I have reported previously about the National House of Prayer (NHOP) in Ottawa. As I write this, Rob and Fran Parker, the husband and wife team who lead NHOP, are planning what they describe as a prayer walk to Israel in late March into April. On March 13-14th the Parkers are also guest speakers at a Calgary conference of a group called the International Christian Chamber of Commerce.

Mr. Parker has written on the NHOP’s blog in recent weeks about his plans. “Recently God has confirmed to me it is now time to Prayer-Walk Israel,” he wrote in February. “It seems that everywhere you turn these days you are hearing that there’s a growing sense of acceleration of God’s purposes. Many Christian leaders are preaching that we have entered into the ‘Signs of the Times’ that Jesus referred to around his Second Coming. In different ways in Canada we believe we are ‘touching’ things for God’s purposes that are massive in light of the days we are living.”

This is not the first time that the Parkers believe they have been called by God to undertake a project. Ron Parker has a long association with Watchmen for the Nations, a pro-Israel Christian right group based in the U.S. and Canada. After a Watchmen gathering in 1996, Parker organized a prayer-walk from Calgary to Ottawa. He and his wife felt they were being called to set up an intercessory house of prayer in the nation’s capital. In 2004, they purchased a former convent not far from Parliament Hill for $900,000. They’ve added staff and volunteers and regularly host groups, including youth, from across the country to engage in formation as prayer leaders and also to visit select MPs. The NHOP personnel appear to have ready access to Parliament Hill. They attend Question Period, sit in on parliamentary committee meetings and lead parliamentary prayer groups. The people who organize the National Prayer Breakfast, held by parliamentarians once a year, have invited the Parkers to lead workshops following the meal.

Parker, in his blog postings, described the focus of the upcoming Israel walk in the following ways: “To pray for a preparation around the events of the Second Coming of Christ. For a blessing on all those who live in the land and on those who labour for God’s kingdom in Israel. To pray for the safety for the people of Israel as they face any possible threats of war from nations hostile to them.” There is no mention, however, of praying for those in the region who are threatened by hostile actions at the hands of the Israeli military.

The NHOP exists within a fundamentalist and charismatic network known for its emotional and enthusiastic forms of worship, including speaking in tongues, holy laughter, and a belief in powers of prophecy and healing. Many in the movement are Christian reconstructionists who believe that “God governs” and that government and all of society must submit to the bible’s moral principles. There are those who call this a recipe for theocracy. A good part of the ardour on display arises from a millenarian belief that we are approaching end times, when Christ will return to reward the righteous and punish sinners.

Reconstructionists believe that the return of Jews from around the world to Israel and establishing an Israeli state in 1948 were the fulfillment of a biblical prophecy, and a foreshadowing of the second coming. This unfortunate merging of biblical mythology about chosen people and nations with current political events explains the unyielding support for any and all Israeli state policies among Christian reconstructionists in the U.S. and Canada.

The NHOP first came to my attention in 2006 when it was advertising a tour to Israel in September-October of that year. The advertisement invited potential tourists to: “Ignite your passion and intercession for Israel, the land, the people for God’s end-time purposes.” The advertisement quoted Psalm 102, saying, “The appointed time to favor Zion has come.” The tour had to be cancelled because hostilities broke out between Israel and groups in Lebanon in the summer of 2006.

The Conservatives were elected in Canada in January 2006, and certain Christian groups made common cause with Canadian Jewish organizations in lobbying the Harper government to take a pro-Israel position in the conflict. The prime minister did not disappoint, when he described an Israeli campaign that took 1,000 lives as a “measured response” to the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers. The Canadian government has since 2006 jettisoned Canada’s previous role as an honest broker in the Middle East and has tilted our foreign policy entirely in Israel’s favour, including unconditional support for the deadly invasion of Gaza in January 2009.

Canada’s pro-Israel support has now worked its way back into our domestic politics as well, in the most unpleasant of ways. Late in 2009, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) abruptly withdrew funding and severed a long-standing relationship with KAIROS, an inter-church human rights group. Speaking at a conference in Jerusalem in December 2009, Jason Kenney, Canada’s immigration minister, accused KAIROS of being anti-Semitic and of supporting an economic boycott of Israel. KAIROS and its members, including Catholic, United, Anglican, and Lutheran churches, the Mennonite Central Committee and Quakers, hotly denied those claims.

Then, early in 2010 Canada’s respected Rights and Democracy organization imploded after new board members appointed by the Conservative government forced the resignation of the organization’s president Rémy Beauregard at a particularly nasty meeting. Mr. Beauregard died of a heart attack later that day. Conservative appointees to the board of Rights and Democracy accused the organization of being anti-Israel. Senior staff members have now been fired and Rights and Democracy has closed a Geneva-based office that which worked in proximity to several United Nations agencies.

The government’s ham-fisted actions against KAIROS and Rights and Democracy have sent an intended chill through Canada’s church and development communities. Question the policies of the Israeli government and you are called anti-Semitic. Question the policies of the Canadian government and you will be punished. These attacks have led others, including former Canadian diplomat Harry Stirling, to question why the kind of debate that occurs regularly within Israel about the country’s policies toward its neighbours is labelled as anti-Semitic when it occurs in Canada.

A common analysis is that in its policies and practices the Harper government is attempting to win the support of Jewish organizations and voters in this country. It may be, however, that an even more important reason for the government’s one-sided policy is its desire to appease its base among the Christian right – those who actually believe that a biblical prophecy of end times will be fulfilled by the Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.

Some of those people will gather at a weekend meeting sponsored by the International Christian Chamber of Commerce at the Hyatt Regency in Calgary on March 12-13th. They will talk about God’s plan for Israel and Rob and Fran Parker are featured as guest speakers. The ICCC advertisement invites registrants to: “Come and hear about our unique relationship with the government of Israel. Come and hear how you can stand in a practical way with Israel in Her call to be a blessing to many nations.” The ad quotes the bible’s book of Genesis regarding Israel: “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.’’

