The best thing
about being a religion reporter is being able to interview smart people like Kevin
Flatt and John Stackhouse, like I did when I recently asked them for reflections
on why religion is getting so little attention from the political parties
during this election (2019).
The worst thing
about it is not being able to use all the great information they give me—like with my Oct. 12 Free Press column about the lack of attention being paid to religion in
the current election. So I’ve reprinted here what they shared with me on that
topic. Enjoy!
Kevin is an Associate
Professor of History and Department Chair, History, Politics, and International
Studies, at Redeemer University College.
John
is Samuel J. Mikolaski Professor of Religious Studies & Dean of
Faculty Development at Crandall University.
First up, thoughts from Kevin about why we aren’t hearing much about religion during this election. Could it be partly the fault of the media?
“First, one of the main factors shaping news coverage is the attitudes
and inclinations of journalists, who, as a group, tend to be fairly irreligious
and rather uncomfortable with overt displays of religion in political arena,
especially conservative Christianity (Protestant or Catholic), which is the
variety most likely to be politically significant in Canada.
“In fact, on average, journalists are one of the most politically and
socially liberal groups in Canada, and one of the least religious, which shapes
what they collectively see as important and worthy of attention, and whether
religious elements in politics are framed negatively or positively.
“This is turn shapes the views of the electorate and the messaging of
politicians with a net effect of suppressing overt discussion of issues linked
to religion and a ‘closeting’ of any conservative religious views that might
have political implications.
“(Witness all of the suspicion directed at Scheer for his views on moral
issues, the relative silence about Trudeau's politically inert progressive
Catholicism, and May's embarrassed backtracking after she mentioned Jesus in an
interview.)
“Scheer's views raise red flags for journalists, but Trudeau and May get
free passes, as does Singh, for somewhat different reasons.
“For some empirical research on these topics, see David M.
Haskell's book,
Through a Glass Darkly: How the News Media Perceive and Portray Evangelicals (Clements
Academic, 2009) The book is now a decade old, but I'd bet good money that the
main findings would still apply today. Similar conclusions have been reached by
research in the U.S.
“Second, there are certainly fewer religiously active Canadians today
than in, say, the 1950s, and partly as a result we don't see religion
functioning as a kind of politically potent identity group the way it did a
century ago in Protestant-Catholic tensions (which overlapped with
English-French tensions) and resulted in a tendency for Protestants and
Catholics to align along party lines.
“Other identities—region, language, urban/rural, immigrants vs.
native-born, economic situation, education level—generally seem to be more
important when it comes to many political issues.
“Third, it would be a mistake, however, to conclude that religion is
irrelevant in Canadian politics.
“For one thing, the religiously unaffiliated (especially atheists) are
in fact a ‘religious group,’ in the sense that their worldview and values
affect their political choices just as is the case for Canadians engaged in a
traditional religion.
“Political choices typically come down to being choices about values,
and the hierarchy of values; thus, since worldviews (whether religious or
secular) shape people's values they will always be politically relevant.
“This is especially so when it comes to explicitly religious issues: you
can bet that religion is playing an important role in provincial politics in
Quebec right now, for example, with religious minorities alienated from the
governing party by Bill 21 and the deeply secular majority energized.
“But it is also true for other issues where there are deep
worldview-based divides in the Canadian electorate: abortion, some sexuality
issues, educational choice and parental rights, etc.
“Again, the true range of opinions and depth of disagreement among the
electorate on these issues is often obscured by the high level of
secular-progressive consensus among most mainstream journalists (on this, see
Jonathan Kay's recent piece on the lack
of substantive discussion of abortion in Canadian elections).
“This mutes the political effect of such divisions and drives it
underground, but does not eliminate it. And the right confluence of
circumstances can bring it to the fore.
“Fourth, my impression is that religion has actually become a stronger
driver of partisan alignment in recent decades. John Stackhouse says evangelicals
and conservative Catholics don't agree even among themselves on many political
issues, and that is true. But they agree more than they used to, both within
these groups and between them.
