Jim Naughton, our Editor in Chief here at Episcopal Café, was one of the first people to write about the actions of the Christian Theocrats in the US. Now there’s book that discusses the same group and their growing influence in Canada.
The book, The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism by Marci McDonald hit the shelves this past spring and describes in details the actions by religious based groups in Canada to outlaw homosexuality, abortion and to “restore Canada to ‘its divinely determined destiny to be a nation ruled by Christian laws and precepts’.
There’s a good and critical review of the book by a former Parlimentary reporter, Bruce Myers, on the Anglican Journal’s website.
McDonald suggests the effort to transform Canada into a Christian theocracy is quietly but systematically occurring on several fronts. It is guided and funded by socially conservative Christians of evangelical persuasion. She dubs them “theo-cons.”
For a long time disparate and unorganized, conservative-minded Christians in Canada found a single voice in the national debate over same-sex marriage. Their unified opposition galvanized them into a political force to be reckoned with, and one courted more and more by the federal Conservatives.
Inspired by successful examples in the U.S., efforts by so-called Christian nationalists to influence Canadian public policy have increased since Stephen Harper’s Tories took office, McDonald argues. Notably, a growing number of socially conservative Christian organizations have in recent years established a permanent presence in Ottawa. They include such groups as Focus on the Family Canada, the National House of Prayer, and Trinity Western University’s Laurentian Leadership Centre.
These efforts, McDonald says, are aimed at finding their fulfilment in what she calls the “Armageddon factor or the belief that Canada has some particularly significant role to play during the so-called ‘end times.’ ” For those who believe, fulfilling this destiny means transforming Canada into nothing less than a “Bible-based theocracy.
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More.