Interestingly, Christian reconstructionists believe that only those who have accepted Christ as their personal saviour will be saved in the Last Judgement. Others, and one assumes this includes people of Jewish faith, will be damned if they have not accepted Christ. This is, to say the least, an odd basis for a pro-Israel coalition.

Pulpits & Politics

A Winnipeg man who has struggled with alcoholism for decades says he has filed a complaint with the Manitoba Human Rights Commission over the lack of a treatment program that’s free of religious or spiritual elements.

Rob Johnstone said he has battled alcoholism for 40 years and can’t find a treatment program that doesn’t rely on religion or spirituality as part of the recovery process.

…Johnstone said his faith-neutral stance to his own treatment prompted him to be dismissed from an intense residential 12-step program at the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba (AFM), a provincially-run rehabilitation initiative.

Manitoba Health runs 12 programs, costing about 22 million a year.

CBC

Leaving Fundamentalism is relevant to religious right alert readers for a couple of reasons.  Dunn’s introduction to the first person stories of people who have left fundamentalism is a crisp and clear look at Evangelical and Catholic conservatism as we see it unfolding today. Linguistically and historically the reader is introduced to how we have arrived to where we are. Constantine, The Great Schism, the Reformation, Inquisition, colonization of the New World, naturalism, materialism, modernism, culture wars, and 9/11 are deftly explained. Dunn throws light on how the term fundamentalism came to be seen in the late 20th century early 21st century as derogatory. He explains how the Scopes trial brought about a mid-century retreat of fundamentalists into a sub-culture of blue laws and how they re-emerged and re-branded themselves into the movements we see today. You don’t need a natural curiousity of the history Christian faith to find yourself captivated. As a Canadian, I am not culturally disengaged in the reading of the preview.

This is not a scornful look at faith, it is an intensely human and respectful one. We are introduced to individuals who tell their own story, be they Catholic or Protestant. Their narratives have been blessed by a courteous and open editor. Complexity is not an enemy.

I found myself struck by the emotions of the 11 authors. The ages of those telling their story in Leaving Fundamentalism range from 20’s to 70’s. Common themes of search, belonging, need, anxiety, loss, guilt and discomfort are expressed with raw honesty and I am left humbled, surprised, happy, sorrowful, more informed and wanting to learn more. That’s surprising for a quick preview read.

Why do people embrace fundamentalism? What are they thinking and feeling? What happens to relationships? What holds adherents and what disillusions them? What are their gains and losses?  Leaving Fundamentalism gives some insight into those questions as each person tells their story.

I don’t know what made me click over to check out this book. The cover made me smile, I don’t equate fundamentalism with stained glass windows, I perceive the fundamentalist faithful as inhabiting a more black and white world. Politically and socially that may be true in the larger context of church and para-church organizations, what I think makes this book relevant to readers of this blog is the multi-coloured individual courage and relevance of those who tell their story.

You can take advantage of the Google preview for Leaving Fundamentalism off the Wilfred Laurier Press site.

Review:  Confessions of a Cultural Idiot
Author site: G. Elijah Dann
David L. Rattigan is one of the story tellers and his was the first essay I clicked to in the preview. I have read his writing online for years and have a lot of respect for his work. You can find some of his writing at Leaving Fundamentalism and Ex-Gay Watch.

Winnipeg has been the centre of a maelstrom over the past week since Youth for Christ stepped forward with a completed funding proposal in hand for an 11 million dollar rec centre. It’s been huge news in the province, and once the public political fisticuffs was out of the way residents were left debating city hall.
It is done, city council caved like wet cardboard. Community based groups which rely on operational funding are upset. The games being played are not recreational and the debate rightfully continues. (4.2 million municipal/3.2 million federal)

This is not an us/them debate, it is an ‘our’ debate.

Money is being given to faith based charities without public input. We’re kidding ourselves if we lull ourselves into the standard framing of it’s just a local or provincial liberal media driven dust-up, tax payers and delivery of services in communities across Canada are affected. Opposition to federal money being tossed out to religious charities, and economic pressure on municipal autonomy, is not about being anti-Christian despite what political cheerleaders are chanting.

I have a question.
How many federal grants have been handed out lately to faith groups?

I have another question.
Where has money been doled out to faith groups?

Winnipeg. Hamilton…

$986,667 for the Catholic Youth Organization of the Diocese of Hamilton
+
$371,650 for the Good Sheperd Venture Center (Which I didn’t know was Catholic too!)
+
$2,947,652 For Redeemer University College (A Christian School)
+
$1,000,000 For a soccer field at Redeemer University College
+
$300,000 For phase 2 of the soccer field

So That’s

$5,605,969 For Hamilton’s Religious circle

(I’ve written Redeemer College to ask how many community groups have applied or been able to play on the field)

Where else?
If you know, please comment and link.

Previous post: Youth for Christ Winnipeg: proselytizing and political patronage

Who is blogging?
Leaving Faith Behind: Youth For Christ Wins Public Funding
View from the Legislature: NDP Misses The Point On YFC Proposal
Canadian Cynic: It’s nice to see the Christians still getting your tax money
the leg speaks: Excuse me while I get another cup of coffee
Progressive Winnipeg: Steeve’s Brain Working Creative Overtime
Canadian Authors Who are Christian: Youth for Christ - Christians receiving public funding
Project Scottsdale: Sam Katz and CentreVenture work a deal
From the Desk of Shamelessly Athiest: Winnipeg city council to vote on funding an inner city Crusade for Christ youth facility
Meddling Kids: Indoctrination Can Be Cheap
Pharygula: Canada is sharing in Christian shame

The Christian organization, which offers 15 programs in various Winnipeg locations right now, plans to build a 50,000-square foot facility called “Youth Centre of Excellence,” which would include a skate park, fitness centre, dance studio, climbing wall and multi-sport gym, as well as a classroom and job training centre.

