Harper guided by evangelical Alliance Church
There is a detail about Prime Minister Stephen Harper that is very mum in Canada. It is a detail that may and will explain every decision he has made to date and every decision he will make in the future.
Stephen Harper has refused to answer questions about his beliefs and which groups inform him. However, if he were to answer such questions, he would reveal his membership to the Alliance Church which is dominant in Alberta and represents less than 10% of Canadian beliefs.
This same church has declared war on the environment, believes the Earth is 6,000 years old – like former Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day does – and believes that the scientists and environmentalists are preaching a fraud to destroy the economy.
The kind of people backing Harper come from the Cornwall Alliance, which is a right-wing coalition of scholars, economists and evangelicals who instill doubt on mainstream science and climate change, view environmentalists as a “native evil,” and supports libertarian economics.
His church teaches the “truths” of the bible which he takes very dear to himself. There are 4 fundamental beliefs, as cited by a 2007 article in the Vancouver Sun, which Harper adheres to.
According to Professor Philip Geoff from the Indiana State Purdue University religious studies:
“The Alliance Church places an intense focus on the need for personal salvation, emphasizes the importance of leading a ‘holy’ life and encourages spiritual healing, says Goff.
“The denomination also stresses that Jesus Christ’s return to Earth is imminent, says the evangelical specialist, who was raised in the Alliance Church.
“Alliance Church rules, like those of other evangelical denominations, strongly oppose homosexual relationships, describing them as the ‘basest form of sinful conduct.’
“The Alliance Church is also tough on divorce and holds that Christians who have been adulterous do not have a right to remarry.
“The denomination’s leaders, in addition, oppose abortion, stem-cell research, euthanasia, the use of marijuana and ordained female clergy…”
These are the same beliefs that justify his creation of the Office of Religious Freedoms at the expense of Environment Canada, the internal Conservative fight to reopen the abortion debate and the Conservative cravings to get into people’s lives – both online and through their bedrooms.
Everything that has been stated thus far would allow Canadians to anticipate Harper’s contradictory view about reopening the abortion debate, his government’s decision to appeal a BC court’s decision to grant a patient euthanasia, and his clear disdain for human rights and freedoms.
From his government’s obsession with getting into people’s personal lives to dictate what they can and cannot do online and with a woman’s body to his complete dismissal for scientists, it is clear that his actions can all be justified and predicted knowing his relationship with the Alliance Church of Canada and the Cornwall Alliance.
The Harper government abolished Kyoto and is cutting programs geared towards land preservation. They are cutting the regulations that would make oil extraction in Alberta a much safer task to workers and to the environment. However, his guidance doesn’t dictate this at all. In fact, the Cornwall Alliance that is backing him want to see the death of green policy and all those who promote it.
The Alliance believes that “there is no convincing scientific evidence that human contribution to greenhouse gases is causing dangerous global warming.” They also believe that any attempt to reduce greenhouse emissions would “greatly increase the price of energy and harm economies.”
The Alliance also believes that environmental regulation goes against god’s will. “We aspire to a world in which liberty as a condition of moral action is preferred over government-initiated management of the environment as a means to common goals.”
The Alliance published a book called Resisting the Green Dragon: Dominion not Death which labels environmental groups as “one of the greatest threats to society and the church today.”
They go further to declare that “The Green Dragon must die… [There] is no excuse to become befuddled by the noxious Green odors and doctrines emanating from the foul beast…”
This would explain why the Conservatives have labeled environmentalists and activists as radicals and extremists in their bid to destroy them.
To make matters even clearer – and which will really explain the Conservative rush for oil in Alberta and Shale gas in eastern parts of the country, the Alliance believes that renewable forms of energy are for the poor or rural people until nuclear and fossil fuel plants “meet the needs of large, sustained economic development.”
If Canadians would have known this detail about Stephen Harper, Bill C30, Bill C38, his war on the environment and his war on freedoms would not have been a surprise. Knowing this one detail about Stephen Harper is enough to allow people to predict his future moves as he flirts with the tenets that have dominated the Republican Party in the United States in recent years.
The Common Tenets between Evangelists, the Republican Party of the United States and the Conservative Party of Canada
- Disdain for the environmental movement
- Distrust of mainstream science in general
- Distrust of the mainstream media
- Loyalty to the party
- Libertarian economics as God’s will (God is opposed to government regulation or taxation)
- Misunderstanding of divine sovereignty (God won’t allow us to ruin creation)
- Unreconstructed Dominion theology (God calls on humans to subdue and rule creation)
Source: The Tyee
You may or may not agree with the evangelists and Cornwall but if you don’t, they will see you as “lost.”
With this knowledge, the Conservative actions become explainable and predictable and their agenda is far from over. From the cuts to services to fund federal bureaucrats to the divisive and cunning attacks toward opposition and scientists – who are recently mourning the death of science in Canada after being muzzled as an “established practice,” this one hidden detail about Stephen Harper is enough to explain everything and it isn’t a pretty sight.
How do you feel about Stephen Harper’s religious ties? Why would Harper be mum over his religious beliefs if they weren’t the truth?
