Politics and prayer MPs join hundreds of others at National Prayer Breakfast

WINNIPEG FREE PRESS  - 2007.05.13  

Norma Greenaway

OTTAWA -- It's a Parliament Hill event that attracts hundreds of people every year and almost no publicity. Many participants want to keep it that way.

Scores of MPs and former MPs were among the more than 600 diplomats, priests, pastors, teachers and students from across Canada who flocked to three meeting rooms on the hill recently to attend the annual National Prayer Breakfast, a non-denominational Christian affair marking its 42nd year.

But this was not piety on parade. Nor was it the religious right trying to flex its muscles.

In Canada, politicians tend not to wear their religious beliefs on their sleeve, and the yearly gathering reflects that reticence.

Participants say they are glad the event is more low-profile and less political than the one held in Washington, D.C., for the last 55 years. That gathering, which now attracts thousands of people, has almost always starred the U.S. president of the day.

Winnipeg NDP MP Bill Blaikie says organizers of the Canadian event have got it right.

"It hasn't been the big 'P' political vehicle that it has been in Washington, and that is to its credit," said the retiring MP, a United Church minister who plans to write a book about the relationship between faith and politics after he leaves Ottawa.

Beyond the breakfast, though, Blaikie says he's frustrated by a seeming taboo on talking about the role of faith in politics.

"Politics tries to operate as if that elephant isn't in the room," said Blaikie, who was first elected in 1979.

"So a lot is missed as to why people do things the way they do and why they believe what they do." Blaikie also says he's growing impatient with a stereotyping of Christians that focuses on the Christian right and forgets the Christian left.

"That has become a problem, and it's partly because Christians on the left over time have developed a way of speaking that isn't always explicit about where they are coming from." Left-wing Christians need to let it be known "there's more than one way politically to be a Christian in the world." Liberal MP Karen Redman, a Presbyterian and former chairwoman of the prayer gathering, says the breakfast is a chance to celebrate her Christianity in a respectful, non-partisan environment without getting dragged down by debates over such contentious issues as abortion and gay marriage that divide people of faith.

She says, however, she sometimes fears her religion is getting "wrestled away from me" because of assumptions made about people who identify themselves as Christian.

"When people ask, 'Are you Christian?' you say to yourself, 'Now, where is that coming from.' "The right and true answer is, 'Yes, I am a Christian,' but don't assume I'm against gay marriage, against women's right to choose.

Don't visit this whole spectrum of decisions automatically on me because I say, 'Yes, I am a Christian.'" The gathering over fruit, muffins and coffee was clearly a comfortable forum for Christians of all political stripes.

"Our breakfast flies below the radar of social issues," said chief organizer Jack Murta, a former cabinet minister in the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney.

"The prayer breakfast is not about political parties. It is not about who is right and who is wrong." Representatives from each party made appearances on the podium, but their remarks were limited to reading from scripture. The only party leader on hand was the NDP's Jack Layton.

The politics-free event is not, however, to everyone's liking.

Charles McVety, president of Canada Christian College in Toronto and an outspoken player on the religious right wing, says he gave the prayer breakfast a pass this year in part because it's not political enough. He says he prefers to use his trips to Ottawa to directly lobby MPs on specific issues.

"It (the breakfast) has traditionally been very non-political," said McVety, who, as head of the Defend Marriage Coalition, led a campaign in the last federal election to elect evangelical candidates opposed to same-sex marriage.

"I'm not belittling the power of prayer, but faith without works is dead." Bruce Clemenger, president of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, said the breakfast is a quiet celebration of faith that has never been seen as a lobbying opportunity.

But, like Blaikie, he says there should be more open discussion about the role faith plays in politics.

"You shouldn't have to check your faith at the door anymore," he said. "I don't think you can." Former Reform leader Preston Manning, an evangelical Christian, is on the same page. His think-tank, the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, has sponsored a series of workshops over the last year to provide tips to "faith-oriented Canadians" on how to make their case in the political arena without offending people.

Former Reform MP Deborah Grey, a prayer breakfast regular, stood out when she arrived in Ottawa in 1989 because she proudly wore her evangelical faith on her sleeve.

The approach earned her membership in Preston Manning's God Squad, a term some of her Reform colleagues derisively applied to a small group of evangelical MPs who were close to the Reform party's founder.

Grey shrugs off the insults she suffered over her faith when in public life.

"I know somebody who suffered a whole lot more than I did in public," she said in an interview. "His name would be Jesus." -- CanWest News Servic