Winnipeg’s downtown development  agency has decided to kick in a 2.6 million dollar loan for the proposed 9.3 million dollar centre. The federal government is willing to cough up a few million for the religious group. Youth for Christ has raised 3. 1 million and plans to move it’s headquarters into the new facility. Construction is scheduled to begin in April. The Winnipeg funding will go to a council vote this week.

The province has declined to provide funding.  MP Pat Martin, (Winnipeg Centre) says the city’s potential loan to the religious group is ”taxpayer-funded proselytization.”

“I have no objection to faith-based organizations providing services. Sally Ann (the Salvation Army) and others have been doing a great job for years. But these people are evangelical fundamentalists,” Martin said. “Offering much-needed sports opportunities is just their way of luring in young prospects.”

Martin said he personally opposes federal funding for the project and hopes the Conservative government does as well. “Would the federal government be so willing to give them $3 million if they were called Youth for Allah?”

Martin has been taking heat from Winnipeg mayor Sam Katz who says he doesn’t believe Youth for Christ is out to convert young people to Christianity.

That’s not what Youth for Christ says. It’s mission:

“To impact every young person in Canada with the person, work and teachings of Jesus Christ and discipling them into the Church.”

The strategy:

Expanding chapter ministries: “YFC will boldly move into areas where we do not now exist, both geographically and culturally. The aboriginal youth community is a prime area for development.”

Youth for Christ was started in the USA in 1940. In 1944 Charles Templeton and Torrey Johnson started the group in Canada. Billy Graham was the first international YFC evangelist. Youth for Christ Canada has 31 chapters and a 24 million dollar budget.

The Winnipeg funding dispute escalated even further when Public Safety Minister Vic Toews jumped into the fray to criticize critics, especially Martin.

“It appears to me Pat Martin doesn’t have a problem with allowing gangs to recruit in his riding, but when it comes to Youth For Christ offering programs, he suddenly has a problem with it.”

The CBC reports a Canadian Youth for Christ director is a Toews campaign contributor.
The federal government has said it will contribute 3 million dollars if Winnipeg approves the loan.

Winnipeg City councillors say they were given a one page handout on the proposal.

Gerbasi and fellow Coun. Dan Vandal have also expressed concern about the lack of information being provided on the project, which they believe is getting rushed through council.

“This money is all going into capital to build this massive new facility that has not been scrutinized,” Gerbasi said.

“There was a one page piece of paper with a motion on it that was walked onto an agenda [Wednesday] and the decision has to be made next week by council with virtually no information provide to members of council who have to make this decision.

“That’s not a way to run a city.”

Kemlin Nembhard executive director of the Daniel McIntyre-St. Matthews Community Association, is also angry about the deal being given Youth for Christ.

She runs youth programs in the community on a shoestring budget and was stunned when she heard the news.

“Given that we’re constantly told that the city has no money, [that] they’re constantly amalgamating and closing centers, and then they all of a sudden turn around and find $2.6 million to give to a group to run programming that won’t be available to a broad range of youth?”

As well as the 15 year municipal loan, Winnipeg city council is being asked to donate the land.
The PR from the YFC Youth Centre of Excellence states it’s goal as plainly as it’s mission:

“A Centre For Youth Excellence envisions services that promote sport and recreation, character development, community health services for all youth (especially for low-income and high-risk youth) and spiritual formation opportunities from a Christian world view.”

Winnipeg city council will vote February 24th.
Why can’t Winnipeg churches float the loan?

2008 Youth for Christ Canada Annual Report (.pdf)
Youth for Christ Canada

Update: After 6 hours of debate Winnipeg City Council approved 2.6 million dollars for Youth for Christ and gave them the land.

Who is blogging?

Hincey’s Store: Playing Political Football in Canada
The Future American: This is what a faith-based initiative looks like
Molly’s Blog: Millions for Christ
Of Gods & Other Monsters: I don’t want to fund a god’s plan, do you?
Slurpees and Murder: Blood Diamond Lanes is such a great title; or, apparently Pat Martin may not be the Antichrist
Endless Spin Cycle:: Dear Winnipeg, This Is What Awaits You
Jay Currie: Upon this Rock
Startled Disbelief: Cash for Christ
Get Religion: Youth for Allah?

I guess the goodwill had to wear off at some point. For weeks now, as the opposition critic for international cooperation, I have been peppered with media questions about CIDA’s performance in Haiti. I’ve refused to rise to the bait, following a longstanding tradition of political cooperation in times of crisis. The CIDA minister has struggled against massive odds to provide assistance in a world of complexity, misery and corruption. The minister herself has provided me with regular updates, keeping me in the loop as to the massive effort required. There will surely come a time, as in all things political, when the Harper government’s response to that devastated nation will come under historical review, but not right now. Especially not right now. It behooves the other parties to cooperate the best they can when it’s a matter of life and death. In this spirit, the respective critics for defence, diplomacy and development from all parties, instead of criticizing, have spent their days assisting with fundraisers to help the Haitians and working on long-term policy for its future.

The troubled International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development (ICHRDD), familiarly known as Rights and Democracy, is a microcosm of a cultural and political struggle playing itself out in Canada today: progressive values versus a combination of far-right ideology, extremist theology and Middle East politics.

That’s an explosive mix. It’s blowing ICHRDD apart as I write this. Readers are probably aware by now that Stephen Harper’s new appointees to the Board have a clear ideological mission: to exempt Israel from human rights scrutiny. To that end, small grants to three respected human rights organizations in the Middle East–Al-Haq, Al-Mezan and B’Tselem–were “repudiated” this past January. They have since been slandered by the Chair of the ICHRDD Board, Aurel Braun, who called B’Tselem (an Israel-based group that has been praised even by the Israeli Attorney-General) “toxic” and “Israeli in name only.”

But as we now know, Braun’s Gleichschaltung went much further than that. Internally, the now-late president of the organization, Rémy Beauregard, was subjected to gross mistreatment, including gratuitous slander. Employees have been terrorized, to the point that all but one or two of the staff wrote an open letter demanding that three new Board members, Braun, Jacques Gauthier and Elliott Tepper, be removed.

