The relationship between religion and politics is always complicated. In Canada one of its most complex elements is the relationship between Evangelicals and the political left, especially the NDP. A century ago, it was common to associate Evangelicals with progressive politics and social reform agendas. The economic establishment was closely linked with the traditional mainline churches, while evangelicalism challenged the complacency of both. But today, while many Evangelicals still pursue social justice, evangelicalism is associated much more with the political right. For better or worse, “the evangelical left” sometimes sounds like an oxymoron.
There’s more to the story, though, as shown in two recent books – Bill Blaikie’s The Blaikie Report: An Insider’s Look at Faith and Politics and Dennis Gruending’s Pulpit and Politics: Competing Religious Ideologies in Canadian Political Life. Both authors are former New Democrat MPs who have something to say about the relationship between Christians, evangelical or otherwise, and politics. Yet they do so in very different ways.
As mentioned, “Evangelicals in politics” were once found mostly on the left. At the turn of the last century, Christians in Britain, the United States, and Canada were seized with the need to return a wicked world back to God, through a gospel of salvation but also more earthly efforts that expressed God’s love. Morality underlay most social reform efforts of the period, embodied in such phrases as “rescue missions” for the downtrodden, or the original “What Would Jesus Do?” question posed in Charles Sheldon’s 1897 novel, In His Steps. In both Canada and the United States, prominent crusaders such as Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan freely mixed evangelical beliefs, a social reform agenda, and partisan politics. The two were especially intertwined in the temperance movement, anti-prostitution efforts, and other areas where the two Christian notions of personal morality and caring for the poor were obviously connected.
The “social gospel” faded as an organized political movement in the United States (though in African-American churches it morphed into the civil rights movement). But it flourished in Canada, especially under the banner of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), formed in 1932. Ordained ministers such as J. S. Woodsworth and later Tommy Douglas sought political office as a natural extension of their spiritual mission. But the evangelical character of the social gospel faded: Woodsworth in particular had doubts about traditional Christian theology and gave up his Methodist ordination entirely. (In contrast, orthodox Evangelicals were very evident in the right-wing Social Credit tradition in Alberta and B.C., none more than long-time Alberta premier Ernest Manning.) By the 1960s, Christianity still held a strong place in the Canadian left, with Tommy Douglas becoming the first leader of the NDP in 1961, and other ministers-turned-politicians such as long-time Winnipeg MP Stanley Knowles. The theologically liberal United Church gained the informal reputation of “the New Democratic Party at prayer.”
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