The Players in the Northern European Holy War

A Christian Manifesto, written by the late Francis Schaeffer, became the blueprint for the Religious Right.

Schaeffer called for a second American Revolution, that does not limit itself to the United States, but must rescue all of what he refers to as 'Northern Europe', which includes Canada, New Zealand, Australia and no doubt the United Kingdom.

They refer to it as "expanding Christ's kingdom".

Once you look at this broader domain that the Religious Right would like to take dominion over, the entire movement becomes clear as a bell. We are merely a cog in the wheel.

I'm using this page to link to the players in the movement, from all of the nations that are to be encapsulated. It will eventually be very long.

Canada

Anders, Rob
Ben-Ami, Joseph
Beyer, Roy
Bloedow, Tim
Boessenkool, Ken
Boissoin, Stephen
Bruinooge, Rod
Byfield, Ted
Cameron, Mark
Chandler, Craig
Chipeur, Gerald
Cools, Anne
Day, Stockwell
Dimant, Frank
Emmanuel, Tristan (not his real name)
Flaherty, Jim
Fletcher, Steven
Gairdner, William
Gallant, Cheryl
Giorno, Guy
Goodyear, Gary
Grey, Deborah
Gunter, Lorne
Harper, Stephen
Hudak, Tim
Komarnicki, Ed
Kenney, Jason
Landolt, Gwen
Levant, Ezra
Lilley, Brian
Lunney, James
Mainse, David
Manning, Preston
McVety, Charles
Morgan, Gwyn
Morton, Ted
Poilievre, Pierre
Quist, Dave
Reid, Darrel
Rushfeldt, Brian
Shipley, Bev
Solberg, Monte
Sweet, David
Thomas, Rondo
Tkachuk, David
Toews, Vic
Trask, Brent
Trost, Brad
Van Loan, Peter
Vellacott, Maurice
Warawa, Mark
Weston, John
Wilson, Paul

Australia

Muehlenberg, Bill
Williams, Glenn

New Zealand

Baldock, Larry and Barbara
Savill, Sheryl
Sisarich, Tim


United Kingdom

Northern Europe

Breivik, Anders Behring

United States

Ashcroft, John
Bachmann, Michelle and Marcus
Bauer, Gary
Bennett, Bill
Blackwell, Morton
Copeland, Kenneth
Colson, Chuck
Coulter, Ann
Crouch, Paul and Jan
DeLay, Tom
Dobson, James
Eisenach, Jeffrey A.
Engle, Lou
Falwell, Jerry
Fleischer, Ari
Gonzales, Alberto
Hagee, John
Hagin, Kenneth
Hanby, Mark
Jinn, Bennie
Hybels, Bill
Kemp, Jack
Koop, C. Everitt
Kristol, Irving
Kristol, William
LaHaye, Timothy
LaHaye, Beverly
Long, Eddie L.
Norquist, Grover
Novak, Michael
Osteen, Joel
Parsley, Rod
Paulk, Earl
Pearson, Carlton
Reed, Ralph
Rove, Karl
Schaeffer, Francis
Schaffer, Frank
Schuller, Robert
Starr, Kenneth
Warren, Rick
Wead, Doug
Weyrich, Paul
Whitehead, John

Groups

Council For National Policy
Empower America
Leadership Institute
Prison Fellowship
Teen Challenge
Wilberforce Forum

The Canadian Manifesto: 2. "Signaling" For Good and Evil

Messaging and carefully crafted language, has always played a key role in the neoconservative movement. From Leo Strauss's hidden dialogue [Plato] to Preston Manning's calculated ambiguity, speech is used not to inspire, but to manipulate, obscure, galvanize and even incite.

Michael Lindsay, in his book Faith in the Halls of Power, refers to an element of this as "signaling", and says that it is an important tool used by Evangelicals to send a message to other Evangelicals, without spooking secular society.

Not usually nefarious and often comforting, "signaling" sends "implicit, subtle, and often disguised messages" (1) to fellow believers.

From VeggieTales to Airport Signs

Lindsay provides several examples, beginning with the producers of the Christian children's series, VeggieTales.  Shown on NBC, Phil Vischer and Michael Nawrocki, the show's creators, were upset to learn that the network's policy forbid any references to God.