The staff complained of psychological harassment, intimidation and ethnic profiling–the latter confirmed, it appears, by interim president Jacques Gauthier. A gag order has been placed on all employees, three top managers have been suspended pour encourager les autres, and a horde of what Maclean’s commentator Paul Wells calls “freelancers” have been brought in, including a private investigator (Claude Sarrazin), forensic auditors, a new office manager (Charles Auger) and now a new communications director–Peter Stockland.

More on Stockland in a minute.

Braun has not been content to focus on Middle East matters. As Chair of the Board of a supposedly independent agency, he has been unusually protective of the current government. He went so far as to administer a tongue-lashing last year to the late president and to senior manager Razmik Panossian (now suspended). Their sin? They had publicly pointed out that Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, despite his denial, had been informed months in advance of Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai’s plans to legalize marital rape. He was apparently mortified that the Minister–with that ever-convenient memory of his–was being contradicted.

But Middle East politics, nevertheless, have been foregrounded at ICHRDD for months. The new Board appointees include two active members of B’nai Brith (Braun and David Matas). Jacques Gauthier wrote a PhD thesis defending the annexation of East Jerusalem by Israel. The Board also has a couple of Conservative Party trained seals (failed CPC candidate Brad Farquhar and Marco Navarro-Génie, who did his thesis work at the University of Calgary under Tom Flanagan), and a business-oriented Christian think-tanker, Michael Van Pelt.

In this affair, some of the dots connect themselves. The involvement of veteran pro-Israel propagandist Gerald Steinberg is probably worth its own story.But let’s step back and look at the wider picture. The ICHRDD imbroglio, in fact, has much to do with a troubling convergence of church and state in Stephen Harper’s Canada.

Canada has no constitutional separation of church and state. The “Establishment Clause” is part of the First Amendment to the US constitution, but far too many Canadians believe we have something similar.

We don’t, and it’s beginning to show. The Harper government, for example, has just awarded a $3.2 million grant to the evangelical organization Youth for Christ. (As NDP critic Pat Martin quipped, what if the outfit had been called Youth for Allah? He was promptly scolded for his opposition by that moral paragon, Public Safety Minister Victor Toews.)

Our Prime Minister is an evangelical Christian, a member of a denomination that believes Christ’s return to earth is imminent. He has called criticism of Israel “anti-Semitic” and suggested that some Members of Parliament were akin to Nazis. Jason Kenney, no slouch in the religion department either, is perhaps even more zealous on the subject of Israel.

Where does this inflexible stance come from?

There is, in fact, a theological explanation for the solidarity now being shown by right-wing pro-Israel Christians. Put simply, Israel must persist because the Bible says it must–until the Second Coming of Christ and the Rapture (watchthis clip to get the flavour).

So the anti-Semitism of evangelical Christians and Catholic demagogues in bygone days has been replaced? Hold on. Not so fast.

The Rapture–the bodily taking up of the faithful into heaven when the world ends–will only be available for Jews who convert to Christianity, “perfected Jews” in far-right commentator Ann Coulter’s parlance. The rest will be incinerated.

The state of Israel, then, not the Jews, is the focus of so-called “Christian Zionism.” If the difference is obscure for some, the evangelicals are quite clear on that point. And so are disillusioned Jews like Stephen Scheinberg, who watched B’nai Brith Canada lurch into the arms of the Christian Right:

[A] state of pluralism in B’nai Brith lasted until about five years ago. (It has now been totally eliminated with the expulsion of eight dissenting members…) At a rump national board meeting, with a bare quorum, Dimant introduced a resolution to forge an alliance with the Christian right in Canada. Knowing something of their American counterparts, I challenged the motion, but was the only one to do so. I turned to well-known Liberal human rights lawyer David Matas of Winnipeg, but he was not similarly alarmed, perhaps because his own unabashedly pro-Israel position was consistent with such an alliance, or perhaps he did not share my fears. [B'nai Brith president Frank]Dimant and others tried to assure me that the alliance was only for Israel advocacy.

I soon learned that was not the case.

(Scheinberg and ICHRDD Chair Aurel Braun–small world–once co-authored a book on the far Right. Those were the days.)

What in fact is emerging in the US and in Canada is a politico-religious alliance of what once upon a time might have been considered strange bedfellows indeed: conservative Jews, ultra-Christians and the extreme Right. The Christians are, to varying degrees, Dominionists, who want the state to govern according to the Law of God. And, in a further shifting of alliances, zealous Catholics like Jason Kenney have taken their places alongside the evangelicals.

Stephen Harper’s personal commitment to Dominionist notions is hardly a secret (the linked article is long, but well worth reading). And he has a powerful ally in “Doctor“Charles McVety, a Christian extremist who holds undue and unelected sway over the policies of the Harper government.

All of these elements and alliances have been brought to the fore by the civil war raging in ICHRDD. The Conservative government, a forgetful Minister of Foreign Affairs, B’nai Brith and various enthusiastic pro-Israel Christians are ranged against those who take universal human rights seriously (almost the entire staff of Rights and Democracy, for starters)–those, in other words, who think that even Palestinians have rights worthy of protection.

It should be no surprise, then, that the interim president of ICHRDD has now appointed Peter Stockland as his contracted-out director of communications. Stockland is, not to put too fine a point upon it, a right-wing religious zealot who used to write a column for the Sun chain a million years ago, and in that capacity (declaration of interest here) tried to smear me as anti-Catholic when I took on a local homophobe who was trying to shut down a university radio station for being too gay-positive.

Stockland is presently the Executive Director of the Centre for Cultural Renewal, and runs a Montreal communications firm. What is the Centre for Cultural Renewal? In their own words:

The Centre for Cultural Renewal is an independent, not-for-profit, charitable organization that helps Canadians and their leaders shape a vision of civil society. To this end, we focus on the important and often complex connections between public policy, culture, moral discourse and religious belief, and produce discussion papers, forums and lectures on key issues affecting Canadian society, public policy and culture.

