Brian Mulroney, Prime Minister of Canada from 1984 to 1993, died last week at the age of 84.
Mulroney was known as a leader who could promote big ideas. But he also opened the door for evangelicals in Canada to engage with the government on major issues. His encouragement was very important, at a time when Canadian evangelicals were wondering how to present a testimony of the Gospel to civil society.
A year before Mulroney became Prime Minister, I was invited to lead the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC), the Canadian branch of the World Evangelical Fellowship. Before my arrival, the EFC was relatively inactive. It was largely a collection of records accompanied by an occasional public meeting.
I had grown up as the son of a Pentecostal minister on the Saskatchewan prairies. For us, politics was considered outside the orbit of Christian concerns. However, two provincial premiers, both Baptists, saw things differently, and their actions fueled serious conversations about what Jesus meant when he said: Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.
On the one hand, Tommy Douglas, a socialist pastor who became premier of Saskatchewan, introduced the first universal health care system in North America. Meanwhile, in the neighboring province of Alberta, EC Manning was a free enterprise capitalist who also preached every Sunday on the radio.
Despite their influence, our Church had no interest in public engagement other than to bring people to Christ and prepare them for eternity.
However, as president of the EFC, I perceived that the evangelical community could not stay away from the issues bubbling up in our political spheres. Abortion was becoming a major topic of debate, which we could not ignore.
Finally, in 1988, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that provisions of the Criminal Code requiring hospital involvement in an abortion were contrary to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This decision left Canada in limbo, the only Western country without laws restricting abortion. The EFC could hardly remain silent in such a situation.
Until now, the only Canadian churches that had significant contact with the government were the Roman Catholics and mainline Protestants. Evangelicals were simply unknown. Additionally, in the 1980s we fell victim to what I called the “Jerry Falwell Effect,” meaning that our reputation was tarnished by the way Canadian media portrayed American evangelicals as angry “fundamentalists” and assumed Canadian evangelicals were the same.
Our task in Canada was obvious: reject this myth, make the public understand who we were and what we believed, and then determine how we could make useful contributions to our country.
Image: Courtesy of Brian C. Stiller
Brian C. Stiller, of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, with then-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
What I didn’t know was that the new prime minister would be willing to engage with evangelicals. When Mulroney formed his government in 1984, a number of evangelicals were included: Jake Epp became Minister of National Health and Welfare, Len Gustafson was parliamentary secretary, and Mennonite John Reimer, along with others evangelicals, entered Parliament as members of Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative Party. .
Epp, highly regarded by both his party and those in opposition, helped us understand not only how we could speak to the government – particularly on the issue of abortion – but also how to strengthen our credibility.
During one of my one-on-one meetings with the Prime Minister, I arrived with an agenda that our senior officials had been working on. While waiting for Mulroney to call me, I reflected on my morning Bible reading from Daniel chapter 11: “And in the first year of Darius the Mede I took my stand to uphold and protect him” (v. 1) .
It seemed to me that I should set aside my planned agenda and instead offer words of encouragement. A few minutes later I was invited into his office and, after some pleasantries, I was asked about my agenda. My response was simply: “Mr. Prime Minister, I have no other agenda today than to encourage you. We spent a few minutes with some Bible verses and prayer, and after the usual photography, I left.
The following week, as I boarded a plane, Justice Minister Ray Hnatyshyn invited me to sit down with him for a minute. He immediately asked: “Brian, what happened between you and the Prime Minister last week?” My heart sank. Had I gone too far? I was wondering. “Sir, was there something wrong?” » I asked apprehensively.
He smiled and said, “No, not at all,” and then told me that the Prime Minister had extended his time with me, thereby delaying his meeting with the Cabinet members who were waiting for him in the next room. After joining the Cabinet meeting, Mulroney told them about my visit, our conversation and our prayer.
As Hnatyshyn recalled: “The prime minister said, ‘If we as a government misunderstand or ignore the evangelical community, the country and this government will be the losers.’ »
This simple meeting opened more doors to important and substantive conversations with people at all levels of government, giving us the opportunity to understand how to behave in a God-honoring manner with “Caesar”, than many protests or editorials could not have done it.
When I learned of Mulroney’s untimely death, I was reminded of the lessons I learned from him in seeking to understand how our public witness fits into the agenda of Christ and his kingdom.
In my travels around the world, this question is often among the first I am asked by Christians, who seek to understand how our commitment to Jesus as king should shape our interaction with government.
Brian Mulroney opened the door for us to expand our mandate and embody what the Apostle Paul taught: “For he who has authority is the servant of God for your good…Give to each man his due: if you owe taxes, pay them; if income, then income; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor” (Rom. 13:4, 7).
Brian C. Stiller is global ambassador for the World Evangelical Alliance and the founder and former editor-in-chief of the Canadian magazine faith today.
