HAVING SEEN GREEN PARTY LEADER ELIZABETH MAY ATTEMPT TO TALK ABOUT HER RELIGIOUS FAITH THIS WEEK, I’M NOT SURE CONSERVATIVE LEADER SCHEER WILL BE IN ANY HURRY TO DO THE SAME, ESPECIALLY WITH AN ELECTION CAMPAIGN NOW UNDERWAY.
Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer has offered a very legalistic response when accused of having a hidden agenda on abortion and gay rights — he simply insists that he will not open those issues, because they are settled in Canadian law.
I believe him. I don’t see any value in the Conservatives reopening these issues, and I see lots of potential dangers if they do. I don’t have to trust the Conservative leader to agree with me on moral issues, I just need to have faith that he’ll act in his own electoral self-interest.
Besides, having seen Green party Leader Elizabeth May attempt to talk about her religious faith this week, I’m not sure Scheer will be in any hurry to do the same, especially with an election campaign now underway.
May was giving an interview to the CBC’S Vassy Kapelos. Kapelos asked the Green leader who her personal hero was. May answered, without hesitation, “Jesus Christ.” And then she apologized, and said she had
answered without bothering to self-edit. Kapelos obviously had follow-up questions, including why May felt that she had to apologize for her religious faith.
May bizarrely answered that it was because the Green party was a tolerant and diverse place — “inclusive and all-embracing” — were her exact words. Shouldn’t that make it easier for the leader to discuss her own sincerely held moral positions?
This entire campaign thus far has been infused with the background issue of religious tolerance in Canadian society. Indeed, I note with interest that it was just a few days ago that May was making the point that her party was welcoming of religious diversity and would not tolerate discrimination, this after some NDP defectors to the Greens were reported to have concerns with the electability of Jagmeet Singh, a Sikh, because of his religion.
I wonder if May was revealing something deeper when she went out of her way to stress that Singh’s religious beliefs should not be a matter of concern for any member of her party, while also feeling an obligation to apologize for her Christian faith.
I am not a religious person. I was not raised in a religious household. I’m also not an atheist. Though I belong to no church and do not regularly attend services, from time to time, and probably not as often as I should, I do like to offer a prayer of thanks for the many blessings I have known in my life, and to ask for the protection and continued well being of those that I love. I don’t know if this would meet anyone’s definition of religiously observant. But it’s something I do and have taken comfort from — and also humility.
In this, I am a pretty typical Canadian. Pew Research crunched the numbers on religious faith in Canada just a few months ago. Canada is, obviously, less observant than it once was. But more than half of Canadians still say that religious faith is still at least somewhat important in their lives, and more than half the country identifies as Christian (in some capacity). It’s true that the religiously unaffiliated are a growing bloc — but still a clear minority. Simply having a religious faith, particularly the majority one, ought not to be itself something May felt a need to self-edit.
It’s fine that Singh is Sikh. It’s fine that May and Scheer (and Justin Trudeau!) are Christian. It ought to be possible to debate the pressing social issues of the day, or even, for that matter, the notso pressing social issues of the day, without needing to resort to either suspicion of someone else’s religious faith or apologize for one’s own.
I understand that some voters would probably place a higher emphasis on a candidate’s religious faith, or lack thereof, than I would. But I have to imagine that there are a great many Canadians who feel exactly as I do. The religious views of all of the party leaders in the upcoming election is of absolutely zero interest to me. I could not care less.
But I admit that I am certainly interested in what the discussions about religion reveal about the leaders. As I noted weeks ago, Scheer needs to come up with a better answer to abortion and gay marriage than simply stating he won’t reopen them.
Similarly, while May’s Christian faith would never make me more or less likely to vote for her, the fact that she felt moved to apologize for discussing her faith absolutely sends up red flags.
If she does not see the absurdity in insisting that the Green party is too open and tolerant a place for her to express, in pretty mild and unobjectionable terms, that she has faith in the Christian Saviour, I’m not really sure that says anything good about either her, the party she leads or the notions of tolerance and inclusivity as embraced by Canada’s political left.
THIS ENTIRE CAMPAIGN THUS FAR HAS BEEN INFUSED WITH THE BACKGROUND ISSUE OF RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE IN CANADIAN SOCIETY. — MATT GURNEY