This summit took place on June 25 -27 and is old news, but since it failed to make it into U.S. media, I think it is worth noting. Also, the blurring of the lines between end times prophecy and foreign policy will continue with the CUFI Summit in Washington D.C.  on July 20 -22.  This follows Hagee’s release of his new book Can America Survive:  Ten Prophetic Signs That We Are The Terminal Generation,” which includes the graphic description of the end of Judaism and the forced conversion of the state of Israel. Nevertheless, Jewish politicians (Democratic and Republican), Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren, and other Jewish leaders will speak at the event.

Grant Jeffrey is author of Shadow Government, How the Global Elite Plan to Destroy your Democracy and Freedom, also made into a “documentary” film by Cloud Ten Pictures in Ontario, the producers of the Left Behind movie series and John Hagee’sVanished: In the Twinkling of an Eye. I’ve written previously about Cloud Ten Pictures and Hagee’s portrayals of the Antichrist as the head of the European Union inVanished and other media.

Jeffrey is also one of the featured speakers on God TV’s series “Apocalypse and the End Times.”  Link to trailers for the series including interviews with David Ray Griffin, Mike Bickle, Paul McGuire, Tim LaHaye, Gary Kah, Mark Hitchcock, and Larry Bates.

Marci McDonald, author of Armageddon: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada (published 2010), wrote the following in a Canadian magazine article in 2006 titled “Stephen Harper and the Theo-Cons:”

“McVety’s ideological muscle-flexing has provoked charges that he’s financed by the US Christian right. ‘We haven’t seen one American greenback,’ he retorts. Still, his critics could be forgiven for leaping to conclusions. Canada Christian College houses nearly two dozen evangelical tenants, including Oral Roberts Ministries, and just down the hall from McVety’s own office he runs John Hagee’s Canadian command post, dispensing books and DVDs that he claims brings in $1 million a year.”

McDonald continues,

“Then last December, still smarting from their failure to stop Bill C-38 [Civil Marriage Act], McVety and Ben-Ami [Joseph Ben-Ami] launched the Institute for Canadian Values with a gala dinner tutorial from Ralph Reed, the boyish tactical wizard behind Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition, which succeeded Falwell’s Moral Majority and helped mobilize the South for Bush.”
- Walrus Magazine, 2006

Karl Rove’s speech at the “Faith and Business” summit is not available, but he did provide a separate interview with the press and one Toronto reporter described him as “confidently declaring the Democrats would soon suffer a ‘whupping.’” Afterwards, Rove wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal titled “Obama and the Fiscal ‘Road to Hell.’” However, there was no mention of the end times prophecy aspects of this road to hell.

The ongoing blurring of the line between policy and end times prophecy will continue this week as John Hagee hosts his CUFI Summit in Washington D.C. on July 20 -22. Hagee’s latest book Can America Survive: Ten Prophetic Signs That We Are The Terminal Generation was released at the end of June and soared up to #2 on the Wall Street Journal’s “Best Selling Books” in the non-fiction category. As in other books, Hagee describes current events through the prism of end times prophecy and claims that the end of the natural world is imminent. The ultimate purpose of all this end times horror and bloodshed, including the death of one third of the world’s population, is to convince Jews to accept Jesus.

“There is comfort and consolation in Ezekiel’s prophetic portrait of the world tomorrow. The message is that God is in total control of what appears to be a hopeless situation for Israel. He has deliberately dragged these anti-Semitic nations into Israel to crush them so that the Jews of Israel and the nations of the world will know that He is the Lord and there is no other. America and Europe will not save Israel… God will!”
(Page 146)

This is Hagee’s description of the end of today’s world as we know it and the horrific events that will force the surviving Jews of the world to repent of Judaism. This forced conversion of Israel is the trigger which begins the glorious 1000 year Christian Millennium. In the chapter titled “Armageddon: The Final Battle for Planet Earth” there is a subsection titled “The Jewish People Turn to God.” This is slightly veiled code language for rejecting Judaism and accepting Jesus as messiah.
“Note carefully that the Jewish people at this point in time do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah. The Bible is very clear that this will happen at the end of the Tribulation, when the Jewish people…
“will look on Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for his firstborn.”
-Zechariah 12:10

That is the day, the Scripture declares, when ‘all Israel will be saved.’ (Romans 11:26)
Because of this colossal battle on the soil of Israel, the Jewish people will abandon their disastrous relationship with the Antichrist and begin turning toward the Most High God.”
(page 243)

Of course, as Hagee has pointed out in other books, such as Jerusalem Countdown, “all Israel” does not mean all Jews!  In this chapter Hagee again states that the Antichrist will be the leader of the European Union, a claim like many others in his media, that undoubtedly impact his audiences views of current world events.

