The occasion was the first-ever Inter-faith Prayer Breakfast on Parliament Hill. It drew about 100 people to the parliamentary dining room, about one-third of them members of parliament.
While the event was considered an unqualified success by its organizers, it needs to be said, in context, that it drew only about one-fifth of the attendance of the National Prayer Breakfast. That event has occurred annually for the past four decades. It draws broad religious and political participation. But its organizers make clear that the breakfast’s objectives include communicating the life, work and teachings of Jesus to anyone in the political community who cares to inquire.
The Inter-faith breakfast was broader, yet. Its sponsors were drawn from the major world religions, as well as some of their less numerous cousins.
But the initiative for the event was, as has been reported here before, quite fascinating. The co-chairs are Hamilton-area MP David Sweet, the former president of Promise Keepers, a major evangelical parachurch agency and Reuven Bulka, a well-regarded Ottawa orthodox rabbi and host of a weekly radio talk show.
The pair pulled together a polite but congenial group of people both from parliament and the Ottawa religious community. In short, the group wanted to provide politicians the opportunity to observe and experience the prayers and worship practices of a variety of religions, in a spiritually neutral but encouraging atmosphere.
I attended the last half hour of the breakfast. Following its prorogue, I chatted with Jack Murta, the former Mulroney-era cabinet minister who has been shepherding the National Prayer Breakfast and its weekly sponsor, the Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast, for the past two years. Murta has provided valued advice to the inter-faith people, in the planning of this first event.
As we were talking, we were approached by Senator David Smith, who touched our arms and suggested that the breakfast needed one more thing. Then, with a gentle smile, he intoned the words: “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”
Both Murta and I were slightly surprised but understood what it was the good senator was trying to communicate.
And, here, I take a moment to reiterate a bit of Smith’s own history.
He grew up in the home of the late C. B. Smith, a Pentecostal minister of some renown. And although he drifted from the Pentecostal fold over to becoming a fairly devout Baptist, he remains quite close to his two Pentecostal minister brothers, Robert, of London, Ontario and George, who served a couple of western Canadian Pentecostal churches.
David Smith served in Pierre Trudeau’s cabinet. He takes some credit for Trudeau’s decision to place into the preamble of the 1982-patriated constitution, a reference to the idea that Canadians perceive the presence of God in the life of the nation.
During the intervening years, before his appointment to the Senate by Jean Chretien, he was a key figure in building the federal Liberal party in Ontario and, to a lesser extent, in other parts of Canada. Many evangelical Christians who observed his work, suggest that his ability to find Liberal candidates who understood the evangelical ethos was critical to the success of the Liberals in Ontario federal ridings during Chretien’s tenure. (During that period, almost all seats fell to the Liberals, virtually assuring a national majority for Chretien’s government.)
So, in that context, what was Smith’s little post-breakfast invocation all about?
From where I stood, it seemed to be about a new evangelically-led ecumenism emerging in Ottawa.
This ecumenism emphasizes a congenial acceptance of and respect for other religions. But it avoids the syncretism of its predecessors. It does not try to equate Christianity with Sikhism, Islam, Judiasm or any other major or minor religion. And it encourages understanding of other faiths and a willingness to listen to what their own leaders have to say about those faiths.
For the politicians in Ottawa, this inter-faith activity likely prefaces an understanding of the realities in many of the ridings they hold, across the country.
But, in cultivating this understanding, those politicians who are serious Christian believers want to remain true, as well, to the gospel which has shaped their own lives.
Smith’s quiet gesture nicely illustrated the conundrum represented by the exercise in which Sweet and Bulka gave leadership.