Faith in the City tackles questions of political engagement
WINNIPEG, MB—"To what extent should Christians rely on political engagement to bring about a just and peaceful society? What is the response of the Church, when the political process inevitably falls short in responding to God's call for justice and peace?"
These were the guiding questions for Faith in the City, a conference on faith and politics held November 1-3 at Augustine United Church in Osborne Village.
Sponsored by Augustine United in association with the Knowles/Woodsworth Centre at the University of Winnipeg, the conference opened with a keynote address by pastor and former politician Bill Blaikie on Friday evening and reconvened Saturday for a panel discussion on the guiding questions, involving activists, clergy and registrants.
Blaikie says the Faith in the City conference offers an important model for how Christians can engage with the intersection of faith and political life in a meaningful way.
"There is an ongoing need for people within the faith community to engage with questions of civic participation or political responsibility," he says. "It's not just about the need to talk about politics in its more formal sense, but how Christians engage with the political dimension beyond the electoral process."
Gareth Neufeld, Faith in the City event coordinator and member of Augustine's church council, says he hopes the event will become a yearly one. "It's Augustine's attempt to work with some other groups to create a conversation that is ecumenical… to be in ongoing conversations about these kinds of issues," he says.
Challenges for believers in politics
Blaikie, who served in Parliament from 1979 to 2008 and was a member of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba from 2009 to 2011 as an NDP representative for Elmwood, says work in politics brings unique challenges for people of faith.
"Politics is full of difficult issues, but the hardest struggles for me have been in dealing with other Christians," says Blaikie.
"The nastiest mail I received when I was in Parliament was from other Christians. You value your self-understanding as a person of faith and to receive that kind of mail is always very challenging."
Blaikie says every level of political work—municipal, provincial and federal—involves different challenges for people of faith. At the federal level, a certain subset of issues presented as ethical or moral—for example, gay marriage or the abortion debate—exclude other issues that, for Blaikie, should be viewed as ethical or moral in their own right by policymakers.
"I always resisted the mentality that said we've got this set of questions that are moral and religious and this other set that are political—I think how we organize our economy is a moral question," he says.
When it comes to ethical challenges that sometimes confront believers working in politics on a personal level, Blaikie says that such challenges will impact Christians in every profession—not just politics. "There's an assumption that politics represents unique dilemmas but I don't think it does—ethical dilemmas occur everywhere," he says.
But for the politician who is also a Christian, sometimes treading carefully is required in order to get the work done. "In the Canadian context, navigating the public realm wearing your religion on your sleeve is much more difficult and challenging to do right," he says.
"St. Paul talked about the offence of the gospel. Trying to be offensive for the right reasons rather than the wrong ones is the challenge."
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