Vischer said that  he understood NBC's wish to remain religiously neutral, so instead incorporated signals, the most prominent being the wink.  "We wink when we talk about God.... It's a way for us to say [to the evangelical audience] 'We know you're still with us and thanks."' (1)  Does this explain Sarah Palin's infamous wink?

Another example of signaling comes from the popular Irish group U2.

U2, the popular rock band from Ireland, excels at signaling. With a record twenty-two Grammy awards, the musicians have used their public platform to advocate for various Christian concerns, including the Make Poverty History campaign and lead singer Bono's DATA campaign, focused on debt, AIDS, and trade in Africa.

In 1987, U2 released The Joshua Tree, which featured the No. 1 hit single ‑ "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." In both Hebrew and Aramaic, "Joshua" and "Jesus" are closely related, and the album title directly alludes to the cross of Jesus Christ.  The cover for the 2000 album All That You Can't Leave Behind, features an airport sign with 'j33-3," which alludes to Jeremiah 33:3.   As Bono explains, "That's Jeremiah 33:3. The Scripture is 'Call unto me, and will answer you.' It's celestial telephony. (1)

An example of signaling for good.  As Lindsay says: " If an entertainer is trying to mobilize fellow evangelicals to watch his movie or listen to her song, signaling can be an effective way to indicate their shared identity without potentially turning off non‑evangelicals."

A Northern European Welfare State, Huh?

"Canada is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term..." Stephen Harper in 1997 speech to the Religious Right group, The Council for National Policy.

I've always been puzzled by that phrase in Harper's speech.  "Northern European welfare state".  Why "Northern European"  Most of us know that the welfare state refers to the social safety net, and is not exclusive to Northern Europe.

Francis Schaeffer, author of A Christian Manifesto, which has become the blueprint for the Religious Right movement, finally unlocks the mystery.

It is an example of signaling.

According to D. Michael Lindsay:

When a speaker cites Francis Schaeffer, [those] who do not recognize the name miss it, but for those in the know, it signals the speaker's evangelical allegiances. The message is subtle, but strong for those who can hear it. (1)

Stephen Harper did not have to cite Schaeffer, but those in the know certainly got it. From Schaeffer himself: 'We of Northern Europe (and we must remember that the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and so on are extensions of Northern Europe) ...' (2) 

The Nordic countries of course.  Schaeffer's son, in his book Crazy for God, reveals that the movement is about race as much as religion.  Sarah Palin plays the race card in her new book and the Reform Party was notorious for racial slurs, or what former Reform MP, Jan Brown, called "The rampant racism of the God squad." (3)

The following picture is quite telling:

Christians against people from Kenya, aka: black people.  However, the sign also speaks to something else.  Ignorance.  Look at how he spells 'forefathers'.

Schaeffer's Manifesto actually inspired the creation of the Council for National Policy (where Harper spoke), along with many other activist groups, including Focus on the Family, founded by James Dobson.  According to Schaeffer's son Frank, Dobson bought 100,000 copies of the Manifesto to distribute to his flock. (A Time for Anger)

FoF is a good one to focus on (pardon the pun), since it helps to merge us all into this Northern European enclave.  In 2005, the Montreal Gazette, using the financial reports of the parent company, discovered that Dobson had contributed 1.6 million dollars to the Canadian spin-off, once headed up by Stephen Harper's former chief of staff, Darrel Reid. (Reid is now with the Manning Centre)

Dobson also spent thousands of dollars, placing radio ads, with more than one hundred Canadian stations, against same-sex marriage, bolstering Stephen Harper, who was running on the same thing.

This isn't about their religious beliefs, which they are allowed to have, but the fact that powerful American organizations are interfering in our politics.

Turning to my bothers and sisters across the pond, (me signaling to my "comrades".  Wink, wink), they too are concerned with Dobson's meddling.

In Australia, the group was started by Glenn Williams, a fire and brimstone preacher, turned political activist.  Through Dobson, FofF is trying to establish censorship laws, along with the usual anti-abortion, anti-divorce, anti-gay rights, anti-evolution .... yada, yada, yada.

Heading up the censorship campaign in Australia, is Focus's Bill Muehlenberg. (In Canada, it's Charles McVety).  As Australian journalist  Peter Johnson points out (November 1, 2003), while FoF Australia poses as a family friendly organization, their goals are far more political.