Undeterred by Hagee’s continued international promotion of a graphic narrative of the end of Judaism and the forced conversion of Israel, a  number of Jewish politicians and leaders will speak at  the CUFI Summit including: Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren; Rep. Shelley Berkley(D-Nev.);  Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA);  Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations; and Mortimer Zuckerman, Editor-in Chief of U.S. News and World Report and publisher of the New York Daily News.

I wonder if any of these Jewish leaders have read Hagee’s latest book? If you are represented by, or have access to, one of these Jewish leaders, you might want to ask them.

Talk2Action

Inscribe the Bible Canada is sponsored by B’nai Brith Canada andChristians United For Israel, founded by Texas millionaire televangelist Pastor John Hagee. John Hagee Ministries rents office space from McVety at Canada Christian College, and McVety in turn is chair of CUFI Canada. B’nai Brith VP Frank Dimant chairs a department on Israel at McVety’s college, and his appointment to that position was attended by Jason Kenney.

McVety, Hagee, and Dimant have all shared the podium at CUFI bunfests. End times are cozy times.

“The Bible and Peace House will be the jewel in the crown of Bible Valley. The Bible Valley Project intends to develop an area of 25,000 acres adjacent to Jerusalem.

The Bible Valley Project will be composed of several sub-projects.
Foremost will be the handwriting of 100 copies of the Bible in various languages by two million Bible lovers from around the world. This will be done in cooperation with the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Bible House is one of the elements in Bible Valley dedicated to bringing the Bible back to Israeli society and Israeli society back to the Bible.”

Bring Israeli society back to the Bible? Develop 25,000 acres adjacent to Jerusalem to look like biblical times? Rapture outreach tourism?

Take it away, Max …

Rapture Ready: The Unauthorized Christians United for Israel Tour from huffpost on Vimeo.

Next CUFI Show in Washington DC in a month.

Alison also blogs at Creekside
Dawg’s Blog
Chris Selley: Rove sees ‘whupping’ in the offing
Joe Connor: G20: Is god at the summit?
Scott Dagastino: “Strange bedfellows in the Israeli apartheid debate

It will be a long week for Ottawa’s Christian conservatives next week, thanks to former Maclean’s staffer Marci McDonald. And thanks to the fact that I have obtained her new book, The Armageddon Factor three days before its formal release on May 11, I can give you a quick peek at her book through a short summary of what she writes about. And you will know in advance why the national press will be—by my guess–running stories targeting Christian politicians and their friends in think tanks and lobby groups in a few days.

The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism In Canada seeks to argue that Canada is developing its own version of the American Christian Right, complete with various support structures and a network of influential supporters. McDonald, a winner of seven National Magazine Awards, first began to look at this subject when she wrote an October 2006 story for the Walrus magazine, Stephen Harper and the Theo-Cons, which began to look at the relationship between Harper and his conservative Christian supporters.

Although I just came from the bookstore…I shall try and hit as many high points as I can, wanting to post today.

As I used to work for the conservative Report newsmagazines in Western Canada, I suspect that I would be part of McDonald’s own personal “Axis of Evil” if the magazines were still publishing. But, in order to try to be fair to her work as I just got the book, what I will do is try to mostly report on her work in this post. At a very first glance, I fear that she will beg questions and add two and two together to make five…but what I shall do is wait until I have read the book to offer a more concrete comment, after this post.

It will probably hit the best seller list quickly. Curious? Read on…While I would probably qualify as a member of the “Christian Right”(and admittedly inclined to disagree with her thesis) , I do recognize the value of a little scoop, so I will pass on to you what I can gather from a quick overview.

