Posted on 03/20/2006 8:57:44 AM PST by NorthOf45
Inside the strict faith of unfaith
Globe and Mail
Rex Murphy
March 18, 2006
Stephen Harper ended his address to the Canadian troops with what has become a signature salutation: “God bless Canada.”
We must presume that when he says “God bless Canada,” that that is precisely what Mr. Harper hopes for. It is not rote.
Mr. Harper is a Christian. He believes in God. And from everything I've read about the Prime Minister, his is a serious belief, not some decorative shawl worn to court others of similar persuasion, or an item affixed to the campaign bio to signal “community” with the great number and variety of Christians in this country.
For those who have junked religion, passed it by or simply never had time for it, the practice of invoking the Creator can seem quaint, tedious, and utterly passé. For more militant secularists, who are in their fervour and stridency more often than they would wish a mirror of the fundamentalists they frequently deride, the invocation can be positively “offensive.”
I'm not very sympathetic to this latter posture, as I have not often observed the secularists willfully or voluntarily moderating the intensity or expression of their convictions out of deference to the very many others who are not of like mind. Just as one example, people curse and swear (even these words seem dated in these triumphalist secular days) with an ease and abandon, in public and private, at home and at work, without the least thought that there may be others present to whom foul or blasphemous language carries much more than an edge of rudeness and discomfort.
“Too bad” is often the unspoken rider to a good blue streak mingling “Christ” and the “F-word” in all its variations within the hearing of those who have not yet discovered the utility and glee of absolutely uninhibited speech. Those who are still believers, those to whom the name of their Saviour is still sacred, and for whom verbal obscenity is still instinctively repulsive, are more or less told, in another of the elegancies of our age, to “get used to it.”
I can but speculate that Mr. Harper may — in his own way, either mischievously or otherwise — be returning the favour. It may be the Christian imperative to turn the other cheek, but scripture, I think, is silent on the question of whether, when the one side gives you the verbal finger, you may not cock a lexical digit in return.
Ardent non-believers are every bit as squeamish as their opposites.
Perhaps, given the ascendancy and complacency of non-belief in Western culture, and the ever more numerous and thick barricades against any manifestation of belief in the public domain, non-believers think the field is entirely theirs. And so, Mr. Harper's “God bless Canada” may be something more than a mere annoyance to them: It may be the first shadow of a doubt — and nothing is more cruel to a fundamentalist than the approach of doubt — that the ascendancy they assume is complete is a fiction.
That would be intolerable. The faith of unfaith cannot abide a discrepancy between its reality and reality. The thought that religion might have a meaning and significance for a great many of their fellow citizens, beyond its anthropological and historical significance, that it might mean something here and now, and that it should be expressed, is a horror of an insight. In our secular dispensation, God is at best an empty word, a hollow signifier, and the idea of reverence for his Name is at best the reflex of yokels. Time magazine asked the question 40 years ago, Is God Dead? and did not “stay for an answer.”
I am aware that there is another objection to Mr. Harper's habit of asking God to bless our nation, and I'm not sure if this objection has a sectarian basis or not. It is that President George Bush also frequently “signs off” his speeches with the parallel formula of “God bless America.”
In this case, the objection is not so much that Mr. Harper is wearing his faith on his sleeve, as that he is shining a light on his pro-Americanism and, furthermore, that he is miming the zealotry of the “fundamentalist” Mr. Bush. In some quarters, that is a far deeper (it is mortal with a vengeance) sin than the mere public display of an active faith.
Over whole regions of the Western world, otherwise so cleansed of even the vocabulary of religious observance, being pro-Bush may be the last heresy. That position, among those who style themselves progressives, speaks not so much of a failure of intellect; it is a flaw of the spirit, an irrationality so profound that it must have a supernatural (and likely demonic) source.
Still, both Mr. Harper and his critics, at least here, meet on common ground. They are both invoking a higher power to aid them in confronting the world. For the anti-Bushites, any belief in the goodness of Mr. Bush is a tear in the fabric of reality.
Personally, I see nothing wrong with a politician invoking a higher power. I find some comfort in the idea of a leader acknowledging one.
Rex Murphy is a commentator with CBC-TV's The National and host of CBC Radio One's Cross-Country Checkup.
Rex Murphy Ping
He seems to always hit the nail on the head. He is one, if not the only, reason to look at the Globe and Mail or listen to CBC. I try to post his articles whenever possible. I'll add you to the ping list. If you want off of it, just say the word.
These people who have a problem with the PM saying God Bless Canada, do they also have a problem with "God keep our land...." from our National Anthem?
Thanks. I doubt I will want off.
Rex Murphy is an interesting guy. Very very observant. He is a high status media elite guy but not really part of the "family."
Did y'all know Rex Murphy is a Rhodes Scholar too?
Not bad for a Newfie, eh? ; )
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