Scratch the surface of FOFA, however, and a fully-developed Religious Right ideology is immediately laid bare. This becomes especially clear when we look at the question of censorship. FOFA publications regularly emphasise the addictive nature of pornography, comparing its effects to those of nicotine or alcohol (Family Forum, Feb. 1997, 1). They retail a range of myths and urban legends on the topic, such as the claim that the media were ultimately responsible for the Port Arthur massacre of 1996:  Should the music industry be allowed to promote music which upholds violence, rape, narcissism, murder and unsolicited drug-taking? Surely we cannot continue to separate a screen culture that celebrates evil from the level of violence and crime we are witnessing?!

Muehlenberg launched a campaign against a cereal manufacturer (Uncle Toby's), because they gave away as premiums, photos of Baywatch stars, including Pamela Sue Anderson.

In New Zealand, Dobson, as he did with Stephen Harper's campaign, directly funded opposition to a referendum that would have made beating your children a crime.

A group behind the "Vote No" bloc in the smacking referendum received around $1m over six years from a conservative American religious group.  That US organisation advocates a return to "Biblical values" and its founder says "a little bit of pain goes a long way" for children.

The disclosure comes as one of the country's top Anglican clergy has condemned the attitude of Christians who claim a "God-given right" to use corporal punishment against their children.  "I am concerned that a particular stance on child discipline has too often been characterised as 'the' Christian view," said the Very Rev Ross Day, Dean of Auckland's Cathedral of the Holy Trinity.

.... On the strength of the referendum vote, Focus on the Family is demanding that the so-called "smacking ban" be repealed. (4)

Don't forget Harper's speech to the Civitas Society, Canada's arm of the Council for National Policy:

"Even foreign policy had become a theo-con issue", he pointed out, driven by moral and religious convictions. “The truth of the matter is that the real agenda and the defining issues have shifted from economic issues to social values,” he said, “so conservatives must do the same. "  Arguing that the party "had to come up with tough, principled stands on everything from parents’ right to spank their children to putting 'hard power' behind the country’s foreign-policy commitments ... " (5)

A 'principled stand' in favour of child abuse.  If you read Dobson's work, he doesn't stop at a simple spanking.  He beleives that Christian males must take dominion over all living things, including their wives and children.

In his book, The Strong-Willed Child, Dobson relates how he took dominion over his dog, a pet dachshund named Siggie, when the animal refused to get off the furry toilet seat and get into his bed.

"When I told Sigmund to leave his warm seat and go to bed, he flattened his ears and slowly turned his head toward me. He deliberately braced himself by placing one paw on the edge of the furry lid, then hunched his shoulders, raised his lips to reveal the molars on both sides, and uttered his most threatening growl. That was Siggie's way of saying. "Get lost!"  I had seen this defiant mood before, and knew there was only one way to deal with it. The ONLY way to make Siggie obey is to threaten him with destruction. Nothing else works. I turned and went to my closet and got a small belt to help me 'reason' with Mr. Freud." 

He goes on:

"What developed next is impossible to describe. That tiny dog and I had the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast. I fought him up one wall and down the other, with both of us scratching and clawing and growling and swinging the belt. I am embarrassed by the memory of the entire scene. Inch by inch I moved him toward the family room and his bed. As a final desperate maneuver, Siggie backed into the corner for one last snarling stand. I eventually got him to bed, only because I outweighed him 200 to 12!"

A 200 pound man can take dominion over a 12 pound dog.  Isn't 'he the man'.  Fitting this horrendous tale to the discipline of children, Dobson explains:

"But this is not a book about the discipline of dogs; there is an important moral to my story that is highly relevant to the world of children. JUST AS SURELY AS A DOG WILL OCCASIONALLY CHALLENGE THE AUTHORITY OF HIS LEADERS, SO WILL A LITTLE CHILD -- ONLY MORE SO." (emphasis Dobson's)

All of us in 'Northern Europe' have reason to be alarmed.  Where Canada stands alone, is that we are the only country in this little group, whose media refuses to discuss Harper's involvement with this movement.

Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. speak of it as naturally as reporting the weather.

Here, just calling Harper a Straussian will get you fired.  Maybe Salutin should have winked when he said it.

