Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Canadian Republicanism and Christian Zionism by Ron Dart

The National Post (Saturday August 19 2006) carried a full page advertisement, sponsored by Christians United for Israel, calling for a ‘National Day of Prayer for Israel and the Peace of Jerusalem’. A short read of the advertisement makes it quite clear that the political agenda for the day of prayer is support of Zionism. The organization that sponsored the advertisement, Christians United for Israel, is a right of centre activist organization with close ties to Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Benny Hinn and John Hagee. It is interesting to note that Benny Hinn was offered some of his earliest vision and assistance by the well known Canadian Christian Zionists, Merv and Merla Watson.  A browse through the Canadian affiliate website tells the tale in startling clarity (www.cufi.ca). 

Another Dire Prophecy Unheeded: Eisenhower's Farewell Address

My fellow Americans:

Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.

This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.

Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.

Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the Nation.

Emperor Bush, Pirate Bin Laden, Calvin College, and the Gospel by Wayne Northey

"The king asked the fellow, ‘What is your idea, in infesting the sea?’ And the pirate answered, with uninhibited insolence, ‘The same as yours, in infesting the earth! But because I do it with a tiny craft, I’m called a pirate: because you have a mighty navy, you’re called an emperor.’ (St. Augustine, Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans, trans. Henry Bettenson, New York: Penguin Books, 1984, IV, 4, p. 139).”

In The Vancouver Sun, June 13, 2005, the headline read: “BUSH AS SCARY AS BIN LADEN: POLL.” The article began: “Canadians believe U.S. President George Bush is almost as great a threat to our national security as Osama bin Laden, according to an opinion poll obtained by the National Post.

Mercy, Mr. Harper, Not Sacrifice by Wayne Northey

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Justice Minister Vic Toews, and Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day are all Evangelical Bible-believing Christians.  C.S. Lewis’ Professor Kirk (The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe) might have asked: “Just what Good Book are they reading anyway?”

Is the final biblical word for God love or hate? Is there any scriptural word for God that means hate?  How often did Jesus call God (loving abba – ‘daddy’) Father?  How often did he call God (harsh sentencing) Judge?[1]  What has been the dominant image of God in (Christian) Western culture since the eleventh century?[2]  Where is the family resemblance to Jesus in their “new” crime policies?

At least Prof. Kirk would have scolded these Christian leaders for deficient logic, vile vengefulness, or both.  Can one teach flying from a submarine?  Can one teach appropriate citizenship from a (demeaning) punitive institution?  Can one find any reputable criminological/sociological study that concludes crime may best be stopped through ever-harsher punishments (and society remain “civilized”/non-totalitarian)?  Does one find a plethora of academic studies that establish two tenets: “(1) prison rarely rehabilitates, rarely deters, and often increases the risk of recidivism, and (2) a strongly punitive and law-and-order approach to complex criminal justice problems in general brutalizes prisoners, prison staff and society at large.”[3]?

            Ottawa Citizen columnist Dan Gardner wrote recently (February 24, 2006, emphasis added): “Two flies cling to the side of a stagecoach as it rolls across the desert, trailing a thick cloud of dust in its wake. One fly looks back. ‘Wow!’ he says. ‘Look at what we’re kickin’ up.’…  [P]oliticians, police chiefs and activists [similarly] delude themselves about crime policies…  Crime policies don't control crime rates. The broad state of social development does... Nobody wants to hear this, of course, because it means there are no quick fixes and no way to win elections by beating crime. But reality is reality. The flies aren't kicking up the dust, no matter what they think.” 

In another article (April 26, 2006, emphasis added), Gardner asked: “Are Mr. Harper's tough mandatory minimums worth the cost? Will they make people safer? Vic Toews, Mr. Harper's Justice Minister, insists they will. They proved themselves in the United   States, Mr. Toews told reporters a few weeks ago. It was tough mandatory minimums that drove down crime in the 1990s. But Mr. Kleck [American criminologist and deterrence expert] says that's not true: ‘The consensus of American experts who have looked at that is that the mandatory minimums didn't help and may well have hurt.’ ”  (Hmmm.  A politician lying…  A Christian politician lying…  What does the Good Book say about that?)