McDonald approaches her subject from a position that the Christian right is likely to be scary. The introduction to her preface—I wonder if she has read Sinclair Lewis’ novel It Can’t Happen Here–reads like this:

“She stared at me across the table as if I were out of my mind. A publisher had asked me to write a book on the rise of the Christian right in Canadian politics and hearing the news, one of my closest friends was questioning my sanity for even contemplating such a task. “Why would you want to do that?” she asked. “Surely you don’t think that it can happen here. This is a profoundly different country that the United States.”

It would seem not, McDonald continues, but in her years reporting in the U.S. she found that the Christian right always develops a hidden resilience. Returning to Canada, she writes that she found clues, as argued in her Walrus feature, that there was a “burgeoning religious right [in Canada]—a coalition not limited to Christians” and that moreover the secular media—and even most non-Christians seemed not to be paying much attention to it. Her book is an attempt to redress that.

She then has a brief mention of The CRY in Ottawa introducing a friend of BDBO, Faytene Kryskow, to her readers. (What about Faytene? Please see my accompanying post.) This allows her to then talk about Stephen Harper’s born-again faith, which the media found quite odd, and Preston Manning’s role as a mentor to him. Harper’s home church is looked at. When discussing Harper’s career, there is a general sense on McDonald’s part that Harper values conservative Christian support and values, but a bit less than he values the possibility of getting a majority government.

Her political approach then leads her to looking back to the 1980s, and the difficulties that conservative Christians had passing abortion legislation. The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada’ s Brian Stiller was probably the most noted so-con of the era, so she speaks to him as well.  This leads naturally to a short profile of Charles McVety (who Bene D has written on) Brian Rushfeldt of the Canadian Family Action Coalition, and Joseph Ben-Ami who now do much of the same sorts of things that Brian Stiller used to do. The journey of Darrell Reid from Focus on the Family Canada president to Stephen Harper advisor is focused on.

Being from central Canada, McDonald knows about the National House of Prayer, which allows her to spend a chapter talking about what it does, along with David Demian.

The next chapter stood out to me, as it is mostly about BDBO’s “perhaps favorite youth evangelist”  , Faytene Kryskow. I’ve taken the liberty of doing a separate post about that, but I do want to mention here that McDonald does cite her dominionist views as central to the Christian nationalist movement she decries in her book. Bet that is a surprise to many of the other Christian figures I’ve cited so far, but I explain all that in that post.

And then, McDonald looks at academia and the related issue of creationism/intelligent design. What follows this is a chapter beginning with Murray and Peter Corren, two gay teachers who gained the ability to screen everything in B.C. schools, which leads to a discussion of the issue of homosexuality in Canadian schools and how the Christian right tries to have its own influence on the issue.  This leads, naturally, to the question of Ontario’s Christian schools and public funding, homeschooling, and the tales of B.C.’s Christian Trinity Western University and the Laurentian Leadership Institute.

Canada’s “electronic pulpit” leads to a talk about Canada’s religious broadcasting history including discussions of pirate TV broadcasting100 Huntley Street the Miracle Channel and Crossroads Broadcasting. (Tim Bloedow is quoted herein.)

Gerry Chipeur, a former Alberta Report source and Calgary lawyer features in the next chapter about how conservative Christians approach the courts and the judiciary. The Boisson case, naturally, is discussed, as well as the controversies about the “human rights tribunals” and their treatment of the press. (This struck me as interesting as a central figure here—Ezra Levant is not Christian—rather Jewish. Given that she says in the beginning of her book that Canada’s religious right is not uniformly Christian—why does Levant’s mention on page 303 stand out?)

Names of various Americans have been standing out in the book thus far, though, perhaps in an attempt to argue that Canada’s Christian right is an American creation.

In my quick scan of the book, I have not been able to find anything that jumps out at me as obviously newsworthy, such as “Stephen Harper, whose parents raised him as a druid…” (large ). But I think that McDonald, knowing the ways of a newsroom, realizes that reporters who have been wanting to write on a subject, such as the “Christian right in Canada” need what is called a “news peg”—a new excuse to write about a topic. “A new book…” is perfect for such a purpose. McDonald, to be fair to her, dislikes the Christian right, as would many assignment editors and reporters across the country. So, I would expect her to appear in your newspapers and on your TV next week.

