Build more prisons?

Our federal government wants to build or expand prisons and put more Canadians in them for longer.  The Church Council on Justice and Corrections is made up of the following denominations:
The Anglican Church of Canada,
Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec,
Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops,
Christian Reformed Churches of North America,
Disciples of Christ in Canada,
Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (my church)
Mennonite Central Committee Canada,
The Presbyterian Church in Canada,
Religious Society of Friends (Quakers),
The Salvation Army in Canada,
The United Church of Canada

The Council has sent the following letter to our Prime Minister and I sent a similar letter to my Member of Parliament.


Dear Mr. Prime Minister,

The Church Council on Justice and Corrections (CCJC) is most concerned that in this time of financial cuts to important services you and the government of Canada are prepared to significantly increase investment in the building of new prisons.

Proposed new federal laws will ensure that more Canadians are sent to prison for longer periods, a strategy that has been repeatedly proven neither to reduce crime nor to assist victims. Your policy is applying a costly prison response to people involved in the courts who are non-violent offenders, or to repeat offenders who are mentally ill and/or addicted, the majority of whom are not classified as high risk. These offenders are disproportionately poor, ill-equipped to learn, from the most disadvantaged and marginalized groups. They require treatment, health services, educational, employment and housing interventions, all less expensive and more humane than incarceration.

The Canadian government has regretfully embraced a belief in punishment-for-crime that first requires us to isolate and separate the offender from the rest of us, in our minds as well as in our prisons. That separation makes what happens later easier to ignore: by increasing the number of people in jail for lengthier sentences you are decreasing their chance of success upon release into the community.

The vision of justice we find in Scripture is profound and radically different from that which your government is proposing. We are called to be a people in relationship with each other through our conflicts and sins, with the ingenious creativity of God’s Spirit to find our way back into covenant community. How can that be if we automatically exclude and cut ourselves off from all those we label “criminal”?

Increasing levels of incarceration of marginalized people is counter-productive and undermines human dignity in our society. By contrast, well supervised probation or release, bail options, reporting centres, practical assistance, supportive housing, programs that promote accountability, respect and reparation: these measures have all been well-established, but they are underfunded. Their outcomes have proven to be the same or better in terms of re-offence rates, at a fraction of the cost and with much less human damage.

Public safety is enhanced through healthy communities that support individuals and families. We, therefore, respectfully ask you to modify your government’s policy taking into consideration the impact it will have on the most disadvantaged, its lack of effectiveness, and its serious budgetary implications.

Poverty History?

I've been a participant in the Make Poverty History campaign since the Live8 concerts.  I get updates on the campaign and I send emails to our Prime Minister and my Member of Parliament at certain times when asked to by the campaign organizers.  This was the latest email that I sent to our Finance Minister, copied to my MP.  Our country has signed on to the Millenium Development Goals but we conveniently forget about them when something else comes up.  The government will soon be bringing forth a new budget and we're pitifully behind in reaching our target of foreign aid to alleviate poverty.


Dear Mr. Flaherty,

It’s not fair to rely for 25% of your deficit reduction plans on freezing the aid budget. Canada is not even half way to achieving the 0.7% of national income aid target that we promised to give. The impacts of the global economic crisis, the food crisis and climate change are threatening to reverse the progress that has been made towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. Now is not the time to slack off. Rather we need to re-double our efforts to end global poverty.

The new Conservative government in the UK continues to increase their aid and has re-committed to achieving the 0.7% aid target by 2013, despite dealing with a much larger deficit than Canada. Canada ranks only 14th out of 23 donor countries. We can do better.

Priority needs to be given to fighting poverty, both globally and in Canada, and taking action on climate change over buying expensive new fighter aircraft, building more prison cells or continuing to subsidize fossil fuels.

Please do the right thing in your 2011 federal budget and bring in a budget that would help to make poverty history.

I have also copied my Member of Parliament on this letter so they can be aware of the views of their constituents and ask that they do their best to represent my concerns.

Thank you for considering these heart-felt requests.

the greatest story

It's been a while since I've posted.  I wrote this column for yesterday's newspaper.


I’ve made a New Year’s resolution. I’m going to read my Bible more. Shocking isn’t it? A pastor who needs to read his Bible more. I read the Bible plenty, but it’s for work. I read the Bible when I’m preparing a sermon or a confirmation class lesson and we read from the Bible in worship, but I don’t very often just read the Bible for me. So that’s what I’ve resolved to do.

So it’s a few weeks into the New Year. How am I doing with my resolution? I don’t read the Bible every day, but I do more than I did before. I’m not beating myself up about it. Just because you slip doesn’t mean you give up. You can start over and over again and I intend to keep on keeping on.

The Bible is an amazing book, written and assembled by many different people over hundreds of years. It contains ancient mythologies, histories, laws, teachings, prayers, liturgies, love poetry, wisdom literature, prophetic messages, letters, strange visions. There’s a whole lot of variety in the various parts of the Bible.

Some people actually find the Bible frightening and intimidating. That’s understandable. The Bible is an old book written by people living in times and places very different from our own. The language and images used aren’t contemporary so it can be hard to understand. That’s okay, though. You don’t have to be an expert to start reading. It’s okay to have questions, to be confused by some things.

In our church we’ve just started a course called “the greatest story.” It’s an introduction and big-picture overview of the Bible, its story, and how that story connects to our own personal stories and lives. From now until early June we’re going to discover what this strange, sometimes frightening and intimidating book is all about.

I’ve studied the Bible quite a bit over the years, some parts of it more than others, and I always find it fascinating. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not a history book like the ones you might read in a history class, it’s not a science textbook like the ones you’d read in a biology class. The Bible is a book of faith. It’s a book written by human beings about the relationship between God and humanity, about God’s experiences with the Jewish and Christian communities.

I’ve also come to the conclusion that the Bible is a living book. A good book can be life changing, any good book. The words in the Bible are the living word of God that is life changing and life saving. Martin Luther taught that the Bible is like the manger that held the baby Jesus in Bethlehem. The scriptures hold Christ, the living word, God’s address to us.

The Bible holds the living Christ who, as the scriptures are read and proclaimed, lives as God’s address to us. As we read and hear the words of scripture the Holy Spirit opens our ears and our hearts to help us believe the living word and illusions are shattered, old ways are rejected, new life is born, enemies are reconciled, a family is created, and disciples heed the call to follow Jesus.

That’s amazing. It really is the greatest story. I just have to keep reminding myself of that and it’ll be a lot easier to stick to that New Year’s resolution.