This was happening while we weren’t paying attention - Harper aided and abetted by Scheer and Kenney and Ford (although Ford aids them but because of his personal political self-interest, not his zealous Christianity). This is their hidden agenda for Canada: a religious extremist political co-opting of the Conservative party in Canada.
This is the very ugly, very frightening face of THEOCRATIC RULE.
We must do everything in our power as voters to make sure Scheer doesn’t become PM! - Paula Stein
This is the very ugly, very frightening face of THEOCRATIC RULE.
We must do everything in our power as voters to make sure Scheer doesn’t become PM! - Paula Stein
I find it very interesting that the reviewer is trying to refute the author's conclusions. I am going to read this book.
" McDonald sees Christian nationalist conspiracy everywhere she looks. Yet much of what she describes sounds merely like politics as usual, which perhaps makes it no less disturbing to some."
What has become normalised is very disturbing. Andrew Scheer wants to be PM. Among other promises, he says he will defund universities that don't maintain freedom of speech. Well, that sounds alright... except, the speech he wants to be free is spoken by people like Ann Coulter, Steve Bannon, Faith Goldy,.. He wants to ensure that universities cannot stop such speakers from appearing on campus. And to do so, he threatens to defund research programs that advance medicine, engineering and science. That is not just holding universities hostage, forcing them to accept inhumane, irrational notions as equally valid. No, this is holding our society hostage. Do we want cancer treatments to improve? Do we want spinal injury treatments to progress? MS therapies? Alzheimer's research? Do we want Canadians to make important advancements in engineering and science? If we do, Scheer says we have to accept what his pals say, and act like it's perfectly normal.
I wonder, will he also force students to go and listen to these people? In large part, when these speakers' engagements have been cancelled, it is the institution's response to protests and petitions from students who do not want to see these people's views validated by appearing at their university. There would be some schadenfreude in having these speakers stand up in empty theatres.
As can be seen in the article appearing in the comments, it is progressive speech that is being stifled in academia in the US. And that may well be the case in Canada as well. This sort of thing is becoming "normal". We can't close our eyes to some really terribly awful ideas that are beginning to be considered a valid opinion.
It's insidious, this skewing of our society away from facts to magical thinking.
Review: The Armageddon Factor, by Marci McDonald
Many Canadians watching the pastor-politicians and "culture wars" south of the border think, with a sigh of relief: It could never happen here. Marci McDonald is out to prove them wrong.
The Armageddon Factor is an account of Canada's homegrown "Christian nationalism," meant to startle secular citizens into vigilance. She argues that Stephen Harper has opened the way for conservative evangelicals to play an unprecedented role in Ottawa, but these "Christian nationalists" are not content with his dutiful pronouncements of "God bless Canada."
Driven by a theocratic vision of government and an apocalyptic mania, they will, she is certain, stop at nothing short of a "Christian nation [in which]non-believers … have no place, and those in violation of biblical law, notably homosexuals and adulterers, would merit severe punishment and the sort of shunning that once characterized a society where suspected witches were burned."
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