Liberal MP John McKay, a devout Christian and one of several in his caucus who voted against same-sex marriage, has no love for Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. But he says suggestions made by several journalists that Harper’s evangelical Christian beliefs animate his politics is not only wrong but offensive to evangelicals:
I have some sympathy for Lawrence Martin of the Globe & Mail who had the temerity to suggest that there might be a link between Prime Minister Harper’s evangelicalism and his anti-evidence, anti-science attitudes. While I think that he is wrong – profoundly wrong – he does express a commonly held misconception about evangelicals that gets endlessly repeated and therefore takes on a force of truth; namely that evangelicals as a group oppose scientific inquiry and rational thought. This is not true, has never been true but evidence of its untruthfulness seems to never get in the way of those wishing to make an argument.
Mr. Harper’s anti-rational, anti-scientific public policies do not generate themselves from his membership in the Christian & Missionary Alliance Church.
Read the rest: Harper’s ideology has little to do with his faith | iPolitics.