I was one of the dwindling few in church this morning. My presence there does not mean that I accept every word in Christian scriptures as true. It means that, without the acceptance of biblical history, I accept the touchstones of the Christian faith, love, compassion and forgiveness as expressed both directly and symbolically. It means perfection is impossible, but that people who cannot love should not hate, those who cannot pity should not give cause for others to pity, and those who cannot forgive should seek no revenge.
The hotbed of Christian fundamentalism is in the United States. In the campaign for the presidency which is beginning, political soothsayers see the Republican hopefuls marching behind the banners of Christianity and individual liberty to maintain a gun-toting society that believes in health care for profit, in maintaining both a powerful military establishment and overpopulated prison system and denying the scientific proofs of both evolution and global warming. If the right wing of the Republican Party wins the presidency, the new administration will attempt to prevent legal status for same-sex marriages and will make access to abortions the subject of legal rather than medical barriers. Worst of all, the Republic Right is still steeped in the idea that changes in government, even complete changes in society, can be forced upon other countries by military might. Beliefs can change, but cannot be enforced. Whatever appears in American politics will be mirrored in Canada, with the attendant risk of Canada becoming an oligarchy rather than remaining a democracy.
Historically, the nations of the power bloc that is centered in Washington had little interest in the Middle East and North Africa until cheap-to-produce oil was discovered under the sand. Until the victors in the Second World War engineered the new state of Israel, Arab and Jew were at peace. Jewish people should be able to live together in peace, prosperity and security anywhere in the world. I do not believe, however, that the state of Israel must be their home because the God of their Holy Book said so. Israel has been a festering wound in the Middle East ever since its creation. No teaching of any religion should dictate the form of relationships between nations unless it is tempered by reason. Were it not for meddling from abroad, the problems of the Middle East and North Africa could have been recognized and solved by the people who live there.
We are being wooed into the acceptance of the idea that expanded trade relationships will be the salvation of the world. NAFTA, the oldest of Canada’s trade treaties, has cost Canada millions in indemnities paid to U.S. corporations, which have successfully maintained that the laws enacted by Canadian governments, at any level, have limited their potential profits. These same abominable provisions have reappeared in the European trade treaty. I believe reason requires that the laws of even the smallest country, enacted for the good of its own citizens, should not be open to challenge by even the largest of corporations, acting in its own interests.
The world is overpopulated. New technologies will reduce the demand for human labour. There will be more people and fewer jobs. Long ago, when the Roman Empire began importing its foodstuffs from North Africa, the leaders of Rome kept the unemployed of Italy entertained and docile by spectacles in which Christians were fed to lions. We have our own multitude of diversionary spectacles now.
If the profit motive continues to be the dominant factor in every decision that affects world populations, we are approaching doomsday. We need to find our new values in the past. We need a stronger sense of community. We need a growing realization that doing well what needs to be done is its own reward. Or we perish.
