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 - Endorsed - Indifferent - Contested
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| The Nashville Statement
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Name:Daniel
Home: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
About Me: I used to believe that evolution was reasonable, that homosexuality was genetic, and that people became Christians because they couldn't deal with the 'reality' that this life was all there was. I used to believe, that if there was a heaven - I could get there by being good - and I used to think I was more or less a good person. I was wrong on all counts. One day I finally had my eyes opened and I saw that I was not going to go to heaven, but that I was certainly going to suffer the wrath of God for all my sin. I saw myself as a treasonous rebel at heart - I hated God for creating me just to send me to Hell - and I was wretched beyond my own comprehension. Into this spiritual vacuum Jesus Christ came and he opened my understanding - delivering me from God's wrath into God's grace. I was "saved" as an adult, and now my life is hid in Christ. I am by no means sinless, but by God's grace I am a repenting believer - a born again Christian.
My complete profile...
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Daniel's posts are almost always pastoral and God centered. I appreciate and am challenged by them frequently. He has a great sense of humor as well.
- Marc Heinrich
His posts are either funny or challenging. He is very friendly and nice.
- Rose Cole
[He has] good posts, both the serious like this one, and the humorous like yesterday. [He is] the reason that I have restrained myself from making Canadian jokes in my posts.
- C-Train
This post contains nothing that is of any use to me. What were you thinking? Anyway, it's probably the best I've read all day.
- David Kjos
Daniel, nicely done and much more original than Frank the Turk.
- Jonathan Moorhead
There are some people who are smart, deep, or funny. There are not very many people that are all 3. Daniel is one of those people. His opinion, insight and humor have kept me coming back to his blog since I first visited earlier this year.
- Carla Rolfe
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| The Christian Heritage Party of Canada |
Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law" - preamble, Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Part I of the Constitution Act, 1982).
Most Canadians remember that in and around 1982 we, as a nation, became in some vague way less dependent on England and her Queen with regards to how we, as a nation, govern ourselves. The average Canadian is by and large ignorant of Canadian history, and especially so when that history is political in content.
The thought expressed in the quoted preamble above, became part of the Canadian Constitution in 1982, but was originally expressed in 1958 as a federal statute: The Canadian Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights received royal assent in 1960 and is still
in effect today. In that bill we read:
"The Parliament of Canada, affirming that the Canadian Nation is founded upon principles that acknowledge the supremacy of God, the dignity and worth of the human person and the position of the family in a society of free men and free institutions;" - Canadian Bill of Rights, 1960
Because Constitutional rights trump federal statutes in a court of law (i.e. legislative law trumps federal law), it was important to have a constitutional charter of rights, over and above a federal bill of rights, should a matter need to be decided by higher courts (and this was not an uncommon thing). What I want to note here, is that in both the 1960 bill, and in the 1982 Constitutional Amendment acknowledge the supremacy of God as a principle upon which the nation of Canada was founded. These statements were intended to answer the question of authority.
Where did they get the moral authority to say such and such is a human right? The answer is in the preamble: they regarded God as a higher authority than man, and as such, they
conformed (in part at least) their rule of law (with regards to rights and freedoms) to what God says about these matters.
Fact: John Deifenbaker, the primary drafter of the 1960 Bill of Rights, was a Canadian Baptist. I think it is safe to assume that when Deifenbaker wrote about God's supremacy, he was referring to the God of the Christian scriptures. Likewise, in order to defer to God's authority, it must be known what God has said. That is, I expect (and I think it is unreasonable not to think this way) that Deifenbaker, in appealing to God's authority in such moral matters, was appealing to what scripture claims concerning these matters.
What I have done, in case you arn't following closely, is show that the authorial intent of the original drafter of the 1960 Canadian Bill of Rights was to claim the authority of scripture in forming Canadian rights. The text and flow of the 1960 Bill of Rights was transplanted into the 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, (though not without some tweaking), and along with it, the roots of that original authorial intent. Which is to say, that if someone wanted to argue that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as included in Part I of the Canadian Constitution Act of 1982 looked to the scriptures of the Christian bible for its authority, they would have, at the very least, a leg to stand on.
