With federal elections running both north and south of the 49th parallel, it’s interesting to note differences in these two democratic processes. And never have the differences been so stark.
Consider the length of each election. In Canada, the election was called on September 7th and people will go to the polls October 14th, a total of 37 days. In the U.S., there’s a sense of fatigue as the Democratic primary blurs with Republican convention, which blurs with the Palin appointment, which blurs with the formal election race. It seems to have begun in the misty past, and voting on November 4th will prove anticlimactic.
Or consider the cost of each election. The U.S. presidential race is expected to be a billion dollar campaign. Last month alone, the Obama war chest grew by another $66 million (which raises the question: how democratic is a democratic process that requires so much capital?) On our side of the line, the federal parties combined will be hard-pressed to spend as much as Obama’s monthly gross. (Federal spending limits would be $27,037,174.65 for a party running candidates in all 308 ridings. Source: Pundits’ Guide to Canadian Federal Elections.)
But the difference I find most stark is the role of religious affiliation in our respective campaigns. This difference became quite pointed for me when the liberal candidate for my riding (Don Valley West) knocked on the door for a chat. The new liberal candidate is Rob Oliphant, lead minister for Eglinton St. George United Church. At first, I saw “liberal” and told him I wouldn’t be voting for him since I’m a member of the Green Party. Then I saw “minister” and told him I’d just finished a program at Emmanuel College. Turns out we have a lot of mutual acquaintances, so we had a nice chat and avoided the topic of politics altogether.
There is nothing new or strange in the Canadian political sphere for United Church clergy to run for public office. Recently, Cheri DiNovo was elected MPP to the Ontario Legislature under the NDP banner. On the federal scene, we have Bill Blaikie representing the Elmwood-Transcona riding in Winnipeg as he has done since 1979. But there’s a politeness to it. While the social-justice/activism of the United Church of Canada, with its roots in the Social Gospel, creates an obvious impetus to public service, there’s an unwritten code of conduct. Let your beliefs inform what you do, but don’t talk about it.
But in the U.S. there appears to be a reverse onus: candidates are assumed to have a roots in a religious (Christian) tradition and if they’re unwilling to talk about their beliefs in nauseating detail, then there must be something wrong with them. If candidates are reticent, then the views of their clergy are imputed them, as was the case when Obama was forced to defend, and later to distance himself from, controversial statements made by Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Now it’s Sarah Palin’s turn to pass the American piety litmus test, complete with sound bytes from her clergy. So what do we know about Palin’s religious life? According to the Chicago Tribune, this member of the Wasilla Assembly of God “speaks fluently about her faith, striking chords with phrases that evoke Christian virtue. Palin has called on people to pray for the cooperation necessary to build a natural gas pipeline across Alaska, labeled the U.S. mission in Iraq a “task that is from God” and argued that students should be taught the creation account from Genesis in public schools.”
Until recently, openness about religious convictions, especially conservative religious convictions, would have been greeted with ridicule in Canada. (Liberal MP and Anglican priest, Roland de Corneille, was hooted out of Parliament when he first appeared in his clerical collar.) And where a confession of atheism would be political suicide in the U.S., it would be regarded as a virtue here, indicating an objective person who could provide even-handed representation of constituents.
But there is a growing sense that more conservative religious values are creeping onto the Canadian scene. Preston Manning is a good example, a prominent political player with well-known fundamentalist evangelical roots. The same is true of Stockwell Day. And while Stephen Harper was raised within the United Church of Canada, he seems heedless of its Social Gospel heritage and leans to both religious and political conservatism. His habit of concluding speeches with “God bless Canada” reveals something of both, and serves as yet another piece of evidence that Harper is drifting to a more American (Republican) way of doing things.
And so our social activist clergy have one more reason to enter the fray—to serve as a counterweight to more conservative views. But this involves them in a conundrum: as long as left-leaning clergy feel entitled to throw their religious values (even quietly) behind important social, political, economic and environmental issues, then they tacitly grant permission for their conservative colleagues to do likewise. This reduces religion to one more basis for taunts that get hurled across the floor of the Parliament, and contributes nothing to political debate. Or, as seems to be the case in the U.S., religious declarations become a matter of political correctness that end up undermining the integrity of institutional religion as a way to celebrate spirituality. The net effect, particularly among young voters, may be a double disenfranchisement, a cynicism about both public and religious life.
But there’s still the prior question: does the religious perspective have a legitimate place in public discourse? Is it good for religion? Is it good for the people?
I haven’t got an answer to that question. Then again, I don’t need it; I’m not the one glad-handing people in the middle of an election campaign. If you’re going to run for public office, then it’s not good enough simply to shake my hand and introduce yourself as a member of the clergy. I maintain that classic Canadian presumption: keep it to yourself; if you feel compelled to share with me your religious convictions, then you need to persuade me that sharing them won’t do more harm than good. The presumption is against you.