There’s no footnote to these commandments

Apparently, religion and politics do mix.

Here’s something that many of you will know, and many of you may not be happy about.

According to new poll results released last month, faith and religious beliefs are major contributors to our views on politics and the world.

The pollsters at the Angus Reid Institute, Faith in Canada 150 and the thinktank, Car-dus, discovered the majority of Canadians, at 52 per cent, stated that personal faith or religious beliefs were an important factor in how they thought “about public issues and problems facing society.”

When you consider only the most religious respondents — one-fifth of Canadians that fall into the category of the “religiously committed” — the impact of faith on public issues sky-rockets to 88 per cent of those respondents.

Perhaps now with measurable data from independent, credible sources we can finally move beyond the inane perspective of “leaving your beliefs at the door.” It’s not only a ridiculous suggestion, but a completely impractical one. Not to mention discriminatory. Views on faith and religion, it seems, are the only ones that it has become acceptable to ask individuals to deny or repress as they participate in the public sphere. I’ve suggested before that for the genuinely faithful, it is no easier for them to check their faith at the door than it is to ask others to distance themselves from their other orientations, be they gender, sexual or cultural.

Faith is more than what someone believes, it is who they are.

These new numbers suggest that 54 per cent of Canadians point to faith and religious beliefs as being a prime factor in the development of their self-identity. For the religiously committed, the number is, not surprisingly, even higher at 94 per cent.

Statistically then, these expressions of faith are something that are much larger than just an hour or so of weekly worship. The respondents have indicated that their faith forms and shapes the building blocks not only of their identity, but of their worldview, in all of its many expressions.

As a Christ-follower, I obviously make this point from a Christian perspective. Jesus Christ sums up the entirety of the Old Testament with two commandments: To love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. The second is like it: Love your neighbour as yourself. (Matt. 22:36-40)

That’s not a situational commandment. There’s no footnote that says, “unless you enter public service.”

If Christ-followers feel led to participate in public service or in the political arena, don’t we want them bringing all that they are to the task? I suggest that we need fully vested people of faith serving the public, not people who are forced to deny the biggest part of who they are because of the work they do.

As Canada turns 150 this year, perhaps we are finally mature enough to realize that just as faith is beneficial and positive in the lives of the majority of Canadians, it can also be positive for the entire country. — Rev. Brad Peters is the pastor of First Baptist Church Niagara Falls (3900 Dorchester Rd.) and serves as chaplain to the Niagara Falls Fire Department. You can contact him at 905-3547836 or bpeters12@cogeco.ca