The vast majority of those caught committing crime, and the general public, have no awareness of how tough any laws are.  “[Most criminals who land in jail] tend to be young, semi-literate and dumb. They don't subscribe to newspapers. They don't watch Question Period. They don't read criminology journals or the latest amendments to the Criminal Code. What they know about the system tends to come from equally clueless buddies ‘boasting about what they did and got away with,’ says Mr. Kleck.”  (Their ignorance in fact is matched only by the above Christian leaders whose “clueless boasting buddies” are crime policy makers to the south.)

But what about incapacitation at least, Gardner asks?  Longer sentences have to mean less crime?  “Wrong, unfortunately. In reality, incapacitation is a big, complicated issue and longer sentences deliver diminishing returns.”  (Gardner promises future articles on this.  You can also read Gary Kleck’s and others’: “The Missing Link in General Deterrence Research.” Criminology 43(3):623-659, available on line for a fee.)

In Peter McKnight’s “The sham of mandatory sentences” (The Vancouver Sun, Saturday, May 6, emphasis added) the Conservatives’ recent pronouncements are dubbed “profoundly destructive justice policies”.  The author says mandatory sentences will result in:

·       skyrocketing rates of HIV and Hepatitis C (HCV) infection, and with them, a dramatic increase in health care spending, since rates of HIV and HCV infections are already at 10 times the national average in federal prisons, and will greatly increase with incarceration that more than doubles the risk of HIV infection of people who use illegal drugs;

·       soaring costs to the taxpayer, since lifetime treatment costs are currently $215 million/addict;

·       drastic increase in prison use, building and cost;

·       significant increase in use of illicit drugs;

·       great increase of imprisonment of addicts and of their consequent greater danger and cost to society upon release. 

McKnight concludes: “While Stephen Harper might be proud of himself for gaining widespread support through his tough-on-crime demagoguery, he really ought to be ashamed, for his war on drugs is nothing less than a war on Canadian society.”  (So for that matter should all Canada’s political parties be ashamed (except the Bloc Québecois), since they all joined this punitive, misinformed and dangerous cacophonous chorus.)

Further, the vast majority of those living in the democratic West – in particular the self-proclaimed ‘law-abiding’ like… well, Mr. Harper, Mr. Day and Mr. Toews, are what Canadian criminologist Thomas Gabor calls: “opportunistic repeat offenders.”  He writes at the outset of his peer acclaimed 1994 book, ‘Everybody Does It!’: Crime by the Public (emphasis added): “I wanted to take issue with the hypocrisy displayed by many citizens who routinely condemn what they consider to be our leniency towards convicted criminals, while they justify their own illegalities.” 

He adds, as though responding directly to this month’s déjà vu discredited “new” crime procedures by the Conservative government, “Draconian policies may appeal to our tendency to project all that we find unacceptable in ourselves onto some identifiable social group, but they do nothing to help us understand or deal with criminal victimization (pp. xiii and xiv).”  World renowned cultural anthropologist René Girard claims this is fundamentally culturally ubiquitous scapegoating violence, and points to Jesus’ story as the way out (I See Satan Fall Like Lightning). 

Three final questions to these Christian Conservative leaders are: Do you think Saint Paul is on to something in that Bible you read (?) when he claims love (theologically, ceaseless offer of friendship) is “the most excellent way”? Do you think just maybe a Higher Power is trying to teach you something like… “Love your enemies/[criminals/terrorists, etc., etc., etc.]” (Jesus)?  Do you ever wonder that maybe one day, the person needing “mercy not sacrifice” (Jesus) might be you?

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[1] I counted them three times. Are you ready for the two numbers in order of the questions?: 177 and 0.

