John Smulo writes a blog that encourages a lot of dialogue and he recently made a post called George Bush Sucks. He was trying to explore the unthinking assent of American Evangelical Christianity to George Bush and the Republican Party. This is strange for a Canadian to think about, because while it would be difficult to get elected President of the US without professing to be a Christian, it would be difficult to get elected as Prime Minister in Canada if you did profess anything beyond a private faith.
So, with these thoughts percolating in the back of me noggin, I found Mark Noll’s excellent article called “What Happened to Christian Canada?” (Note: you can find this article for free if you have access to ebscohost. The link I gave has an excerpt.) was very surprised to discover that Canada had much higher rates of professing Christianity than the US prior to WWII, but of course today that trend is dramatically inverted.
Another fascinating thing, given the American divide between evangelicals and social activism, is that the NDP party (Canada’s essentially socialist party) grew out of the Cooperative Commenwealth Federation. The interesting part is that the CCC was founded by Tommy Douglas, a Baptist socialist. Not only would it be nearly unthinkable today for a Baptist to be a socialist like this, it’s particularly interesting because the current NDP party is highly secular liberal in its values.
So, that’s some history that I learned today. Anybody care? ;)