Our Trudeau, which art in Ottawa, hallowed be thy name. Thy electoral victory come, thy policies be enacted… Oh, sorry. Just practicing for Remembrance Day.
Perhaps unsuitably, you may think. If so, I remind you of the edict that military “chaplains” not engage in any tacky divisive prayers to God on such a solemn occasion. And in other news, the Canadian Armed Forces faces a recruiting crisis.
He then resumed the charge, insisting that any prayer language be “inclusive.” A word here meaning “exclusive,” because banning any specific references to actual Christian beliefs excludes Christians. As banning specific references to the actual Muslim beliefs excludes Muslims, and ditto for Jews, Buddhists, polytheists, atheists, and on down the line. But of course the majority of CAF chaplains are, and were, Christian, like the majority of those who served in Canada’s wars.
Belisle also said he supports the “spirit” of the new directive that says men of God must not mention God. So pretty much everybody is excluded except those willing to worship Caesar, as under the pre-Constantine Roman Empire.
In those days Caesar Augustus really did assume the title “Saviour of the Universal Human Race,” and while you could agree with a knowing wink, like Vespasian’s deathbed wisecrack “Oh dear, I must be becoming a god,” you weren’t allowed to disagree. The consequences of refusal varied from cynical inaction to violent persecution, but the principle was clear. Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and everything is, including worship. And here we go again.
There were once Christians who’d rather be torn asunder by lions than deny Christ, and still are in many parts of the world. Yet senior CAF religious brass, like too many of their non-chaplain colleagues who greet brutal fiscal cuts with rah-rah rhetoric about a lean, diverse force, now grovel before the wrong throne.
Naturally, much of it proceeds from the same benign impulses that rightly permit Stars of David on military headstones as well as crosses. But there’s a vast difference between respecting the fact that people disagree deeply on matters of fundamental importance by making room for those differences and totally disrespecting it by saying just shtum about that silly old God.
When the bones of Richard III were found under a parking lot five centuries after his death at Bosworth Field, I agreed that he ought to have been interred in a Catholic church, not Anglican Leicester Cathedral, because he was Catholic. But the modern view is that nobody takes actual religious doctrine seriously. Which is not respectful at all.
Indeed, the main thing that got Christians in trouble with emperors like Nero was precisely their refusal to admit that all religions were equally true, as in not very if at all, and to insist instead that their doctrinal convictions were vitally important. I’ve never understood what other ground could exist for embracing an idea than thinking it was true. And I’ve always believed you should be very careful what you think because ideas have consequences. If something is true, other things it entails are also true.
For instance, for a Christian chaplain, Matthew 10:33: “whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.” And Paul’s if Christ be not risen, our preaching is in vain. If you consider your preaching in vain, shaddap. If not, hoist the cross when you mount the pulpit.
It is of course a problem that Islam is not Christianity, Christianity is not Islam, and neither is New Age agnostic pseudo-spiritualism, especially if you bet your civilization on the contrary proposition. But the solution of telling Christian preachers in the Canadian Armed Forces to deny Jesus isn’t a nicey-nicey way of avoiding taking sides. It’s choosing Caligula.