The last two chapters are tailored for such a media push. The chapter called “The Armageddon Factor” targets “Christian Zionism” and links it to Stephen Harper’s friendly stance towards Israel. Instead of pointing out, as Ezra Levant has on his blog, that there are many prominent conservative Jews in the Conservative Party who have Harper’s ear on this subject, McDonald instead attributes this to the dispensationalist beliefs of some on the Christian right. She reasons that they want to hasten the return of Jesus and therefore need to hasten the events of the end of the world for this to happen—which include pestilence, famine and war. Merv and Merla Watson, two sweet Christian musicians with an interest in the “messianic” church are part of the scheme. (I’ve met the Watsons and can attest that they do not have nuclear weapons hidden in their autoharps.) (Fair warning– I will probably have issues with this chapter.)

Hinting that Christians wanting to cause the end of the work have Harper’s ear is useful red meat for the media. As is the last chapter, which discusses in a general way Christian conservative efforts to establish an institutional presence in Canadian politics—if you are a media reporter with an already skeptical bent about the Christian right, to have them be entrenched would be scary.

In Bene D’s own teaser post about the book earlier today, he writes that the book would be an encyclopedia on this subject. As someone who might have a good knowledge of all this—if not as thorough as Bene D’s—I can say at first glance that McDonald’s book seems quite thorough, and addresses the people and events that I would, were I to do a book length treatment of Canada’s Christian right. I might even say that it is comprehensive.

I fear a bias though…but will hold off on declaring that I see one, in my view, until giving the book the careful reading it deserves. (As I mentioned, I will address any comments to that effect in a comment on this post.)

I do know, however, that this book serves up this subject, on a plate, to those editors who want to pursue it. Given that the reporters will be primed by McDonald’s own unfriendly towards the right point of view on this, I can imagine conservative Christians having to face questions with a bit of a spin on this subject.

If you have a progressive view on all this, I can imagine you thinking “Rightly so!” But I can agree with you that there will be some very interesting stories sparked by this book, whatever you might think of what McDonald has to say, after you finish reading it.

From Dawn thot :summary. The full 20 page .pdf can be downloaded from the link. The chart at Dawn thot is interactive. Clicking on each organization will give you a quick summary of what the organizations beliefs are.

I think many Canadian Conservatives would be dismayed if they knew the extent of the economic and ideological ties to religious right influencers in the US. The assumption is often made that Christians, particularly evangelical Christians, adhere to the rigid theocratic and dominionist beliefs of men such as James Dobson, Tim LaHaye, Ralph Reed, Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Fawell. The harder core messages out of the US religious right is softened and fed to the Canadian public by Canadian leaders in bite size pieces under the guise of social conservatism.

While this 2006 document needs an update as key players move around, the bedrock and ties have not been broken.  Some of those named have moved into more influential positions in Canadian federal and provincial politics.

In 1997, Stephen Harper was invited to speak to the tri-yearly Council meeting being held in Montreal. His speech is one of the few to this group of about 500 which has been made public.

During the CNP appearance, Mr. Harper made a number of statements denigrating Canada and Canadians: “Canada is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the word,” said Mr. Harper;31 “In terms of the unemployed, of which we have over a million-and-a-half, don’t feel particularly bad for many of these people. They don’t feel bad about it themselves, as long as they’re receiving generous social assistance and unemployment insurance,” continued Mr. Harper.32 Mr. Harper was also critical of the Supreme Court of Canada and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms: “[W]e have a Supreme Court, like yours, which, since we put a charter of rights in our Constitution in 1982, is becoming increasingly arbitrary.”33