Our goal is to provide a vision of civil society that addresses the fundamental connections between public policy, culture, moral discourse, and religious conviction. We provide journalists, politicians and the interested public with quality resources, and believe that the quality of contemporary public dialogue is improved with the inclusion of many aspects of the rich and complex vision of the human person viewed in relationship to others, and bearing rights and responsibilities. [emphases added]

What does that mean in reality? This sort of thing:

In late 2009, the Quebec government published its new policy to combat homophobia. Though far-reaching,the policy has generated little commentary of substance. The Centre for Cultural Renewal, in keeping with its mandate to build understanding between faith and culture, has agreed to post a provocative critique written by Douglas Farrow, professor of Christian Thought at McGill University in Montreal.

After analyzing the policy and the thinking behind it, Professor Farrow warns “no society that adopts such (thinking) can hope to survive for long, for along with the reforming and redemptive effects of religion it has rejected the natural, self-replenishing diversity that is the root of its own vitality, in favour of an artificial, stifling “diversity” that can only degenerate into a culture of compulsion and despair.” He further urges citizens inside and outside of Quebec to make public their vigorous dissent from the policy. Whether or not those who read Professor Farrow’s document dissent from the policy or from his critique, we welcome all thoughtful, fair-minded responses and will try to publish a representative selection. [emphasis added]

What does the organization stand for? No boundaries between public policy and religion, and genteel homophobia, for starters. Extreme religious ideology, in other words, if cloaked in relatively moderate language. And now the organization’s Executive Director has been injected directly into the on-going Rights and Democracy war.

More oil, as Yogi Berra might have said, on troubled flames. And the fire is not by any means confined to a small office in Montreal.

Dawg’s Blawg

David Matas is a recent Harper appointment to the troubled Rights and Democracy Board. In the interests of fairness and transparency, Maclean’s columnist Paul Wells reproduces a new communication from Matas, whose previous defence of the agency came to the public via far-right activist Ezra Levant.

One can’t fault Matas for attempting to apply varnish to wood in the last stages of dry-rot. It’s his job, as a Board member, to defend the current administration, and he does. Shorter Matas: move along, nothing to see here, it’s the usual institutional jockeying between a staff and a Board. Policy isn’t at issue, everyone’s on-side, Israel has nothing to do with it.

The day before [the late President Remy] Beauregard died, the Board passed a motion repudiating the grants. The vote was nine in favour and one abstention. None opposed. Beauregard not only voted in favour of repudiation; he spoke for the motion saying “we could have done our homework better”. All that remained in dispute was the manner in which both sides had acted in resolving this policy disagreement.

Recall that this came after several months of browbeating by pro-Israel hawks on the Board, including its Chair, Aurel Braun. A negative evaluation of Beauregard by the Braun faction, then in a minority, was obtained by Beauregard through a Freedom of Information request and distributed at a Board meeting last June, causing no end of consternation to the folks who had thought they could undermine him in secret.

At the January meeting, Beauregard reached the end of his tether. The grants had been made, the money spent long ago, and what was at issue was administrative: new rules by which the President, already in the process of cleaning upmanagement practices, could make discretionary expenditures.

To quote the Braun faction:

The freeze decision is meant to allow the staff time to complete a redesign of decision-making processes to help the organization avoid such situations in the future.

Reading between the lines, tighter administrative processes were continuing to be implemented, and the President went along. As to the “homework” that should have been better done, we have no idea of the full context of that remark. Perhaps it was a last-ditch effort to be conciliatory.

It was quite a gathering in January. Three grants to human rights groups in the Middle East were “repudiated,” an international Board member was shown the door by the Braun Board, and two other Board members resigned on the spot. The battered President left the meeting, went home and died of a heart attack.

Matas couldn’t confine himself to an administrative argument, in any case. Instead, he began a tirade about “anti-Conservative polemicists” who have allegedly “concocted facts.”

…Haroon Siddiqui, in an opinion piece published in the Toronto Star, January 31, 2010 under the heading “How the Harperites ambushed the rights agency” wrote that the Board “voted 7-6 to repudiate the three grants”. A vote of 7 to 6 for repudiation sustained a story line that recent Tory appointees to the Board were bringing to the Board the Tory’s pro-Israel agenda. So that was the assertion, in spite of the fact that the vote was nine to none with one abstention.

Moreover, Siddiqui when he wrote about the 7-6 vote, knew it not to be true. I had written an analysis of the controversy in Rights and Democracy where I recounted the repudiation vote. In my analysis, I pointed out that the motion had passed handily and that Beauregard had voted in favour of the repudiation motion. I sent my analysis to Siddiqui by e-mail. He responded on January 27 by thanking me and indicating he had already read my analysis on a website.

Yet, four days later he wrote an opinion piece suggesting that the Board/staff dispute over the three grants remained alive and that the change in policy was the result of a Harper “hostile takeover” of the Board. Those imaginary facts fit better into the opinion he wanted to express than the real facts. So the imaginary facts prevailed.

7-6, 9-0. Matas’ colleague Aurel Braun, meantime, says the vote was 8-0. Surely there are Minutes to put this matter to rest. In the meantime, Braun and Matas themselves disagree on the facts.

(I have contacted Rights and Democracy to obtain the coordinates of the person responsible for FOI requests so that I can initiate a request for the Minutes of the fateful January 7 meeting. Given the Centre’s unwillingness or inability to respond to date, I would welcome any brown-paper envelopes that people might want to send my way.)

There is no reason, in any case, to quarrel with Siddiqui’s assessment. To claim that policy isn’t involved in the goings-on at Rights and Democracy stretches credulity. The staff has complained bitterly, not only about office administration (and even there, it is rare for an entire shop, maybe minus one or two people, to rise up in protest in this manner about merely administrative matters), but about outright racial profiling. Matas doesn’t address this question, nor, whether the policy issue is allegedly settled or not, why the top echelon of management has just been suspended.

