November (Web-only) 2000

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Evangelical at center of election controversy While the U.S. waits to hear who won its presidential election two weeks ago, Canada is gearing up for its elections on Monday. It's a lot different from elections down here. Remember, they have a prime minister. Not a president. If you want a primer on how it all works from a U.S. perspective, as well as a rundown of the major parties, see this much-republished piece from the Los Angeles Times. But for the purposes of Weblog, all you have to know is that the Canadian Alliance, headed by evangelical-Pentecostal layman Stockwell Day, is the leading opposition party (see Christianity Today's earlier coverage of Day's rise here). Day's religious comments have increasingly come under attack as the election draws closer, most recently centering on his creationist beliefs. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) recently aired a report saying Day has recently taught the earth is merely 6,000 years old and that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time. Day called the report "yellow journalism," said that he did not think his views on creation "should be used in any kind of detrimental way in an election campaign," and noted that Prime Minister Jean Chretien, a Roman Catholic, was not asked to debate transubstantiation or the Immaculate Conception. A campaign spokesman later noted that Day "doesn't have any problem with the theory of evolution," but wants schools to be open to teaching other theories as well. The National Post uses the controversies to flesh out what it means to be a Pentecostal, which "to many people, and arguably to most politicians and journalists ... is a strange, exotic species rarely encountered and seldom known." (If you like the article, see Christian ...