[2] You guessed it: Hangin’ Judge!  See: Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition, Harold J. Berman, Harvard University Press, Cambridge and London, 1983.

[3] Criminologist Matti Joutsen, former Director of the European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control, presently with The Ministry of Justice, Finland, is summarizing the professional studies in the field.  The answer is: Yes!  Why don’t we get this in North America? Crime has been politicized and “mediatized”.

If I Met a Great Man by Wayne Northey

If I met a great man…
I’d meet President George W. Bush.

I’d start off asking about his wife and kids;
His aspirations of becoming a grandpa;
His hopes for retirement.
  I’d enquire about adversities overcome;
What “makes his day begin”;
His greatest fears.
  I’d want to know who irons his shirts;
Does he lose socks in the dryer;
Has he sometimes kicked the dog;
Does he ever cry?
In all:
What makes him tick and why?

And yes, I’d finally get around to it:
  I’d ask about the war.
  Not the statistics, the politics, the gore.
  Rather impact on the kids: his for starters;
America’s next;
And victims of the bombs.
  About violence modelled;
About violence flaunted;
About violence vaunted.
  About another way;
  About going “home”;
About a gentler America;
About a kinder world;
About his heart.

If I met a great man…

The Matrix of Liberalism: a Seven Act Drama by Ron Dart

“Liberalism was, in origin, criticism of the old established order.”
Today, it is the voice of the establishment.
--George Grant

“The end is in the beginning.”
--Plato

Noam Chomsky Meets Robin Mathews: American Anarchism and Canadian Nationalism by Ron Dart

“Judged in terms of the power, range, novelty, and influence of his thought, Noam Chomsky is arguably the most important intellectual alive.”
—The New York Times

“Chomsky…. is a major scholarly resource. Not to have read (him) is to court genuine ignorance.”
—The Nation

“Robin Mathews is a fighter poet, aggressive in his defense of human rights, expressing his nationalist vision with enough feeling to slash like a razor.”
—Montreal Gazette

Donald Creighton and Eugene Forsey: Tory Historian Meets Radical Traditionalist by Ron Dart

“I’m an unrevised, unrepented Sir John A. Macdonald conservative… There aren’t many of us left… Just Creighton and me… That is... if Donald will admit me to the sacred precincts… I’m sick of pygmies trying to destroy what giants created.”
—Eugene Forsey

When Brian Mulroney became Prime Minister of Canada in the early 1980s, most assumed Canada might return to a traditional form of Tory government. When Brian Mulroney went to Washington after his electoral victory, and assured President Ronald Reagan that Canada was open for business once again, a clear signal was sent across the land. The Progressive Conservative government of Mulroney was going to take Canada much closer to the USA than any other leader of the Conservative party in Canada had ever done.

Stanley Hauerwas and Noam Chomsky: Anarchist Affinities by Ron Dart

Time magazine has called Stanley Hauerwas “America’s Best Theologian” and The New York Times has called Noam Chomsky “the most important intellectual alive.” Such well placed laurels, wreaths, and crowns should not go unnoticed.

Some would argue, and legitimately so, that setting Hauerwas and Chomsky side by side should not be done. Chomsky, after all, is a disciplined, fastidious and committed student and disciple of the secular Enlightenment project, worldview and model. Religion, within such a framework, might have some social value (or not), but academic disciplines such as theology are somewhat dated and beyond the ken of empirical and solid scientific knowledge.

The American Empire, Canadian Compradors, and the Calgary School: A Tory Talks Back by Ron Dart

John Foster Dulles once said that there were two ways to control and dominate another state. The first approach was military invasion and occupation. This approach tends to be the messiest, most obvious and brutal, and, hence, a last resort. The second approach is to take over the economy of another country. This is more subtle and difficult to detect but it is just as real for those dominated by it. A third approach that Dulles did not mention was the cultural approach, and through such an approach the creating of a comprador class. It is the role of the comprador class to be apologists of the empire while living within a state the empire seeks to dominate and control for its imperial ends.