Stephen Harper just can't quit his inner-Evangelical

Here's a great article by David Haskell. You can see the original here. The title caught me - I must admit I was pleasantly surprised...

Stephen Harper just can't quit his inner-Evangelical
Feb. 4, 2006. 01:00 AM
DAVID HASKELL
GUEST COLUMN

Stephen Harper, our newest Prime Minister, is an evangelical Christian. Over the course of the election campaign, certain media outlets, Liberal Party supporters, and members of Canada's intelligentsia have suggested that that makes him different from the rest of us ... us being "average Canadians."

Let me make this perfectly clear (I stole that line from Paul Martin), Harper's faith does make him different, but not in the ways his detractors are suggesting.

As an evangelical, Harper is a strong supporter of traditional marriage but that hardly put him at odds with "average Canadians;" if anything it lumps him in with the majority. Consider this: a poll conduct last year for CBC News found that more than half of Canadians, 52 per cent, said they disagreed with the Liberal government's plan to change the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples.

As an evangelical Harper probably supports some restrictions on abortion (I say probably, because he has never said so himself).

But again, this doesn't set him against most Canadians, it aligns him with them.
A 2004 Environics poll showed that more than two-thirds of the population wants greater restrictions on abortion. In fact, some experts feel that percentage would increase if more Canadians knew that we have no abortion legislation and as such a pregnancy can be terminated up to its final month.

Note that I said Harper, as an evangelical, might support restrictions but not a ban on abortion. I'm basing that on the empirical evidence. While nearly 100 per cent of Canadian evangelicals find abortion morally offensive, research done by sociologist Sam Reimer shows that only about 28 per cent think the procedure should be outlawed. Interestingly, a 2005 Environics poll shows a similar percentage of "average Canadians" are of the same mind as "hard-line" evangelicals believing that "life should be protected from conception."

How do we know that Harper isn't one of the evangelical hard-liners gunning for abolition of abortion? Well, as it says in the Gospel of Matthew: "By their fruits you shall know them."

Harper's track record shows that he's always been a moderate conservative when it comes to social issues.

Read any of the policy or position papers written by Harper from the time he was a grad student at the University of Calgary, to his days as a Reform Party MP, to his stint as head of the National Citizens' Coalition and you will be surprised to find that the only time he talks at length about values is when he is discussing the value of the dollar and how to maximize its potential. Conservative social values, while I'm sure they are important to him, are not what get his motor revved.

People often forget (or perhaps in the case of his Liberal opponents, they choose to ignore) that Harper quit as a Reform MP because his party colleagues often made social issues, and not economic and political reform, their primary focus. After his resignation a report in the Toronto Star referred to Harper as a "moderate." Yes, Canada's national voice of the left, called him a moderate.

While the values stemming from Harper's evangelical faith may seem extreme relative to the values held by national media personnel, Liberal Party insiders and those in ivory towers; relative to the values held by a majority of Canadians they appear pretty mainstream.

But as I said at the outset, in some ways Harper's faith does make him different from the rest of it. Specifically, if Harper is a typical evangelical then chances are he is more prone to be honest than the population-at-large.

Research, also done by Reimer, has determined that because Canadian evangelicals see honesty, fidelity and charity as categorical imperatives and not situational options they tend to show more continuity between what they say and what they do. In the vernacular of evangelicals: if they talk the talk, they walk the walk.

The implications of these findings are staggering: it could mean that for the first time in decades Canadians might have a Prime Minister who doesn't lie to them.

Skeptical? I understand. It may be easy for evangelicals, but for the rest of us ... it's hard to believe in miracles.

David Haskell teaches journalism at the Brantford campus of Wilfrid Laurier University.