In a similar vein, Ish Theilheimer, at the website PublicValues.ca, wrote that the letter from the staff asking three Board members to resign was directed not to the leadership of the Board, but rather to a trio he characterized as recent political appointees – myself, Michael Van Pelt, and Jacques Gauthier. Yet, Jacques Gauthier was appointed to the Board two years ago.

Michael Van Pelt and I are the new appointees. The January Board meeting was our first. The staff did not ask us to resign. The Theilheimer commentary which criticized the Harper government for using the appointments process to pursue an ultra conservative agenda both quoted and had a link to an article by Maclean’s reporter Paul Wells. That Wells article stated correctly who the three targeted Board members were.

So again here we have an imaginary fact, which the writer knew to be false, being using to buttress an opinion which the real facts could not sustain. The suggestion of a hostile political takeover is more compelling if the staff resignation demand is directed to the new members. The narrative Theilheimer wanted to build is that the staff today still support funding for the three organizations but the Government does not; so the Government appointed people to reverse the funding policy.

This is an amazing display of disingenuousness. Let’s deconstruct:

First, the three people named in the staff letter were Braun, Gauthier and Elliot Tepper. It’s entirely fair to point that out (and Theilheimer provided the link) but it shouldn’t be conflated with the larger narrative: a minority, hawkishly pro-Israel faction had been increasing its numbers on the Board thanks to recent Harper appointments, and the arrival of Matas and Michael Van Pelt gave Aurel Braun the majority he had been looking for. The majority flexed its muscles this January: the scheduled October meeting of the Board had been cancelled by Braun, likely to allow the majority to be created.

Let’s not play semantic games about Van Pelt, either. If “evangelist” is not precise, “fundamentalist Christian” would fit more exactly. And then there is Jacques Gauthier, with his PhD thesis effectively supporting the confiscation of East Jerusalem by Israel: thanks to the Braun Board, he’s now the interim President of Rights and Democracy.

Agenda? What agenda? asks Matas, with wide-eyed innocence. Nobody told him what to do. Sure, he’s a lawyer for B’nai Brith, but he’s a Liberal. But he doesn’t mention the fact that the extremist pro-Israel stance of B’nai Brith has been adopted, holus-bolus, by the Conservative government. Whether he’s holding his nose or not, Matas is completely on-side. His enemy’s enemy, the Harper government, is presently his friend.

And of course no official comment from the current Rights and Democracy Board majority would be complete without the obligatory smear:

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Al Haq, Al Mezan and B’Tselem have gained a reputation for their method of operation – develop a theory first, in their case “Israel is to blame” and then twist or invent the facts to fit the theory. The current round of polemicist attacks on the Tories seems inspired by this method of operation. If the facts cannot sustain their theory – a Conservative party hostile takeover of Rights and Democracy to pursue a right wing ideological agenda – then the facts must be changed to fit the theory.

Whatever, David. But there’s a backstory developing that may have some bearing on the situation.

Michael D. Behiels, of the Department of History at the University of Ottawa, has claimed that the government, in what looks like a wrecking operation at Rights and Democracy, is simply “pandering to B’nai Brith.” He’s right, but there’s more to it than that. The Centre, in fact, appears to be a casualty of the alliance of B’nai Brith’s Israel-can-do-no-wrongers and the fundamentalist Christian Right.

In broad strokes, the nature of that alliance is sketched out here. It goes well beyond Canadian borders, of course. It occupies a twilight space in which Jews who do not toe the line are maniacally denounced as evil traitors, while Christian evangelists seeking the proper unfolding of Biblical prophecy, and who inconveniently believe that Jews will meet their deserved end during the Rapture, are Israel’s current BFFs.

Now, B’nai Brith Canada has been having its own factional dispute going on for several years, and this has just culminated in a lawsuit by nine former members of the organization this past January 20.

These nine members were expelled from the organization in 2008. They include past BB national presidents, and 93-year-old Lou Ronson, the longest-living member of B’nai Brith up to that time, who received his expulsion notice while he was mourning the recent death of his wife. They are suing for $990,000 in damages and reinstatement. As reported in the Canadian Jewish News:

The case arises out of a dispute between several longstanding senior members of the organization – who were expelled – and the organization’s leadership over a number of alleged irregularities. The former members contend that B’nai Brith directors have wrested control of the organization from its members, who are organized in lodges, and that B’nai Brith “has used tactics amounting to intimidation” to silence opposition.

–

The plaintiffs were expelled from B’nai Brith after a disciplinary committee hearing in January 2008 for “conduct unbecoming a member.” The plaintiffs …allege the disciplinary committee hearing was fraught with legal and procedural errors “such that the plaintiffs were thereby denied a fair hearing conducted in accordance with the principles of natural justice.”

They say they were never informed who laid the complaint against them or what specific conduct merited expulsion. As well, they say they weren’t permitted to cross-examine their accusers, they weren’t allowed to present submissions on their own behalf, and that the hearing was adjourned with a request for disclosure of documents still pending.

“The plaintiffs state and the fact is that the directors of the BBC have effectively taken control of the organization from its membership, and in part by way of the taking of such control, failed to provide details of contracts involving themselves and other associated bodies of which they have direction.”

–

The defence acknowledges that “many of the plaintiffs were longstanding members of BBC and BBI. However, the plaintiffs’ tenure and past accomplishments did not insulate them from subsequently engaging in conduct unbecoming a member of these organizations.”

What’s up? Just a common-or-garden institutional struggle, much like the one at Right and Democracy, as Matas is attempting to portray it?

Well, no. The B’nai Brith fracas, as it turns out, is about policy, too–policy that has a direct bearing upon the politics presently at play at Rights and Democracy.

Stephen Scheinberg is a former senior B’nai Brith official. He and Aurel Braun–small world–were co-authors of abook about the far right, but that was then (1997) and this is now.

