Fighting for the Alliance’s soul
Rarely in federal Canadian politics has the "Christian vote" come up as a significant block to be pursued. Yet as the Canadian Alliance Party led by evangelical Christian Stockwell Day inches up in the polls, pundits are recognizing an increasingly vocal and politically active group to be reckoned with.
Day's philosophy that his Christian faith informs all his decisions is a big reason why evangelical groups have supported him and his party. The Alliance, in turn, seems eager to court the Christian vote. So where do the politics of Stockwell Day converge or diverge with the public agendas of the Christian communities?
Andy Bryce, pastor of Summerside Community Church in Prince Edward Island, who attended one of the Alliance's meetings earlier this summer, says that he and other churchgoers are attracted to Day for his support of traditional family values, not necessarily because of his religious beliefs.
"The traditional family has been under attack on a number of fronts for several years now," says Bryce. "It is nice to see a political leader speak in terms that may not be politically correct, but stand up for traditional family values and make good common sense."
That sentiment has been the rallying cry of a number of conservative family groups, most notably the Canada Family Action Coalition (CFAC), led by Edmonton pastor Roy Beyer.
While long-established Christian groups like the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and Focus on the Family are prevented from openly endorsing a political party by their charitable status, nonprofit groups like CFAC can-and do-rally support.
Though it is officially neutral and says it does not endorse any candidate or party, a quick run through its Website reveals an obvious favourite: the Alliance Party. It even provides the phone number to sign up as an Alliance member.
Beyer went even further earlier this year by taking time off to create Families for Day, which, according to Maclean's, signed up at least 6,500 new party members who voted for Day in the Alliance leadership contest, about equal to his final margin of victory.
MPs pressured
Keith Martin, the incumbent MP for the Vancouver Island riding of Esquimalt/Juan de Fuca, felt the growing pressure of the Christian right during his successful nomination battle against former Tory MP Robin Richardson.
Martin was cited in a news report as saying "some evangelical Christian groups" are behind the effort to oust sitting Alliance MPs like himself who don't reflect conservative social values such as those on abortion and homosexuality.
Richardson, a conservative economist who has also pastored an evangelical church in Victoria, is the epitome of what many see as the core of Christian support for the Alliance: fiscal conservatism wedded with social conservatism.
Christian News Ottawa publisher and Preston Manning biographer Lloyd Mackey takes a special interest in Alliance politics. He believes that Families for Day, Campaign Life and CFAC have employed a strategy to play hardball within the Alliance, trying to persuade social conservatives to run against those who don't hold those values.
"[But] if someone like Families for Day got him speaking to a group of ministers, I would say that (advisor) Rod Love and (MP) Jason Kenney would have tended to make sure Day handled that very carefully."
Church front lines
The Alliance still has major hurdles to overcome if it is to break into Quebec, Ontario and the Maritimes, and church communities have become one of the front lines. Though the Alliance officially denies trawling churches for members, it has established a pattern of approaching ministerial groups to make its pitch.
Glenn Smith, director of Christian Direction in Montreal, met with Day in June, as Alliance workers began accessing the church networks there.
Smith says he asked Day about a number of foreign policy issues that are "off the radar screen of most social conservatives in Canada to the betrayal of their 'Biblical worldview.'"
Day was forthright on the issues of foreign aid distributed through NGOs and human rights abuses in general, but not about Calgary-based Talisman's oil interest in Sudan. Day recommended a less aggressive stance against Talisman than many church groups would like.
"The Canadian Alliance has a long way to go in my opinion before we get a wholistic political agenda that incorporates global kingdom values and worldview concerns," Smith adds.
Though Alliance support in Quebec is shallow, Smith says that many of his Francophone friends joined Day's cause "because of the social and conservative issues and his pro-provincial agenda." Smith says this appeals to soft nationalists which represents the vast majority of Francophone Christians in Quebec.
In Atlantic Canada, the Alliance battle for Christian voters followed a similar pattern. One of Day's first public meetings on PEI was at a Catholic church hall in Charlottetown, where close to 200 jammed in to hear the Alliance leader in August.
The crowd was peppered with important members of the Christian community from throughout the province, leading one reporter to wonder if organizers worked the phones through church directories rather than traditional party lists. It's a charge the local Alliance riding president hotly denies, saying they just put an ad in the local newspaper. He acknowledges, though, that it probably helps that Day has never been shy in expressing his beliefs.- with files from Andy Walker in PEI
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