On specific policy issues, Mr. Harper demonstrated his contempt for ideas at the heart of Canadian society, including public health care and international cooperation. For example, the Charlottetown Agreement, he explained to his audience, included “some [things] that would just horrify you, putting universal Medicare in our constitution, and feminist rights.”34 Mr. Harper also showed dissatisfaction with Canada’s strong support for the UN, and the pride Canadians take in their country’s status at the UN: “This distresses conservatives like myself quite profoundly, but I will warn you, it’s a widespread view, and I will always say, one that could only be maintained as long as [Americans] basically provide us with military protection.”35 Mr. Harper also provided the CNP audience with a glimpse of his opinion of future political reform in Canada. He called the Reform Party a “conservative Republican” organization that espoused “a constitutional agenda that challenges the way our entire political system operates.”36 Most revealingly, Mr. Harper shared his view that the Reform and Progressive Conservative parties would ultimately merge and “[o]ne party is going to win out….And Reform is not going to lose that contest in the long term.”37

…“[t]he individual views of Conservative candidates matter very much in a party that promises to hold more free votes in Parliament on social and moral issues.”179 – David Laycock, Simon Fraser University.

As conservatives in Canada move to entrench their grassroots organization through social conservative leadership training initiatives like those undertaken by the Manning Centre, Canadians should remain vigilant lest social conservatives already supported by a vast network of American organizations turn their influence into government power.

Other background – US

CNP – wiki
CNP – Seek God
CNP – People for the American Way

Groups in Canada

What many Canadians don’t know is that Ms. Holmes has a lawsuit against the Ontario government, which has not been filed to recoup 100 thousand dollars for her 2005 trips to the Mayo clinics to remove a Rathke’s Cleft cyst.,
The suit is also a challenge to single tier care and the Canadian health system. She is one of two plaintiffs, the handlers behind it are The Canadian Constitution Federation headed by John Carpay.
Ontario Superior Court September 2007 (.pdf)

After doing the commercial and a talk show circuit in the US Shona Holmes publicist told CBC News, she was now declining interviews.

Who is the Canadian group Shona Holmes has partnered with to challenge Canadian health care?
The Canadian Constitution Federation is a registered charity, featured in a 2007 article in The Toronto Star: Keeping some advocacy groups out of court
May 11, 2009 Terrible Depths

In this morning’s Globe and Mail, there’s an op-ed by John Carpay, the executive director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation, in which he argues that “Quebec’s parents have lost the freedom to choose religious education.” Carpay’s reasoning? The provincial government has mandated a new course called “Ethics and Religious Culture,” to be taught in all public and private schools. Carpay’s foundation is assisting parents in a court challenge of the new course, arguing that it has stripped away their previous power to choose with their children would receive “Catholic, Protestant, or non-religious moral instruction.”…

Oddly enough, the “religious” objection to the new course is probably criticizing what the drafters in the education ministry thought was its greatest strength: that it is “nebulous” and inconclusive in moral instruction, offering great leeway for schools to structure their presentation and for students to make up their own minds. The other criticism – that it is “superficial and very limited” – is, well, pretty much what you’d expect from any high school-level survey course. Be serious; this isn’t grad school here. Anyway, the combination of limited and vague presentation, according to Carpay, makes the curriculum “anti-religious.”…

Carpay is an old Reform Party candidate who moved over to the Alberta branch of the Canadian Taxpayer Federation (CTF provincial directors are, more often than not, retired conservative politicians and party staffers) and then took up the reins at the Canadian Constitution Foundation a couple of years ago. Aside from the Foundation, you can find also his musings at right-wing hangouts like the Frontier Centre, the Fraser Institute, the Canada Family Action Coalition, and the Manning Centre’s journal, C2C. (That Carpay’s columns, which explicitly identify him as speaking for the Constitution Foundation, would be reproduced in CFAC newsletters seems like it might be a little bit at odds with the Foundation’s formal position that it has no opinion on abortion per se, but whatever.)

