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How Canada's Christian right was built
McDonald, Marci
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/806535--how-canada-s-christian-right-was-builtDate Written: 2010-05-07 Publisher: Toronto Star Year Published: 2010 Resource Type: Pamphlet Cx Number: CX11871 The religous right is organizing hard, and effectively, to get their hands on the levers of power. Abstract: Excerpts: In fact, as the movement focuses on taking over the "gateways of influence," one of the portals within its sights is the mainstream media itself. Where once social conservatives regarded the fourth estate as hostile territory from which they had been sidelined, now the heads of religious-right think tanks, such as Dave Quist and Joseph Ben-Ami, have become regular spinmeisters for the social conservative point of view, their numbers on the speed-dial of Ottawa reporters seeking an instant quip or a quote. At the same time, Faytene Kryskow is training her young activists in the art of getting letters to the editor and opinion pieces published - furnishing online examples to copy and a daily index of articles demanding commentary - none of them betraying their links to 4MYCanada. As she crowed to a gathering of MPs, "You are likely reading our words much more often than you realize." At a New Brunswick press conference in the midst of the 2008 election campaign, Stephen Harper staked out his political legacy, arguing that under his government, the Canadian public had already become more conservative. Although he seemed to be referring to fiscal attitudes, social conservatives like Joseph Ben-Ami did not disagree. "In the real world, you measure success not so much on whether you won or lost but where the centre of gravity is," Ben-Ami says. "And I think in this country, it has shifted somewhat to the right." For this new wave of Christian nationalists, united across the continent by the charismatic renewal movement, the signs and portents of the end-times are unmistakable, apparent in each new earthquake report or tremor of the global financial system, and they feel they have no time to waste. Their mission is to prepare God's dominion on Earth, and they are unlikely to rest until they see their perceived scriptural prophecies fulfilled in Ottawa and Jerusalem alike. As Faytene Kryskow underlines in her book, Marked, she and her fellow revivalists are no longer content to agitate for policy crumbs. They have "a take-over mentality," she writes: "They are convinced that God has called them to take over the world!" Subject Headings |