Factional fighting within the upper echelons of B’nai Brith broke out in 2007. Part of it had to do with how the organization was being run, and part of it arose from the close ties its President, Frank Dimant, was attempting to build with the Conservative party.

In the Fall of that year, Scheinberg broke with the organization and published an article entitled “Partners for Imperium: B’nai Brith Canada and the Christian Right” (HTML version here).

Scheinberg contends that the struggle within B’nai Brith was not ideological, and he also tries to distance Stephen Harper from the religious fundamentalism addressed in his article, fingering Jason Kenney as the PM’s point man in that respect.

But readers may wish to draw their own conclusions from the contents of his piece. Here are some excerpts, with emphases added:

Presiding over B’nai Brith’s declining fortunes since 1978 has been Executive Vice-President Frank Dimant, the son of Holocaust survivors who was born in Munich just after the war. Dimant matured within Montreal’s Betar, the extreme right-wing Jewish youth group associated with the Revisionist-Zionist movement of Ze’ev Jabotinsky and Menachem Begin. Revisionism advocated an Israel on both sides of the Jordan (that is, including much of today’s Jordan).

Dimant took his present position thirty years ago, an extremely long tenure in such a position but testifying to his skill at wielding power. He distributes offices and awards, and even helps his loyal followers gain places in B’nai Brith International, organizes meetings with government officials, and also has ties to the Conservative Party, which could help secure a nomination for parliament. At least two of his followers, to my knowledge, have nominations for the next election.

In the 1980s, when I first came to BBC, attracted by its work for human rights, it was a pluralistic organization. Around the League for Human Rights table I found mostly liberals—a few, such as myself, with more activist backgrounds—and a sprinkling of conservatives. Most of the conservatives were part of the other side of BBC political work, the Institute for International Affairs, and since most of that group’s work was Israel advocacy, it was where Dimant’s own Betar views predominated. I think many, like myself, in the League accepted this, believing that the Institute was Frank Dimant’s small corner of B’nai Brith, but unfortunately that corner has become what today’s B’nai Brith is all about.

This state of pluralism in B’nai Brith lasted until about five years ago. It has now been totally eliminated with the expulsion of eight dissenting members. At a rump national board meeting, with a bare quorum, Dimant introduced a resolution to forge an alliance with the Christian right in Canada. Knowing something of their American counterparts, I challenged the motion, but was the only one to do so. I turned to well-known Liberal human rights lawyerDavid Matas of Winnipeg, but he was not similarly alarmed, perhaps because his own unabashedly pro-Israel position was consistent with such an alliance, or perhaps he did not share my fears. Dimant and others tried to assure me that the alliance was only for Israel advocacy. [emphasis added]

I soon learned that was not the case. One day I received a phone call from NDP MP Svend Robinson, inviting me as Chair of the League for Human Rights to come to Ottawa to testify in favour of his bill to include gays and lesbians among those protected from hate speech. I readily agreed, because it had always been BBC policy to support their inclusion, but I was in for a surprise. It was clear that the main group opposed to Robinson’s bill was the Christian right, and that BBC, that is Mr. Dimant, would not support the bill without protection being given to the speech of anti-gay clergy. I, though much embarrassed, had to notify Robinson that I was unable to appear at the hearings as a representative of BBC. It would have been a good time to resign, but perhaps mistakenly, I hung in.

Meanwhile, Dimant received a honourary doctorate from the Canada Christian College, but unlike most recipients of such degrees, he often uses the title “Dr.” Joint tours of Israel, exchanges of speakers and of course mutual support of the Conservative Party have furthered the linkage. The anti-gay, anti-feminist, pro-censorship stance of Reverend Charles McVety of the Canada Christian College did not seem to bother Dimant, who heads a League for Human Rights.

[That name! Where have I heard it before? --ed.]

A key person in furthering the alliance was Joseph Ben-Ami, a bearded, pleasant individual and an Orthodox Jew who took on the role of BBC’s government affairs representative in Ottawa. He had worked previously for Stephen Harper and then for Stockwell Day as a policy aide, and played a leading role in Day’s leadership campaign. I believe that Ben-Ami was central to the effort to build this alliance. He would go on to work for two of the numerous front organizations established by Rev. McVety—the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies and the Institute for Canadian Values. McVety seems to believe that his multiple groups will further the belief in the power and influence of the Christian right here in Canada. According to a 2006 article in Walrus, McVety’s Institute was established as “a direct riposte to bill C-38” which legalized same-sex marriage.

In any event, McVety and some of his pastoral colleagues, especially Reverends John Tweedie and Dean Bye, became favoured speakers at BBC events. They helped create the illusion that, at long last, Canadian churches were giving their unconditional support to Israel.

That would seem to connect most of the dots. The writing is on the wall, I think, for Rights and Democracy.

Dawg’s Blawg

Who is blogging?

BigCityLib Strikes Back: Spector on Rights and Democracy
Montreal Simon: The Sad Last Days of a Human Rights Campaigner
Public Values: Rights and Democracy shake-up an “extraordinarily serious scandal” - Broadbent
The McGill Daily: Rights and Democracy undermined by feds

The ad was paid for by a BC anti-abortion group called Kelowna Right for Life, and it is probable the group was attempting to garner some pre-Olympic attention.
CHBC general manager Dennis Gabelhouse:

Gabelhouse said from what he knows, the ad was created in the U.S. in 1989 and has never actually aired on North American television, despite many attempts over the years by pro-life groups to air it on local stations.

The ad insertion was paid for by Kelowna Right to Life and was scheduled to begin airing after midnight on Friday, but Gabelhouse said the station had already received complaints from people who had viewed it on the Internet.

Even if those complaints weren’t made, Gabelhouse said he’s certain there would have been some as soon as the ad started running.

“Advertising Standards Canada would eventually tell us to pull it,” he added.

The station has run ads for Kelowna Right to Life before, albeit of a less graphic nature, and Gabelhouse said he expects they will again in the future.