“Research done by the Evangelical Fellowship in the 1990s found that the
distribution of the evangelical vote across the parties was not that different
from the general vote distribution, albeit with a slight conservative lean.
“But more recent research seems to suggest that conservative religious
views are now a much stronger predictor of voting Conservative, and religious
non-affiliation a stronger predictor of voting for left-leaning or progressive
parties.
“This may reflect a consolidation of views among evangelicals and
conservative Catholics, but I think more likely it reflects the fact that since
the 1990s that Liberals have taken harder and harder progressive lines on
several social issues.
"In the 1990s, you had pro-life Liberal MPs and Liberal MPs (and
leaders) opposed to same-sex marriage; today, neither of these views are even
acceptable in the party, and in the past few years Liberal governments seem to
have been working to eliminate such views from respectable society at large
(e.g. the Canada Summer Jobs debacle, the Wynne sex-ed curriculum in Ontario).
“And of course the NDP takes an equally hard line on these issues (the
Greens have been a bit more gentle, though their preferences are clear).
"I’ve heard from many evangelical and Catholic voters, who used to vote
Liberal or NDP . . . that they feel like
the only party that where they would even be welcome as supporters is the
Conservatives. This isn't so much because they prefer the Conservatives in
terms of fiscal policy, health care, etc., but because of rhetoric and policies
related to abortion, education, identity issues, etc.
“Again, something quite similar has happened in the US with Republicans
and Democrats, though there of course are other things going on there that
don't apply in Canada.
“Fifth, and finally, given that immigrants to Canada tend to be much
more religiously committed than other Canadians (interestingly, a plurality of
them are Christians, typically with quite conservative religious views), and
large-scale immigration seems likely to continue and probably increase for the
foreseeable future, there is going to be a potential for religious dynamics to
play an important political role in our large urban centres.
“This is anecdotal, but I've heard that enrollment at private Muslim and
Christian schools in the Toronto area has skyrocketed since the Wynne sex-ed
curriculum was introduced into the public schools (subsequently largely kept in
place by Ford's government).
“Folks who are willing to make the major financial sacrifices to put
their kids into private schools that reflect their religious values because
they feel unwelcome in the public schools are also at least potentially willing
to have those values shape their voting patterns. This may be a significant
political liability for the Liberals and NDP moving forward, though it would be
a very tricky thing for the Conservatives to capitalize on it.”
Next up, John suggesting another reason religion gets so little attention at voting time is because there isn't a religious bloc politicians need to cater to.
“Religion isn’t discussed by politicians in Canada . . . not because it
doesn’t matter, but because it does.
"It matters in two respects, in fact.
“First, religion matters to religious people, of which there is a
significant minority in Canada, but different sorts of religious people want
different things from politics and political parties, including people within
the same religious traditions.
“For instance, churchgoing evangelical Protestants and Catholics take
their religion seriously, but have no uniform views on most key issues.
“There isn’t a single evangelical or Catholic policy position on global
climate change or indigenous issues or child poverty or overstretched education
and health regimes—so there’s literally no point mentioning them or appealing
to them as blocs, since they aren’t blocs.
“Second, religion matters to nonreligious people because many of them
fear that religious people are fanatics determined to force everyone else to
conform to their peculiar preferences, whether shariah or dominionism or
conservative Catholicism or whatever.
“Therefore, since there is nothing to be gained by appealing to
religious communities in toto—since they
don’t agree on policy issues and therefore can’t be expected to line up with
this or that party on this or that issue—there is much to be lost by appealing
to one or another of them.
“(Witness how many people get jumpy whenever the Conservatives come
within a mile of appealing to traditional Christians). For this reason, Canadian
politicians steer clear of religion.
“I don’t think the absence of explicit religious language or appeals to
religious people is a mark of secularism, or indifference, but of remarkable
political pluralism within religious groups and anxiety among the
non-religious.”
