The following article appeared in the March 1^st, 2007 edition of  Christian Week newspaper as part of a series entitled “Does the free market foster the decline of virtue?”

I believe that free markets foster the decline of virtue, but more specifically I believe that the kind of free market fundamentalism and capitalist triumphalism characteristic of the post-Cold War era has been particularly destructive of virtue. It is not just that the free markets of this era create and exaggerate inequality. That would be lacking enough in virtue. It’s that a whole new way of thinking about life, that used to know its place, has become so comprehensive and ubiquitous as to threaten other more virtuous ways of being human in the world. Markets are one thing, and still debatable as to their scope and nature, but the marketization of reality is another, and a much more undesirable thing.

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.

February  8, 2007

   Hon. Bill Blaikie (Elmwood-Transcona, NDP): Mr. Speaker, last night, thanks to the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, members of Parliament were given an opportunity to preview the movie Amazing Grace, which tells the story of British MP William Wilberforce's long fight to abolish slavery. This superb movie was produced to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire

Notes from an address by the Hon. Bill Blaikie to the Faith and Social Justice workshop at the NDP Convention Quebec City September 9, 2006

During a speech in Toronto in the fall of 2002 at a debate organized during the NDP Leadership Race, I made a reference to the social gospel as one of the traditions that inspires and informs the NDP. In the question period that followed I was taken to task by a woman at the back of the hall who said that “gospel” was a Christian concept and that by using the word “gospel” I was engaging in a form of Christian imperialism that left non-Christians out of the conversation.

Whether one thinks that this was over reaction to an objective description of one of the origins of the party, or a brilliant flash of multi-cultural sensitivity, it nevertheless raised for me an important question. How do those of us who see ourselves in the social gospel tradition speak of ourselves and what we believe, in a 21st century Canadian context that is characterized by secularism, pluralism, a touchiness on the part of many about anything Christian, and a touchiness in general about the role of religion in politics.

April 22, 2004

Hon. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg-Transcona, NDP): Mr. Speaker, my question is for the right hon. Prime Minister who I am glad is meeting with the Dalai Lama.

I hope that when he does meet with the Dalai Lama that perhaps the Dalai Lama could instruct the Prime Minister as to the difficulty of separating the spiritual and the political. Indeed, many of the best things about political life ought to be grounded in some sort of a spiritual view of the world.

March 24, 2005

Hon. Bill Blaikie (Elmwood-Transcona, NDP): Mr. Speaker, 25 years ago today Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador was gunned down by a hired assassin while saying Mass for a community of nuns. Archbishop Romero had had the courage to criticize El Salvador’s American backed military for various murders and disappearances.

Canada and the Social Gospel

by Bill Blaikie

The good news of the “social” gospel is that the God of the Bible is a God who wants to redeem the whole of human existence, our social as well as our individual lives. The bad news is that this involves Christians in the world of politics and political choices, taking the same side as God is reported to have taken in the biblical tradition-the side of the poor, the needy, the fatherless, the vulnerable, the oppressed. This bias on the part of God is stated most eloquently and clearly in the song of Mary (Luke 1:46–55). Mary praises and welcomes the birth of Jesus Christ as scattering the proud, putting down the mighty, exalting those of low degree, filling the hungry, and sending the rich away empty.