Sources:

1. Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite, By D. Michael Lindsay, Oxford University Press, 2007, ISBN: 978-0-19-532666-6, p. 152-153

2. A Christian Manifesto, By Francis Schaeffer, Crossway Books, 1981, ISBN: 0-89107-233-0, p. 24-25

3. Hard Right Turn: The New Face of Neo-Conservatism in Canada, By Brooke Jeffrey, Harper-Collins, 1999, ISBN: 0-00 255762-2

4. US Funding for 'no' vote, By Matt Nippert, New Zealand Herald, August 23, 2009

5. Stephen Harper and the Theo-cons: The rising clout of Canada's religious right, By Marci McDonald, The Walrus, October 2006

The Canadian Manifesto: 1. The Centre of the Universe

In 1933, a small group of religious leaders got together, via the post office, to establish a Humanist doctrine. According to Time Magazine (May 15, 1933):

Humanism used to be a good subject for parlor and dinner table discussions. Few people knew what it actually was or ' where literary Humanism left off and religious Humanism began. Nor did Humanism's expounders get together and codify their beliefs for popular enlightenment.(1)

Key leaders were often at odds over how to define the movement and what its key goals should be.

But that was about to change.

Last week, for the first time, the religious Humanists were on common ground. After discussing many questions (by letter) they had drawn up, signed and circulated a manifesto containing their articles of faith. More & more Humanists are to read the manifesto, sign it, make suggestions which may perhaps be incorporated after due consideration.(1)

Key elements included:

- The universe is self-existing, not created.

- Man is part of nature, product of his culture, his environment, his social heritage. The traditional dualism of mind and body must be rejected.

- Humanism also rejects cosmic and supernatural "guarantees." The Humanist eschews theism, deism, modernism, "new thought'' and instead of feeling religious emotions concentrates on human life—labor, art, science, philosophy, love, friendship, recreation.

- Humanism is for "a socialized and co-operative economic order—a shared life in a shared world."

Its adherents say that it will: "Affirm life rather than deny it ... seek to elicit the possibilities of life, not flee from it ... establish the conditions of a satisfactory life for all, not merely for the few." (1)

How could you argue against this set of principles?

Yet argue they did. When the Humanist Manifesto, written primarily by Raymond Bragg (shown above) appeared, it created quite a sensation, because it challenged the principle of God being the centre of the universe.

Instead they embraced science, human compassion, and equality in a shared world.

The late Francis Schaeffer, author of A Christian Manifesto, that prompted the creation of the Religious Right/Moral Majority, has built a career challenging, what he refers to as "secular Humanism". He believed that all of our current problems are the result of not embracing God as the center of the universe.

He felt that if all law and governance was based on the Old Testament, all of our problems would disappear. He encouraged Christians to become confrontational, and did not rule out violence as a means to an end.

There does come a time when force, even physical force, is appropriate. The Christian is not to take the law into his own hands and become a law unto him­self. But when all avenues to flight and protest have closed, force in the defensive posture is appropriate. This was the situation of the American Revolution. The colonists used force in defending themselves. Great Britain, because of its policy toward the col­onies, was seen as a foreign power invading America. The colonists defended their homeland. As such, the American Revolution was a conservative counter­revolution. The colonists saw the British as the revo­lutionaries trying to overthrow the legitimate colonial governments. (2)

This certainly helps to explain the Tea Party and the Religious Right's obsession with guns.

When Stephen Harper's former Chief of Staff, Darrel Reid, suggested that our laws should be changed to reflect those in the Bible, the story pretty much ended there.

Reid is now with the Manning Centre, but continues his work with several current Harper MPs, toward Reconstructionism.

The media is doing us a grave injustice by not staying on top of this story. In the United States, after learning that Presidential hopeful, Michelle Bachmann, is a follower of Francis Schaeffer, their media is all over it.

Ryan Lizza wrote an in depth article for the New Yorker, under the heading Leap of Faith. In it he refers to Bachmann as "an ideologue of the Christian-conservative movement." A term once used to describe Stephen Harper, before he took the happy pills and became a "Tory".

Lizza reveals how the Bachmanns (Michelle and Marcus), experienced a "life-altering event" after watching Schaeffer's film series “How Should We Then Live?”