The Christian Heritage Party of Canada, or the "CHP" as they have recently re-branded themselves, is a Canadian Political Party that makes a lot of this preamble. Consider this from their home page:
The CHP is Canada's only pro-Life, pro-family federal political party, and the only federal party that endorses the principles of the Preamble to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the Canadian Constitution,
which says:
"Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law..."
From what I can tell, what they mean by saying this (perhaps I am misreading them) is that they are the only party that recognizes the supremacy of God.
That's awesome, but somewhat of an incomplete/immature thought, though that might be intentional.
Brushing past all the fluff, what is being asserted here is an argument that goes like this: If the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms derives its moral authority from the testimony of God as witnessed in the Christian Scriptures, then this same Charter must uphold the human rights of the unborn.
I think that's a very fair argument - it is saying that you cannot on the one hand appeal to the supremacy of God as your moral authority in these matters, then deny that same Witness by denying rights to the unborn when scripture clearly refers to the unborn as people from the moment of conception.
The reason I say that the thought is a little incomplete, or perhaps just immature, is because it fails to frame itself in the context of what it is really saying. Perhaps the CHP assumes a common knowledge in the reader that
simply isn't there? I don't know. Maybe I am wrongly presuming, but I think that the average reader is going to read that and interpret it to mean that they are [1] calling themselves the only political party that recognizes the supremacy of God, and [2] that this belief in the supremacy of God is in fact part of Canada's collective heritage.
Now, I don't know about you, but when someone speaks to me about my heritage, I am not looking back to things that happened in the tenth grade (1982 for me). I am looking back at the founders of my nation, I am looking back to confederacy under British Rule, and the events that brought us to that. Consider this brief history of religion in Canada. The early colonization of "New France" carried no religious restrictions, Roman Catholics and Protestants (Huguenots) settled side by side, until 1627, when the religious strife threatened to escalate into a civil war. At that time, since the Protestants showed themselves to be less inclined to royal control than the Catholics, no more Protestants were allowed to immigrate to New France (Canada) from France, and so New France remained almost exclusively Catholic until French rule was abolished in 1763 by the conquest of Canada by the British.
At that point, the Catholic only immigration policy was functionally reversed, giving all possible encouragement to the erection of protestant schools and churches to the end that the inhabitants of Canada by induced, by degree, to embrace the protestant religion.
At that time the British offered free land to British loyalist living in the US - and through this, the population of Canada was suddenly inundated with more protestants. In 1792, Parliament of Great Britain passed a Constitutional Act to provide for the administration
of the province of Quebec, which now was home to many British subjects who had fled the US on account of the war of independence. The Act separated the province of Quebec into upper and lower Canada - a division that was primarily a division between English speaking British protestants, and French speaking Roman Catholics, or, as we see it today, between Ontario (British) and Quebec (French).
By 1850, (16 years before confederacy), Most of Canadians were either Catholic or Protestant; By 1867, it would be fair to say, that Canada was a nation that, on the whole, regarded the Christian Bible as authoritative, though higher criticism and Darwinism were
already eroding the notion of God's word as an objective standard.
The question then, when we use a phrase such as Christian Heritage, in the venue of Canadian Policy, we must ask, which Christian Heritage? The Roman Catholic Heritage, or the Protestant Heritage? Are we talking about the low or high ebb of these various heritages? Presumably, since confederation took place in 1867, and because we are talking about Christian heritage, as it pertains to governance and policy in Canada, it seems reasonable to conclude that we are talking about British Protestantism. Given that the first six Prime Ministers were all Protestants, I think our conclusion is demonstrated to be true.
Why the boring history lesson? The lesson is to say that I am aware that Canada does have a Christian Heritage; I am aware that those who eventually confederated this nation were Protestants (what we would call "Evangelical Christians" today), and that if we are going to talk about Canada's Christian Heritage, we are likely going to be talking about what influence
Evangelical thought had in forming the policies and governance of Canada.
