Friday, July 24, 2015

Is Stephen Harper Canada's Very Own Jesus?


Vancouver South  MP Wai Young recently appeared as a guest speaker at Harvest City Church in Vancouver.   Ms. Young notes in the introduction to a sermon entitled "Influencer - Have A Lasting Impact" that she has attended both Alliance and Baptist churches as a younger person and that she currently attends a Mennonite church.  This puts her well within the bounds of what most people would classify as a fundamentalist evangelical Christian, not the sort that is part of the social gospel movement like Canada's United Church, Presbyterian and Anglican churches.  This group is often considered the base of the Conservative Party of Canada and the people that Stephen Harper often appeals to when using his family values and tough on crime agendas.

Here's her photo:


Ms. Young was born in Hong Kong and raised in Vancouver.  She worked for both the provincial and federal governments and has a degree in sociology from the University of British Columbia.  She was first elected to the House of Commons in 2011.   

Let's hit a few of the high points of her "sermon", focussing on one point in particular.

Near the beginning of her very obvious campaigning for the October 2015 election, Ms. Young notes that it is "dicey" to mix religion and politics (2 minute 45 second mark) but goes on to mix the two for nearly 20 minutes nonetheless and provides the church's congregation with the address for her Vancouver office (4 minute and 30 minute mark).  She states that she no longer reads the newspapers because "most of the facts in there are not factual" (9 minute mark) and goes on to castigate Canada's journalists for their anti-CPC slant because they no longer present the facts. Apparently, there's nothing like being an uninformed representative of the people, is there?

Here is the sermon in its entirety, noting that Ms. Young speaks for roughly the first 20 minutes:


If you can manage to listen to her musings for any length of time, you will find what I consider to be an interesting comment starting at the 10 minute mark made right after she scolds Canada's media:

"...Given that it's so difficult to get real information nowadays, I just wanted to go back to people of faith to say that we're hear because we believe that Jesus served, he saved but he acted as well and it's because of these three things that his legacy has lasted over these millennia, over time and that's why we still study the Bible and study Jesus because we see that he has done these incredible things.  I want to share with you about what our government is doing in the same vein.  Jesus served and acted to always do the right thing, not the most popular thing and we know all the stories in the Bible that share with us about that.  I want to let you know that our government will stand firm, we will always act and do the right thing."

Apparently, there's no better government than one that has, at its head, a leader that is just like Jesus.

Ms. Young goes on to list what the government has done to "protect Canadians" including promoting the recent Bill C-51, an extremely controversial and unpopular anti-terrorism bill.  She notes that if Bill C-51 had been in place at the time of the Air India disaster, 400 lives would not have been lost.

Toward the end of her sermon, she goes on to plug the Harper government's obvious attempt to buy votes with the recent implementation of the Universal Child Benefit and she goes on to brag that because she has a 17 year old, she will get money back from the government and she's "so happy" about that (14 minute 15 second mark).  Like an MP actually needs even more of our tax dollars.

I did find it interesting that right through the 20 minutes, she never once refers to the Prime Minister by name.

The Conservative Party of Canada, responsible for appointing three Senators that have collectively been charged with breach of trust, fraud, assault, sexual assault, possession of cocaine and bribery and which has one MP that has been convicted of violating Canada's election fraud is now the Party of Jesus.

4 comments:

  1. Great post. Harper doesn't think he is Jesus; he thinks he is God

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  2. I must say I rather enjoyed this one!

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  3. Excellent piece! I cannot believe that a person with any intelligence would make such overt statements equating the work of the government to Christian beliefs. This will just give further fuel to anti religious sentiment.

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  4. The parallels between the Conservatives in Canada and the GOP in the States are astounding. And frightening. Who needs facts when you have faith? How odd to hear somebody say, "I believe this is true."

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