Lawrence Martin is the author of 10 books, including six national bestsellers. His most recent, Harperland, was nominated for the Shaughnessy Cohen award. His other works include two volumes on Jean Chrétien, two on Canada-U.S. relations and three books on hockey.

Well there I was, worried about the ever-declining state of my golf game, when I was told that I should check the views of some of our scribes on the far right. They were all in a tizzy over what I had written in a recent Globe and Mail column about the intersection of religion and politics.

I thought well heck, why bother. It’s perfectly predictable what these guys say – and I’ve got my wedge game to work on.

But my goodness, I did look and found such distortion and excess that it merited a response.

My initial reaction was to be flattered that they would think my views carry so much weight (they don’t!) that they would want to react in such volume.

My column made no extraordinary claim. It said there should be a debate about the impact of religion on our politics. The religious right has had a major influence on politics in the U.S. and here, while not nearly so big, it has become increasingly influential. How closely, I wondered, do the views of our Conservative politicians on such matters as science and climate change reflect the views of their church? Is faith a guiding influence or is it reason?

The column stated that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is fully entitled to privacy in the matter of his religious faith. It said that indeed this was our tradition in Canada, that it should be kept.

The column went further than that. It said, contrary to the spin some of the Theocons put on it, that just because the prime minister was a member of an evangelical church it did not necessarily mean he accepted the teachings of that church. In drawing an analogy, I explained that many Catholics don’t necessarily accept a doctrine of their faith – that of transubstantiation.

The critics got all worked up about this, explaining that if you don’t believe in that doctrine you are not a Catholic. Technically, this is true. In practise, it is not. I was raised as a Catholic in a strict Catholic environment. I am still – they haven’t excommunciated me yet – a Catholic. I go to church occasionally. But I don’t believe in transubstantiation. In fact, most Catholics who I know do not believe in it.

Why the ideologues wanted to highlight this point was bizarre. It served – since I was using it to say we shouldn’t jump to conclusions about what the PM believed – to undermine their argument.

I also put forward the example of a prominent writer who believes the PM’s religious beliefs have an effect on his policymaking. I pointed out that in my opinion, this was all in the realm of speculation. We don’t really know.

All this was still not enough. There were still some who wanted to believe I was mounting a fullscale attack. One poor scribe was practically catatonic. In a hilarious screed, he basically suggested I should be drawn and quartered.

Some right-side ranters entered into all kinds of definitional hair-splitting over what constitutes fundamentalism, the religious right, evangelicalism etc.. You can have lengthy debates over the nuances and pardon me if I didn’t nuance things to their satisfaction. It was not essential to my general point.

The majority of responses I received were reasonable, fair-minded and in agreement. Some criticisms of the column were appropriate. (There are eminently challengeable points in virtually every column I write). The point, for example, that evangelicals should not be pigeonholed was right on. I thought I had covered this with my reference to Catholicism. But I should have been more loud and clear. Evangelicalism comes in many different forms. There are many examples from history and from today that counter any kind of stereotyping.

On subjects like science, evolution, climate change however, people can check out what many evangelical churches have been preaching in recent years and draw their own conclusions. There are many groups like the Cornwall Alliance which have strong views on these subjects.

In saying how dare I suggest the PM’s views on policy questions could be influenced by his religious beliefs, some observers showed that they do not know their history. Many prime ministers have been influenced, Mackenzie King being the best example. His diaries offer up voluminous evidence.

There is a strain of anti-erudition in this government, a tendency to reject empirical data. It is seen, for example, in the muzzling of our scientific community. One hopes that religiosity is not a contributing factor.

The tie between religion and politics, in my view, is greatly under-covered by our media. Some pollsters will tell you that the degree to which the Conservative Party dominates the churchgoer vote is critical to their success. Some Liberals will tell you their loss of that vote is a serious factor in their decline.

Though the impact of the religious right is not what it is in the United States, though evangelicals in Canada are much different from their American counterparts, it doesn’t mean it’s a subject that should be set aside. In my view it’s an important subject, one that should be discussed widely and reasonably.

And now, if you don’t mind, I‘ll get back to practising my wedge game.

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