When we speak of the US founding fathers, we are speaking of actual founding fathers. There was a war of independence that ended with a group of people having to define themselves apart from any previous definition. The founding fathers of the US had to form a government from scratch, inheriting nothing, even as they innovated and borrowed according to whatever wisdom and light they had at the time. Canada however did not have a war of independence. Our government was not formed by the people who originally governed us. When Canada was confederated, we inherited a system of government from our (then) sovereign nation Britain. It wasn't as if we a group of men, mostly Christians, sat down and newly invented a form of government that drew from their own (mostly)
Christian faith and morality.
To be sure the 1689 English Bill of Rights, does not draw its authority from God, but rather from the throne of England. That means that when the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms looks to the supremacy of God, it isn't following the traditions that founded our nation, but in introducing a new tradition, ostensibly injected into the Canadian mainstream by Deifenbaker, though assented to by the Queen, in the 1960 Canadian Bill of Rights.
So why all that?
Well, when I read the front page of the CHP website, I find the equating of their policy to my Christian heritage a bit misleading. They represent their platform as though there was some
political Christian heritage that previously set the matter in antiquity, and present themselves as clinging alone to what was, and is in danger of being lost. When in reality they seem to simply be a Christian party, with a narrow agenda, co-opting one line in a
very recent Constitutional Amendment for the sake of painting their agenda as [1] Christian, and [2] historical, as though Christianity itself was our heritage, and not the recent amendment preamble upon which the door of their platform appears to be swinging.
Having said all that, this is a very small, politically insignificant party. I doubt there is anyone in the party whom I would consider more conservative or biblical in their views than most of the people in my own congregation. But having flipped through their platform, it seems at once pie-in-the-sky, and childish; lacking both vision and direction while sending the entirety of their being into orbit around the idea that people are people at the moment of conception because the God of the Christian scriptures says so.
Don't get me wrong - I believe that life begins at the moment of conception, and this agrees entirely with what God has said. The weight of God's word on the heart of a believer should be enough to satisfy any doubt, but truly, one need not be a believer in God, or a respecter of God's word to see that scripture is only stating what is patently true. From the moment of conception a human life is formed and grows. I believe that. And I likewise believe in the supremacy of God, and that any moral decision I will make in my life must agree with the objective morality reflected in the God of the Christian scriptures. If I were a politician, I would vote according to this same objective moral standard - because I am a Christian first, and everything else second.
What then, is my beef? Well, one of the reasons the Christian Heritage Party of Canada, rebranded themselves as the CHP is because they were experiencing some negative feedback for having the word "Christian" in their name. I don't get the sense that this party is ashamed of the name of Christ, so I don't believe they removed the name out of a desire to distance themselves from Christ's name - but rather that the name suggested the party was a ... well... a partywhose main focus was restoring a lost Christian Heritage.
The trouble was, that the idea of Christian Heritage ends up being an all to thin facade for their all Christian anti-abortion platform. Rather than change their name to match their agenda, they instead hid their name behind a three letter acronym style branding - and someone honestly thought, somewhere, that this was going to correct the floundering party image.
If you want to be a member of the party, you have to sign your name to a declaration that says that you believe that the preamble in the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms is referring to the "God of the Bible" when it says, the "supremacy of God".
Think that through for a second.
Simon is a Jew. His bible is the old Testament. Maybe its just the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament)
Sue is a Mormon. Her bible is the 66 books of the Protestant Canon, plus the book of Mormon.
Zach is a Jehovah's Witness. His bible is the JW-sanitized "new world translation" plus everything ever printed by the Watchtower Society.
John is a Catholic. His bible is the 66 books of the Protestant Canon, plus seven others.
Jim is of the Greek Orthodox faith, his bible has the the 66 books of the Protestant Canon, plus twelve more
Jane, a Baptist, has only 66 books in her bible.
Mohamed is a Muslim. His bible is the Qu'ran.
When the Jew says that he believes that the supremacy of God is referring to the God of the Torah, he means that it is Not referring to Jesus.
When the Muslim says that he believes that the supremacy of God is referring to the God of the Qu'ran, he means that it is not the God of the Jews, or Jesus.
