Chapter One: Finding Our Way
Excerpted from “To Shift a Nation: How the Body of Christ can effectively promote change in Canada“. Copyright 2024 Craig Docksteader | Published by Word Alive Presss | All Rights Reserved
When most Christians think of creating change in a nation, they think of political change. They think of electing a different government, prime minister, or member of Parliament. But it hasn’t always been this way. At one time, the general attitude amongst the church was that Christians had no business getting involved in politics or any other role in the public square. As far as the world went, the church’s only job was evangelism and discipleship. Get the lost saved and get them into the church.
Some people took this even further, convinced that attempting to change society was basically carnal (not to mention hopeless) and that the best thing we could do was get people saved and shelter them in the church, because everything was just going to get worse and worse. There seemed to be no vision to impact society. Our job was to hunker down, rescue as many people as possible, and wait for Jesus to come back.
Perhaps this was because Christians were largely unconcerned with how the nation was being governed at the time. Nobody was threatening to take away religious freedom, and the nation was still largely defined by Judeo-Christian values, so there was little need to get involved. Others were handling things and it seemed to be going just fine. As far as many Christians were concerned, ministry was found only in the church, and there was no concept of being called to serve in the public square.
But at some point, this attitude started to shift.
In the United States, William F. Buckley’s famous statement—“I’d rather be governed by the first two thousand people in the Boston telephone directory than by the two thousand people on the faculty of Harvard University”—foreshadowed the changing sentiment. This view was not anti-intellectual but rather rooted in the conviction that the wisdom and views of the average person should be reflected in public policy and political decisions.
Over the next thirty years, from the early 1960s through the 1980s, the conventional thinking that politics should be left to the ruling class was consistently challenged through things such as the rise of the civil rights movement, the hippie counterculture, anti-war protests, student activism, and anti-establishment voices.
By the 1980s, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and US President Ronald Reagan had been elected to office on populist-sounding platforms, which popularized this sentiment further. Their grassroots, folksy styles of leadership appealed to the common sense of the average person. At this time the US also saw the rise of Jerry Falwell’s “Moral Majority.” The movement encouraged Christians and everyday people who held “traditional values” to raise their voices on political issues and stand up and be counted. Falwell’s efforts were controversial because they contradicted the popular American Christian understanding that there should be a separation between religion and politics, but it heralded an awakening amongst Christians to the responsibility of being informed and involved in the public square. The “religious right” had begun to flex their muscles.
As usual, however, Canada lagged behind. Perhaps it was our natural deference to authority or our propensity to apologize for merely having a differing opinion, but the same mobilization of the grassroots didn’t begin to materialize in Canada until the late 1980s.
A multitude of factors contribute to societal shifts, but when we consider what began to awaken Christians in Canada to get involved in the public square, one undeniable catalyst was the rise of the Reform Party. The Reform Party was formed largely in response to western alienation, but over time it transformed into a movement that championed a grassroots, populist approach to political leadership and garnered national appeal.
People were tired of the elitism demonstrated by federal political parties of all stripes and the failure of politicians to reflect the values and common sense of the average person. The Reform Party began attracting political candidates who were not career politicians but instead run-of-the-mill people who wanted to influence constructive change and see a shift in the direction the country was going. This included a sharp increase in the number of Christians joining the political party and running for federal public office under its banner. It wasn’t a coordinated or organized effort; it was an awakening amongst Christians that they had a societal responsibility to be engaged and active in the political decisions that affected society. There was an increasing awareness that God has called his people to impact society rather than separate themselves from it, and the grassroots approach of the Reform Party provided an opportunity and a vehicle to do just that.
But it was more than that. In Preston Manning, the church saw a Christian who was passionate in his vision for a better Canada and was using the public square to press for policies to realize that. Preston Manning was followed by Stockwell Day, and then by Stephen Harper, who were all unapologetic about their Christian faith. Many Christians began to see a place for themselves in the public square. As parts of the church in Canada began to take hold of this newfound vision—that their involvement in the public square could make a difference—a sense of momentum began to build, and optimism began to grow.
Between 2000 and 2015, the anticipation that Christians were on the right track and on the verge of seeing significant changes in the nation was palpable. Christian organizations were formed to help mobilize, equip, support, and release Christians into the public square. A focus on prayer for the nation and for government began to take root and flourish. Conferences, gatherings, and regular prayer meetings were held on and off Parliament Hill, which addressed the need to shift the direction of the nation. Efforts were made to find and support Christian candidates for public office and get them elected. Those who couldn’t run themselves were encouraged to get involved with the campaigns of those who could by volunteering and supporting them financially. All of this was necessary and welcome. It was a refreshing and encouraging change from the sleepy days of yesteryear when Christians had all but abandoned the public square. But it wasn’t enough.
I still recall the deep disappointment in 2015 when Stephen Harper was not re-elected as Prime Minister. Even though many Christians didn’t view themselves as necessarily partisan, they found that the views and values of the Conservative Party most closely aligned with their own. Consequently, there was a significant push amongst believers to support the Conservative election campaign through both prayer and participation. When the Conservatives lost that election, many Christians who had worked so hard and believed so strongly were devastated and disillusioned.
Rather than getting better, things got worse. The new Liberal government began to slowly unwind many of the gains made under Stephen Harper’s leadership and introduced policies that would shift the nation in a direction most Christians found troubling. From the legalization of marijuana, to assisted suicide, to the erasure of any connection between anatomical sex and perceived gender, to the renewed funding for abortion in foreign countries, to the closure of the Office of Religious Freedom—the changes were alarming.
After recovering from their initial disillusionment and disappointment, the response of many Christians was to double-down and level-up. They doubled down with even greater determination that all we needed was more of what we’d been doing before: more prayer, more activism, more involvement, more sacrifice. They levelled-up by torquing the rhetoric even tighter: Unless the Liberal party was defeated, the country would be ruined and never achieve its destiny in God. In the same way that Dietrich Bonhoeffer stood up to Nazi Germany, Christians were supposed to resist and defeat the Liberal government through prayer, proclamations, and political activity.
There was growing determination and confidence that the 2019 federal election needed to be, and would be, a turning point. But it never happened. Instead, Canada elected a minority Liberal government supported by a trio of political parties that were even further to the left. Hardly a recipe for reformation. When the election outcome in 2021 was basically a carbon copy of the 2019 election results, the mood darkened further. Despite all of the prayer, effort, and time invested, things fell short. Again and again and again.
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