By Lloyd Mackey

WE take note, today, of last week's written presence of two Canadian religio-political senior statespersons -- Preston Manning and Reginald Stackhouse -- in succeeding issues of The Globe and Mail.

On March 2, shortly before Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's release of the federal budget, Manning extoled the virtues and mechanisms of innovation, and the need for better practices in business, public services and democracy.

On March 3, Stackhouse encouraged Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his government to "stay focused on big issues and stop getting into trouble over secondary ones".

It was the rather controversial contention in the third to last paragraph in Stackhouse's piece that forms the basis for my critique, today. The subject concerns some of the communication idiosyncrasies involving people who, in normal circumstances, would consider themselves to be fellow followers of Jesus.

Stackhouse makes the point that the Harper government has been "impressive in dealing with the world credit crisis ... handled the 'Buy American' threat with persistent skill [and] marshalled Canada's aid to Haiti with speed and skill." Having done that, he wonders why the same government gets "caught in the wringer over one low-level issue after another."

One explanation he puts forward is that "maybe it's a hangover from the Reform side of the party's ancestry that explains this partly ideological, partly psychological dogmatic intransigence. Maybe it is juvenile refusal to accept the biblical wisdom that 'a soft answer turneth away wrath.'"

Stackhouse has an illustrious past that has included a stint as a Mulroney Conservative MP and the principalship of Wycliffe College, the Anglican evangelical seminary at the University of Toronto. He holds doctorates in both philosophy and theology. And, now in his mid-80s, he is distinguishing himself in writing particularly for those who want to age well, both intellectually and spiritually.

Anyone who understands Christian evangelicalism and political conservatism, in both the eastern and western parts of Canada, might be able to decipher the perhaps-unintended irony of Stackhouse's criticism of Reform.

That is why Reform founder Preston Manning's written appearance, just the day before Stackhouse's piece, helps to provide some context to this discussion. And, in so doing, it illustrates the interesting challenge faced by the present prime minister - and the Liberal leader who sits opposite him - in managing and critiquing public policy.

Manning makes three suggestions for the implementing of innovation in Canada - in Parliament and the provincial legislatures; in health care; and in the private sector. And he says that for innovation to flourish, there is a need for mechanisms, some which may not yet be invented.

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Manning, it should be recalled, built Reform out of the same western populism that spawned the socially-democratic NDP. The difference was that Reform did its stuff with the tools of what might be described as a very broadly-based social conservatism. Track some of his early writing and one will find periodic recognition of the issues raised by socialism, particularly with respect to poverty and family issues, and the finding of solutions through conservative or conserving manners of thinking.

When Reform began in the late 80s, some of its most formidable opposition came from Christian people in the Mulroney Conservative party, who believed Manning was splitting the conservative movement. Conversely, some of its eastern-based support came from people, many of them Christian, who responded to Reform's early cry that "the West wants in" with the response that "the East wants in."

Stephen Harper, not Manning, was the person to whom it fell to bring the various parts of the Conservative movement together. But it could yet be people like Manning and Stackhouse who could collaborate to help complete that task.

Some readers will wonder what collaboration within the conservative movement has to do with faith-based initiatives. After all, to be Christian is not necessarily to be conservative or vice versa. But sometimes there is an understanding among Christians of similar mind, in various sectors of both the nation and the church.

Stackhouse, in implicitly linking Reform and dogmatic intransigence, has understandably verbalized a mainly central Canada-based mindset with respect to western-based institutions. And Manning, coming from a western influence-base, has understandably built a base for a political movement that works its influence from the hinterlands to the urban centres -- not the other way around. The headline for the Stackhouse Globe piece calls for Harper to "focus on the big stuff". And Manning wrote a whole book on that subject, entitled Think Big: My Adventures in Life and Democracy (M & S, 2003).

Later this week, the Manning Centre for Building Democracy will be holding its annual networking conference in Ottawa. I will be lurking around the edges, there, looking for ways in which the Stackhouse and Manning perspectives might find resonance.

Lloyd Mackey is a member of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa and author of Stephen Harper: The Case for Collaborative Governance (ECW Press, 2006), More Faithful Than We Think: Stories and Insights on Canadian Leaders Doing Politics Christianly (BayRidge Books, 2005) and Like Father, Like Son: Ernest Manning and Preston Manning (ECW Press, 1997). Lloyd can be reached at lmackey@canadianchristianity.com.

March 11/2010