead the campaign against frank and healthy sex education, while framing state-funded day care as an attack on the family and a form of social engineering. As for abortion itself, the Christian right wants it defunded, and ultimately – however much they may deny this publicly – banned and criminalized.
For, make no mistake: Such ideological tussles are anything but abstract debates about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. The Halton Catholic District School Board, west of Toronto, last month passed a motion that bans it from facilitating financial donations to charities that support, “either directly or indirectly, abortion, contraception, sterilization, euthanasia, or embryonic stem-cell research.” Under the ban, the Hospital for Sick Children, the United Way and Doctors Without Borders would become charities non grata.
Indeed, for many Catholics, the loathing of abortion, no matter the circumstances, trumps even the most basic of Christian virtues. In 2015, in The Prairie Messenger, a Catholic newspaper in Western Canada, I wrote supportively about a 10-year-old Paraguayan girl who had been denied an abortion after being raped by her stepfather. I was promptly fired (albeit amid profuse apologies from my editor, who cited external pressure). Which in turn prompted Lifesite, the Canadian anti-abortion movement’s most prominent media platform – and one of the most influential conservative Christian sites in the world – to announce that they were “glad that the Prairie Messenger will no longer be a mouthpiece for Coren’s misplaced notions of compassion and love.”
Imagine: compassion and love for a pregnant 10-year-old having no place at the Christian table.
And yet, who is welcome at that table? Donald Trump, a man who lies on a near daily basis, who has given comfort to racist thugs, who has admitted to sexual assault and is by all accounts an adulterer. As with Christians in the United States, conservative believers in Canada are more than happy to defend the man.
And why not, they ask. He opposes a woman’s right to choose (after years of claiming otherwise), has fired every member of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, has renewed his call to ban transgender citizens from serving their country in the U.S. military and has promised to vigorously appoint “pro-life judges.” To a number of his religious supporters, he is a new Constantine, the deeply flawed emperor who allowed Christianity to flourish in ancient Rome: As Mr. Trump proudly champions all that is selfish and mean, these Christians accuse his opponents of being “demonic.”
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In any case, defending life is a complicated affair. As the Benedictine nun Sister Joan Chittister has said: “I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth.”
Or what of Christians who would deny equality to LGBTQ2 people – in a world where homophobia leads to persecution, family rejection, self-harm and even suicide? It’s another of those subjects that, while of concern to Christians on both sides of the aisle, is hardly touched on in the Bible. The Genesis story of Sodom and Gomorrah is less about homosexuality than about hospitality – protecting one’s guests and neighbours, and loving God rather than oneself. Remember, it features Lot offering up his teenage daughters to a rape mob in place of his angelic guests! Hardly family values.
When the Hebrew Scriptures – the Old Testament – do speak of homosexuality, it is condemned with other transgressions such as combining different cloths, eating the wrong foods and having sex with a woman when she is menstruating. As for St. Paul’s rejection of homosexuality in the New Testament, it is concerned with straight men using boys, usually young teenagers, for loveless sex, a practice common in Greek and Roman culture. And while Jesus doesn’t speak of the subject, it’s worth rereading his affirming and loving response to a Roman centurion who cares deeply for his slave. Many theologians are convinced that this is an account of a gay partnership.
The progressive Christian approach is to understand Biblical teaching through the prism of love, to regard the Bible as a living document that on certain subjects speaks differently to different ages. It is to acknowledge that the writers of the Old Testament knew little if anything of committed, loving same-sex relationships. As Ms. Helwig notes, “The radical left theological tradition, which goes much further back in Christian history” imparts a message of deep humanity, one in which “we don’t need to be afraid of the ‘other’ or, finally, of God, that God is constantly drawing us all into the vast mystery of love, and that we are, despite our many human failures, deeply, existentially safe. So we can be vulnerable, and open, and comfortable with difference and uncertainty.”
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That wonder is troubling for the complacent, who want their faith neatly packaged in catechismal certainty. But being born again is not the same as being born yesterday, and questioning is not the same as doubting. As scientific knowledge expands and public attitudes change, Christianity today must either respond intelligently and constructively, or retreat into an ever-shrinking, more hostile ghetto.
For Canadian Christians (and here, it is not solely the conservative among them) the newest battle front is assisted dying or, as opponents prefer to call it, euthanasia. Unlike abortion and homosexuality, this is more a work in progress, a conundrum whose resolution is still undecided for many people. Not for all, however.
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To liberal Christians, it seemed that once again those on the right of the church care most about people just before they are born, and just before they die. In between, not so much. In the process, those conservatives betray their indifference to economic systems that exacerbate suffering across the lion’s share of our time here on Earth.
There was a time when Christian social conservatives in Canada held to an economic gospel, when they were prepared to believe that the desire for more socialistic policies was compatible with conservative views on life and sexuality. Like so much that involves benevolence and mercy, that position has been largely suffocated. As Protestant evangelicals and conservative Catholics rally round right-wing politicians, they trade away kindness and generosity in exchange for a guarantee that Canada’s legislatures will call a halt to social progress.
Canadian Christianity is bisected, and – as the absolute numbers attest – in trouble. And while no faith should be measured exclusively by its headcount, without worshippers, there is no community, no money and, for that matter, no church.
The coming years will see a new generation of believers assuming positions of influence and authority in our churches and in our society. Those leaders will have the option of building walls or building bridges, of extending the circle so as to include as many people as possible or standing at the corners of their creeds and repelling all they see as a threat. Of lending a hand to the marginalized and needy, or withdrawing it once and for all.
James E. Wallis Jr. is a Christian writer and political activist, best known as the founder and editor of Sojourners magazine, a journal of the evangelical left. He writes: “Two of the greatest hungers in our world today are the hunger for spirituality and the hunger for social change. The connection between the two is the one the world is waiting for, especially the new generation. And the first hunger will empower the second.”
Whether Canadian Christians will listen to Mr. Wallis – or, for that matter, to Jesus Christ – remains to be seen. Their decision will influence all of us, whatever our faith or lack thereof.
And it will determine whether our houses of worship, and our houses of politics, are places of division and discord – or living rooms where love is always welcome and compassion finds a home.