By Lloyd Mackey

It was good, this past Saturday, to take in a couple of 'slices' of the February 18-21 National Christian Law Student Conference, staged by the Christian Legal Fellowship. The event took place at the University of Ottawa, just across the Rideau Canal from the now-almost- unprorogued Parliament.

The two slices were:
• A talk given by Faytene Kryskow of 4 My Canada, focusing on "the importance of strategic prayer in seeing justice and mercy established in our nation."
• A panel discussion involving two evangelical Christian MPs who are members of mainstream parties, and the leader of the Christian Heritage Party, Jim Hnatiuk. The MPs were a Saskatoon area Conservative, Maurice Vellacott, and a Toronto-based Liberal, John McKay.

We focus, first, on Kryskow.

The major thrust of her talk was to trace her "pilgrimage" from working with street people in Vancouver, shortly after her conversion to Christ in the 90s, to leading groups of young people in some 600 visits to MPs over the past few years. Those visits have been in the interests of encouraging politicians to "establish justice and mercy" in their parliamentary precinct.

As she does, often, when she is speaking to Christian groups and politicians, she made reference to a series of political tracking polls taken in the period leading to the 2008 federal election, which saw the Conservatives re-elected to government with an increased minority.

Kryskow cited The Cry, a mass prayer event on Parliament Hill just a few weeks before the election writ was dropped. She made the argument that it might have been the prayers offered that day which began to build the gap between the Liberals and the Conservatives. Those polls were showing the deadlock being broken, with a Conservative increase and a Liberal decline.

I have heard Kryskow maintain, in other circumstances - in, for example, a video of a sermon she preached at a Comox Valley church - that some Christian leaders believe prayer events before both the 2006 and 2008 elections made the difference in the electing of "a Christian government."

At this past Saturday's event, she was most careful not to articulate that sentiment, but she left the inference strongly enough that I doubt these Christian law students would have missed it.

To understand Kryskow's perspective, one needs to read her first book, Stand on Guard: a Prophetic Call and Research on the Righteous Foundations of Canada (Credo Press, 2005).

She related, as I have heard her do before, that when she took business administration studies at Simon Fraser University a few years ago, her worst subject was research - something she suggested God made up to her when she felt tasked to write Stand on Guard.

During the question period following her Saturday talk, your humble scribe had the audacity to ask her a question to which he knew the answer. The question went something like this: "You say your research skills were not up to what was needed for the book. Who then provided the research?"

The answer was that she had discovered a book edited by Michael Clarke, entitled Canada: Portraits of Faith (Reel to Real, 1998). It is a beautiful coffee table book which is now out of print. It heavily impacted the Canadian Christian community in the late 90s, with its portrayal of 52 historic Christian leaders, including Jean de Brebeuf, Egerton Ryerson, Timothy Eaton and Ernest Manning. Each of these people, in some small but significant way, helped prepare the way for whatever is happening spiritually, today, in this country.

Kryskow lifted -- with Clarke's permission, I should note - large parts of Canada into Stand on Guard, to form the first one-third of her book.

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Each of the three politicians who formed the panel discussion later that morning brought a valid perspective forward, for the law students' consideration. I only wish that they were not in different political 'silos.' But I recognize that is the present reality in an adversarial political system.

McKay - betraying his well-honed legal mind - talked with some modest satisfaction about the private members bills in which he has been involved in the House of Commons. Probably his happiest achievement was the passage, a few years ago, of C-293, entitled the 'Better Aid Bill.' In it, he called for three principles: direct poverty alleviation, recognition of the perspective of the poor and the application of international standards of human rights. The moral impulse of the bill, he said, was Malachi 3:5.

Vellecott noted that many of his main reasons for being in politics surrounded his strong beliefs in life - particularly the rights of the pre-born, traditional marriage and family.

He cited three books as having been influencing him, recently, in the shaping of his parliamentary role. They are The Three Faces of Law, by Ian Hunter, University of Western Ontario law school professor emeritus; Politics for the Greatest Good: the Case for Prudence in the Public Square, by Clarke Forsythe; and Creating the Better Hour: Lesson from William Wilberforce, edited by Chuck Stetson.

Hnatiuk said he looks forward to the day when the Christian Heritage Party will actually elect members to the House of Commons. He pointed to his experience working with the Alpha movement as having stirred his interest in politics. He had decided, at one point, that he wanted to start a new, specifically Christian, political party, not knowing one already existed. When he learned about the CHP, he gladly embraced it, becoming its leader when Ron Gray retired from the post three years ago, at age 75.

Let's get back to John McKay, for a moment. He wrapped up his talk with a reference to 18th-19th Century political reformer William Wilberforce's "last great project", the advocacy of reform of public manners - something that was roughly akin to what we call, today, the "civil society."

McKay noted that Wilberforce had, at the end of his life, seen civility in society and the political institutions as every bit as important as the abolition of the slave trade.

Wouldn't it be great, if McKay and Vellacott could jointly sponsor a private members bill that would call for greater civility in the Parliament of Canada? After all, they are both bright and reasonable people whose Christian values make them more alike than different, despite their party labels. And they both appreciate Wilberforce.

Oh, no! That would never work. Conflict is the basis of both an adversarial political system and the media network that feeds off it, right?

Let's just leave that idea open for further discussion.

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.

February 25/2010