Schaeffer’s film series consists of ten episodes tracing the influence of Christianity on Western art and culture, from ancient Rome to Roe v. Wade. In the films, Schaeffer—who has a white goatee and is dressed in a shearling coat and mountain climber’s knickers—condemns the influence of the Italian Renaissance, the Enlightenment, Darwin, secular humanism, and postmodernism. He repeatedly reminds viewers of the “inerrancy” of the Bible and the necessity of a Biblical world view. “There is only one real solution, and that’s right back where the early church was,” Schaeffer tells his audience. “The early church believed that only the Bible was the final authority. What these people really believed and what gave them their whole strength was in the truth of the Bible as the absolute infallible word of God.” (3)

I've been watching the series and reading the book, and was surprised to find that chunks of his speeches have found their way into the vernacular of many members of the Harper government.

Including Harper himself, but I'm getting into that later.

The rise of Michelle Bachmann, has given the Americans an opportunity to discuss this movement and what it could mean to their future. Schaeffer is very clear on what fundamentalist Christians need to do.

And in his Christian Manifesto, he states that the movement must include Canada, Australia and New Zealand (p.24), if it has any hope of succeeding.

We're probably going to hear a lot more as the U.S. election campaign heats up, so I thought this a perfect time to put together an essay on Canada's Religious Right movement, that is being allowed to operate in almost total secrecy, simply because we are too squeamish to talk about religion.

But we have to remember, that this is a political movement, and one that could have a profound affect on who we are as Canadians.

We need to become part of the conversation since clearly we are to play an important role.

Marci McDonald had spent several years as a Washington correspondent, where she covered the rise of the Christian Right.

When she returned to Canada, she was shocked to discover that the same movement had embedded itself here. Like Ronald Reagan, Stephen Harper has moved these fundamentalists into the courts, the civil service and even the foreign service, creating a new office of religious freedom.

From her piece for Walrus Magazine: Stephen Harper and the Theo-cons: The rising clout of Canada's religious right:

"For Harper, the courtship of the Christian right is unlikely to prove an electoral one-night stand. Three years ago, in a speech to the annual Conservative think-fest, Civitas, he outlined plans for a broad new party coalition that would ensure a lasting hold on power. The only route, he argued, was to focus not on the tired wish list of economic conservatives or “neo-cons,” as they’d become known, but on what he called “theo-cons”—those social conservatives who care passionately about hot-button issues that turn on family, crime, and defence.

"Even foreign policy had become a theo-con issue, he pointed out, driven by moral and religious convictions. “The truth of the matter is that the real agenda and the defining issues have shifted from economic issues to social values,” he said, “so conservatives must do the same.

"Arguing that the party had to come up with tough, principled stands on everything from parents’ right to spank their children to putting “hard power” behind the country’s foreign-policy commitments ... " (4)

McDonald would turn her piece into her best seller: The Armageddon Factor

However, the Canadian Manifesto, is about more than religion, but is intended to show how the American Neoconservative movement as a whole, is dictating how our country does business.

There are many questions that we need to ask ourselves, including:

Why did top Republican pollster, John Mclaughlin, personally handle Stephen Harper's political career?

Why did the National Citizens Coalition meet with Republican politicians to help draft strategy?

Why did Richard Nixon's magician, Art Finkelstein, work with the NCC for 16 years, guiding Stephen Harper in the art of destroying liberal democracy?

Milton Friedman from the Chicago School, spent a lifetime engineering the takeover of the economies of foreign nations. Why was he so interested in Canada, becoming a regular speaker at the Fraser Institute?

Why was Religious Right leader, Paul Weyrich, so keen to have Stephen Harper on the throne?

Why is a Goldman Sachs' executive, now the head of the Bank of Canada?

It's not hard to see that there is a plan for us, but unfortunately, we are not in the loop.

So maybe if I can create a Canadian Manifesto, as it might look if there is one locked away in the Republican Party HQs, we can at least talk about it.

Is this what we want for Canada?

Sources:

1. Religion: Humanism on Paper, Time Magazine, May 15, 1933

2. A Christian Manifesto, By Francis Schaeffer, Crossway Books, 1981, ISBN: 0-89107-233-0, p. 117

3. Leap of Faith: The making of a Republican front-runner, By Ryan Lizza, The New Yorker, August 15, 2011

4. Stephen Harper and the Theo-cons: The rising clout of Canada's religious right, By Marci McDonald, The Walrus, October 2006