When the Jehovah's Witness says that he believes that the supremacy of God is referring to the God of Watchtower, he likewise does not mean Jesus, for Jesus is just (according to him) the angel Michael
When the Catholic/Evangelical/Orthodox says that he believes that the supremacy of God is referring to the God of the bible, they mean the God of their own bible, and only according to their own interpretation.
How then, can anyone, in good conscience, become a member of this party? Anyone who could say that the preamble to the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms is referring to the God of the "Bible", and not believe that some bible is true would be a hypocrite; so rules out all non-believers of any faith, except for the hypocrites. And anyone of any kind of faith who is willing to make a very open ended and highly ambiguous declaration concerning their faith, demonstrates that they are either so entirely liberal and ecumenical as to make no distinctions between what one person calls the bible, and what another calls the bible - or they are so undiscerning as to not notice that there is a distinction. The bottom line is that the only people who can become members are hypocrites, liberal ecumenicals, and the undiscerning and/or ignorant.
Now, why would anyone vote for someone like that?
The point of my post is not to draw attention to this however. I am sure that many of the party members are good, principled, morally upright, Christians, who probably find the whole thing as poorly thought out as it seems, but are willing to work with it for the greater good.
No, the point of my post is that I don't think this party even knows who it is trying to be. Its platform, though well meaning, seems immature, even naive. It presents itself under the cloak of Christian heritage, but really it means that little bit of heritage we have picked up in the last few decades, at least insofar as it pertains to policies concerning the unborn. In a word, the party doesn't seem comfortable in its own skin - as if it isn't sure who it is or whom it is supposed to be.
I mean, I think they haven't really decided how to get my vote. Do you appeal to the fact that you are a Christian? Do we appeal to your desire to abolish abortion? Do you try to combine those two? Do we appeal to your desire to wag whole dog of the Canadian Constitution by the tale of its one sentence preamble? What is it?
I honestly couldn't see myself voting for this party as it sits. Their platform seems to me to be a collection of ideas, some of which have merit, but none of which seem well thought out. There is certainly a morally conservative angle, but this at the unnecessary expense of a narrowness in both scope and mind.
This being my blog, I am at liberty to offer my opinion on these things in broad sense, without qualifying it - since it is only my opinion. Yet it all comes down to this for me. When I heard that the Christian Heritage Party was changing their name, I thought, to myself, of all the things they needed to change, the name was probably the least important. They need to figure out who they are going to be, and stop trying to be ten other things at the same time. When they finally figure that out, then they can pick a name that makes sense.Labels: politics, Strong opinions |
posted by Daniel @
2:19 PM
13 comment(s)
 
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| Age Segregation in the church: Culture vs. Scripture. |
Every Sunday my family and I congregate with our church family. When we first arrive, the children go downstairs to the "Sunday School" rooms and attend Sunday school in classes that are segregated by age; meanwhile, any adult who isn't teaching a Sunday School class is free to attend the adult Sunday school class in the auditorium.
On judgment day, every Christian parent will have to give an account of himself or herself with regards to how he or she answered the clear directive for parents (especially fathers) in bringing up their own children in the admonition of the Lord.
It is true that Sunday School teachers will have to answer for anything false that they might have wrongly imparted on some Sunday morning, but the job of instructing children is biblically assigned to parents, not Sunday school teachers. The one will answer for their failure to disciple, the other will only answer if they add something wrong to the mix.
I think every church that runs Sunday School programs gives vocal assent to this: Parents, it is your job to raise your children up in the fear and admonition of the Lord; Sunday school is not meant to be a replacement for this. Yet for all that, the local church then immediately forgets what Sunday School actually was invented to do.
Remember that Sunday School was originally intended, not to educate the congregation's children - but to educate the children of those who were outside the church - a program intended provide biblical instruction to children whose parents were not Christian.
Somewhere along the way, Sunday School stopped being about the unchurched, and became the way we "churched" our own children.
But this post isn't about Sunday School, it is about what came in riding on the coat-tails of Sunday school: Age segregation.
Now, for must of us who were educated in the public school system, age segregation is about as natural as watching television every night. We tend to reason that since we were brought up that way, and we turned out alright (why do we always presume we turned out alright?), that the notion that there is something wrong with this is nothing more than a tempest in a teapot - a small thing, so small in fact that we can dismiss it and disregard it without even thinking about it. It is "obvious" we say, that age segregation is fine.
