Performative Faith

(This post brought to you by a combination of insomnia and the sudden realization I forgot to blog last night!)

American Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is framing up Trump's war in Iran with a lot, and I mean a LOT of faith-based language. He has instituted regular monthly Christian worship services at the Pentagon, and in a recent one, prayed openly for American service members to have "wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy."

No specifics were given as to who specifically might be undeserving of mercy, but we can probably hazard some guesses.

This approach really seems to fly in the face of the teachings of Christ as they have been presented to me (feed the hungry, heal the sick, visit the prisoner, etc.) but it doesn't feel like my place to criticize someone else for how they express their beliefs, however hypocritical and problematic they might appear to me personally.

But luckily even protestants like me can take heart and guidance from the first American pope, Leo XIV, who in his Palm Sunday address said, "(Jesus) does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: 'Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood',"

Citing the Hebrew Testament prophet Isaiah in this way really helps to draw a line between Christianity and Christian Nationalism, a movement we are having to deal with more and more here in Canada as well. Here in Alberta, the former Wild Rose Party and its "lake of fire" Biblical punishment fundamentalists, aided by citizen groups like Take Back Alberta, have rolled back all manner of protections for gay and trans kids and prompted the provincial government to divert millions of dollars in funding from public to private and religious 'charter' schools. 

Federally, MP Jamil Jivani voted against Bill C-9, which removes a religious exemption for hate speech, while dramatically clutching a bible to his chest. 

This bugs me for a number  reasons, not the least of which is because the House of Commons has strict rules against using props of any kind - even buttons with slogans and symbols are prohibited. But most aggravating is the fact that this guy and his party have voted against multiple pieces of legislation that would seem to be consistent with how Jesus would like us to behave: feeding school children, sending aid to Cuba in midst of an energy blockade, supporting a nationwide dental care program for those without other insurance.

None of these endeavours were worthy of Conservative support, but stop allowing people to use hate speech cloaked in scripture and Jivani and his ilk call it an attack on Christianity. And American-owned media like the National Post (who have a virtual monopoly on text-based media in Canada with 130 daily print and digital brands) are only too happy to back them up in this.

And while NP circumspectly calls it an attack on faith here, I wonder what would have happened had an MP brought a Quran to that vote instead of a Bible.

At the end of the day, I don't feel particularly persecuted as a Christian, and I am grateful to see the religious loophole to hate speech finally is almost closed now that the legislation has passed in the HoC. The arguments never held a lot of water, and as many have said, if the practice of your faith involves hate speech, you should check the instructions again to make sure you are doing it right.

Heck, even with C-9 in the books, I don't think Hegseth's posturing, bellicose prayer meets the threshold for what we would consider hate speech here in Canada - but it's good to know that if it was, scriptural shields are no longer a sufficient defense against accountability.

And who knows what accountability might eventually be rendered by the Almighty?