The ad advertises Priests for Life, a US anti-abortion group run by Father Frank Pavone. Pavone has a show on EWTN and is a member of Focus on the Family Institute.

Kelowna Right to Life

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unrepentant old hippie
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Dammit Janet!

Coded biblical inscriptions have been found on the telescopic sights of rifles used by soldiers from several nations, including Canada, who are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. The company that supplied the inscribed weapons initially defended its actions unapologetically, and the response by the American military spokespersons has been under whelming. The inscriptions, placed where they are, represent a betrayal of the Christian scriptures and their central message of peace and reconciliation, although some obviously see this activity as admirable and patriotic. The incident and responses to it raise deeply troubling questions about elements of the American military.

A group called the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which seeks to preserve the separation of church and state in the U.S., blew the whistle to ABC News in mid-January, saying it had received a complaint from a U.S. Army infantryman. The gun sights allow soldiers using them to shoot at people with greater accuracy in the dark or in dim light. The inscriptions are in the form of raised lettering and numerals added to the serial numbers along the sights. One of the inscriptions reads: “JN8:12”, a reference to a passage in John where Jesus says, “Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” A second inscription reads “2COR4:6” and refers to St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. The passage refers to God’s “[giving] us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”

No apologies

A Michigan-based company called Trijicon, which has a $660 million contract with the U.S. Marine Corps, supplies the rifle sights. Trijicon, when first asked about it, defended its actions saying that, “as part of our faith and our belief in service to our country, Trijicon has put scripture references on our products for more than two decades.” The practice began under its founder, Glyn Bindon, a devout Christian from South Africa, who was killed in a 2003 plane crash. His son, Steven Bindon, is now president of the company and well connected to the leadership of the religious right in the United States. Trijicon states on its website: “We believe that American is great when its people are good. This goodness has been based on biblical standards throughout our history and we will strive to follow those morals.”

Initially, U.S. military officials also defended the use of the inscriptions, saying that they did not violate a constitutional ban on religious proselytizing by American troops. Officials said that the military would not stop using the telescopic sights. On January 20, an Air Force spokesperson named Major John Redfield compared the inscriptions to the use of Biblical language on the U.S. currency. “Are we going to stop using money because the bills have “In God We Trust” on them?” he asked. “As long as the sights meet the combat needs of troops, they’ll continue to be used.”

Barrage of criticism

That position changed within a few days after a barrage of criticism from a variety of groups, including the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and the Muslim Public Affairs Council. They said the implied message is that American soldiers are fighting a holy war against Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq, even though American politicians, including President Obama, have said this is not the case. A second, and perhaps predominant concern among soldiers is that publicity surrounding the inscriptions could put them at added risk if ever they are captured in battle. The defence departments and military officials in New Zealand, Australia and Britain, responded cautiously, saying that they had not known their soldiers were being provided with weapons bearing the biblical inscriptions. Within a few days of the controversy erupting, however, those organizations and the even U.S. military had decided that the inscriptions were not acceptable. By January 22, military spokespersons were saying that they did not approve of them and wanted them removed. Trijicon then announced that it would provide “modification kits” at its own expense for that purpose. Owner Stephen Bindon was now describing his company’s action as “both prudent and appropriate.”

A Canadian military spokesperson admits that Ottawa-based Joint Task Force 2 and a special operations unit from nearby Petawawa use the Trijicon rifle sights in Afghanistan, but Major Don MacNair cites national security reasons in refusing to say how many of the sights are employed. The activities of the joint task force are shrouded in secrecy, but the unit often works behind enemy lines and its members are trained to kill with cold efficiency. MacNair told the Ottawa Citizen that the inscriptions are inappropriate and should be removed.

Christo-fascism

The most disturbing question here is whether these military inscriptions represent a rogue act by a company owned by a right wing Christian businessman, or whether they represent an attitude and practice that is pervasive in the military and therefore more sinister. There has been significant reportage on the religious influence in the American military. Jeff Sharlet, writing in Harper’s magazine (May 2009) reported on a “subtle civil war” that is occurring for the “soul of the military.” He reports on a “small but powerful movement of Christian soldiers concentrated in the officers corps” who are trying to turn the military into a “righteous Christian army”. These officers bully recruits and ordinary soldiers to become involved in mandatory assemblies and prayer groups (open only to Christians), and they appear as speakers on the prayer breakfast circuit and on religious media owned by fundamentalists.

“What men such as these have fomented,” Sharlett writes, “is a quiet coup within the armed forces: not of generals encroaching upon civilian rule but of religious authority replacing the military’s once staunchly secular code … they see themselves not as subversives but as spiritual warriors –‘ambassadors for Christ in uniform,’ according to the Officers’ Christian Fellowship.” Sharlett also writes about how the chaplaincy in the U.S. military, which was once apportioned strictly according to the country’s religious demographic, has come to be dominated by graduates from fundamentalist bible colleges.

Every person in the U.S. military, Sharlet writes, swears an oath to defend the Constitution. But for fundamentalist officers and chaplains, “the Constitution is itself a blueprint for a Christian nation.” These officers and chaplains see the campaign in Afghanistan and Iraq as holy wars, exemplified by an example Sharlet discovered of soldiers in Iraq travelling through neighbourhoods with a bullhorn shouting, “Jesus killed Mohammed” – and shooting people who objected. This faction within the military also sees enemies everywhere at home, and believes it must “wage spiritual warfare against their countrymen” – those “post moderns” who believe in diversity and egalitarianism. Sharlet believes this religious intrusion into the American military is so deeply rooted that President Obama has chosen a hands off policy in exchange for “evangelical peace.”

In 2006, President George Bush began to use the term Islamo-fascism, which neo-conservative pundits Washington had been employing for some time to describe America’s enemies in the Middle East. It was an imprecise description that linked an entire world religion with an extremist political ideology — and moderate Muslims were offended. They might now ask in return if Christo-fascism is emerging within the American military.

Pulpit & Politics