The Foundation was founded in 2002 by John Weston, a Conservative MP in Vancouver – its first task was to oppose the Nisga’a Treaty, but it subsequently branched out to oppose public healthcare…

The Constitution Foundation is also backed by another pro-corporate “charity,” the Weston Foundation

Used by permission. 2009 Terrible Depths

Who is blogging about this?

a creative revolution: Shona Holmes: “Charity” funded in her quest to take away your health care? Update.
unrepentant old hippie: Shona Holmes, Sex Advisor
The Nexus of Assholery: Headhunting for Shona Holmes
Beyond the 140: 33.7 million Canadians are not Shona Holmes
Bouquets of Gray: More on Shona Holmes
Sandwalk: Shona Holmes and Canadian Health Care

…Jim Hughes, president of our own Campaign Life Coalition, said that “Those of us in the pro-life movement do not want to see abortionists die, we want to see them convert.”

A charming, coy thing to say, no doubt, but the everyday rhetoric of the CLC would have us believe that abortion is murder, and that abortion clinics are therefore ethically equivalent to concentration camps. The Coalition strongly supports, for example, the so-called “Genocide Awareness Project” being run on Canadian campuses by the California-based Center for Bio-Ethical Reform. Are we to believe that if Mr. Hughes stumbled across Auschwitz, he would try to “convert” the guards first? Is he opposed to taking up arms against “genocide”? Can he consistently condemn someone who did so?

No: Like most pro-lifers, he is simply a purveyor of beliefs whose literal truth he does little or nothing to act seriously upon. (As I’ve pointed out in this space, you can make Henry Morgentaler a member of the Order of Canada, thus offering the grossest provocation imaginable to Catholics and evangelicals who have received the honour, and literally 99% of them will suck it up.) But, very occasionally, some ardent religious loner is confused enough to hear those beliefs, conclude they are true, and follow through. And a doctor somewhere ends up maimed or dead. And we blame only the individual who pulled the trigger

When copy/pasting the link to this article, I noticed with some amusement that the original title of this post was “Don’t Blame The Shooter”.  I guess the editors considered that a little too hot for the socons in the audience.

Cosh is 100% right:  we are all influenced to varying degrees by external stimuli and input from our information sources.  If those sources repeatedly deliver the message that “So-and-so is a depraved maniac of a baby-butchering killer”, that will eventually flip someone’s batshit switch.  The worst thing is, these people know it.  Their hollow, weasel-worded denunciations of Dr. Tiller’s murder, always qualified with a “but he had blood on his hands” kind of statement, prove it.

Look at it this way:  if Dick Cheney ever kicks the bucket, the only people who’ll be talking about the “blood on his hands” will be the ones cracking open a bottle of bubbly to celebrate.

Now somebody go log in to the NatPo and tell them the news.

Used by permission. June 2, 2009 unrepentant old hippie

The Universal Aide Society website is still up with no mention of the revocation, along with some letters from supposed charity leaders praising Universal Aide Society.

The Arizona Republic takes a look at the ‘pass along’ practise and Universal Aide Society tie ins with a Phoenix televangelist Don Stewart and the St. Louis Bible Fellowship.
Stewart is a story in himself, taking on the mantle and organization of A.A. Allen, a known Pentecostal fraudster and operating openly for near 40 years.
According to the Phoenix Register, Universal Aide Society did more than run a personal piggy bank out of BC:

“Gremyachev is a director for two charities in the United States called Universal Heart in South Bend, Ind., and Universal Aide Society America in Tampa. Both charities were set up after the Canada Revenue Agency began its investigation of Universal Aide in 2005.”

The Toronto Star fills in details on how the scam operated in High-flying charity grounded.

BD describes the context and what came next:

For a small conservative evangelical Canadian ministry to tell the mighty Focus on the Family they can no longer walk together is not a small thing. To do so means facing retaliation, be it financially or in US religious media.

The men running Exodus play political hardball. They do not accept or tolerate disagreement, their ministry is about conflict, their politics are about conflict and their lives are conflicted. God help anyone who in their eyes and parlance “err too much on the side of grace”. If evangelicals keep doing that, they’ll be out of the spotlight and out of a job.

Now I read that if New Directions hadn’t made a thoughtful and I think theologically wise discussion to leave the umbrella of Exodus, they would have been kicked out. Good. I’m glad to read the New Directions board made the choice they made when they did. They are now free to help those they are meant to help and carry their own knapsack. The games and bullying of politicized fundamentalism do not have to weigh them down.

Read more at Benediction Blogs On.