In fact, people go much farther than being indifferent, they even begin to demand age segregation.
Why should I have to put up with crying kids sitting next to me when I am trying to hear the sermon?I recall reading a series of snide comments on another blog years back now, about this very thing. Why should I have to put up with crying kids sitting next to me when I am trying to hear the sermon? Who do these people think they are, bringing their unruly children into this sacred assembly to disrupt what goes on here by their endless distractions? How dare they!
Seriously, you would think they had paid admission to a concert the way they imagine themselves to possess a god given right to "hear the sermon" in perfect, undisturbed, tranquility. I suspect it hasn't occurred to these "church is here to edify me only" sorts, that the purpose of our congregating might actually be bigger than hearing this Sunday's sermon.
Seriously, you would think they had paid admission to a concert the way they imagine themselves to possess a god given right to "hear the sermon" in perfect, undisturbed, tranquility.I bring my children with me into the morning service - all four of them, the youngest being three, the oldest, 11. Guess what? The eldest sits through the whole service, attentive, and without my having to constantly goad him to be that way. In fact, I haven't had to correct his behavior in years. My second oldest is going to be nine in a few weeks, and she too knows how to sit still and listen, my five year old is an unchained, boisterous ragamuffin, who couldn't care less about the service, and her little brother, now three, hasn't got a clue.
Do I think my children are getting anything out of the sermon? Pfft. Of course not. I mean, my oldest is sometimes edified, and is always thoughtful, but he is mostly there because he has to be. My eldest daughter is more concerned about where she sits than she is about what is said, and my two youngest are hardly aware that a sermon is going on at all, except that they are restrained during the sermon from being disruptive.
So why do I put them through it?
Well, perhaps I am missing something, but I don't think the sermon is the main point or even the highlight of our time together. My children are learning from my wife and I what is important to us. They are learning what it means to sit as a family, they are learning what it means to respect others, and they are learning that they are part of the church family no matter how old they are.
There is that old pithy line, the youth in Christ are not the church of tomorrow, they are the church right now. See, I don't think of that as a nice catch phrase that we all can nod in agreement about then toss out as if we never said it. I take that as truth. My children, the ones who are in Christ, are as much a part of the body as anyone else in the assembly - they are called to congregate with the whole body, and not just those in the body who are there own age. This notion of segregation did not come from the bible, it comes from man's wisdom, and let me tell you my opinion of man's wisdom: it isn't very wise.
As I have said, my children go to an age segregated Sunday School, but this takes place before we assemble as the body of Christ. When we assemble, I prefer not only my children to be there, but everyone else's too. Let 'em cry, let 'em fuss. I am not there to watch a show, I am there to fellowship, and to share my life with all of them, not just those who are mature and able to sit through a sermon without distracting others. I am there because I am called to be there with all of them - and anyone who would put the children, or the elderly, or the women in a room by themselves so as to make the hearing of the sermon more pleasant for the remainder, either doesn't understand what they are there for, or they they are "doing church by default" - that is, falling into cultural habits that seem right since that's the way we do everything else.Labels: Strong opinions |
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posted by Daniel @
4:02 PM
21 comment(s)
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| A Nation at Rock Bottom, starts drilling... |
I read on CNN today that an abortion clinic in Indiana is giving out gift certificates that can be used to subsidize abortions.
I am trying to picture the giving of such a gift:
Guy: Hey Marcia, I hear you are suffering financially but I know that hasn't stopped you from engaging in activities that produce children; and I likewise know that you have no moral hang-ups about killing your own children, so long as they aren't "born" yet, so I thought to myself - hey, your next murder is on me!
Marcia: Thank you so much! What a thoughtful gift, and I didn't even tell you that I voted for Obama, how did you know?
Guy: I just thought, hey, that Marcia sleeps around, but I never see her pregnant. I put two and two together. Good luck with the job search!Labels: Strong opinions |
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posted by Daniel @
10:14 AM
6 comment(s)
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