Vancouver South Conservative MP Wai Young’s contentious political remarks about Jesus and the Air India bombing are not out of the ordinary in some Canadian churches, says a specialist on evangelicals and Chinese Christians.

“They’re remarkably fascinating comments, but they’re not sensational,” said Justin Tse, a post-doctoral student at the University of Washington who earned his UBC PhD studying religion and trans-national migrants.

The evangelical pastors who head Harvest City Church in East Vancouver, where Wai spoke in late June, “felt her talk was so uncontroversial that they posted it on their website,” said Tse.

The national media is buzzing over comments Wai made during the service, in which she linked the federal Conservative party’s decision to launch anti-terrorist Bill C51 to the courage of Jesus Christ, “who served and acted to always do the right thing, not the most popular thing.”

Young, one of about 100,000 Chinese evangelical Christians in Metro Vancouver, also defended Bill C-51 by telling the Pentecostal congregation that Canada’s spy agency knew there was a bomb on the Air India flight that exploded over the coast of Ireland in 1985, killing 329 people, mostly Canadians. Young has retracted that statement. Her constituency office sent out a statement in which Young says she “misspoke,” adding “I regret this error.”

Tse said Young’s talk, one of others that she has made at Vancouver churches in recent months, was designed to appeal to evangelicals by portraying Jesus as a leader who “built community” — particularly one who did so within the framework of a “Conservative party ideology.”

Young’s talk at the church, Tse said, equated community and nationhood “with strong security.” The MP, a former provider of services to immigrants, stressed the importance of anti-terrorist legislation, firm borders, fighting crime and lowering taxes.

Young also told church members she had stopped reading newspapers because “most of the facts in there are not facts.” Tse found it significant that Harvest church tried to offer an alternative to the secular media by putting Young’s talk online.

Debra Bowman, the minister of Vancouver’s Ryerson United Church, echoed the views of many of Young’s critics when she urged the federal Conservatives to put as much effort into probing the charitable tax status of Tory-friendly churches as it does to auditing environmental and other non-profit groups.

“The thing I find really upsetting isn’t so much (Young’s) dreadful Christological claims for Harper’s Conservatives,” said Bowman. She was more concerned about the way the backbench MP appears to be flouting Canada Revenue rules on politically partisan activity by religious groups.

“I really hope someone will track whether (such churches) come under the same financial scrutiny that many justice-environment-church groups have been experiencing,” said Bowman.

Harvest City Church released a statement late Wednesday saying Young’s “comments were her own and Harvest City Church does not endorse her comments, nor any political party, nor does it endorse the use of its facility as a political platform.”

In March, a University of Victoria study stated that Prime Minister Stephen Harper government’s allocated $13.4 million to fund tax audits of “political activities” by non-profit groups, particularly environmental and left-leaning social-justice organizations, that provide tax receipts for donations.