Bill C-9 Tyranny vs. The Greatest Revival part 3
This section discusses the political and civic era, touching on COVID-19, the voices that emerged, the Truckers' Freedom Convoy, challenges faced by Canada's institutions, honouring veterans, and a practical call to action.
A Season of Testing: The COVID 19 Years.
Few events in recent Canadian history have challenged the integrity of our institutions and the loyalty of our churches as profoundly as the COVID 19 pandemic and the policies associated with it.
Whatever one believes about the virus’s origins or severity, what became undeniable from 2020 to 2022 was this: Canadians discovered that the rights and freedoms taken for granted were more fragile than imagined. Church gatherings were restricted. Churches were closed or capped. Travel was curtailed. Livelihoods were threatened. And those who raised questions — doctors, nurses, pastors, politicians, ordinary citizens — were often marginalized, fined, or silenced.
The Apostle Peter wrote that judgment begins with the household of God (1 Peter 4:17). From that perspective, the pressures of the pandemic years can be understood not only as a political crisis but also as a spiritual one — a season in which God allowed the true condition of the Canadian Church to be revealed. What was revealed was often uncomfortable.
"For the time has
come for judgment to begin at the house of God; and if it begins with us first,
what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God?" 1 Peter 4:17
Numerous churches closed their doors without issuing any protest. Many Christians obediently adhered to all directives, without ever questioning whether God's commands — such as gathering together (Hebrews 10:25), caring for the sick and the elderly, and defending the vulnerable — might occasionally demand courage when facing governmental pressure.
This is not to say that caution and care for one's neighbours were wrong. Loving your neighbour sometimes requires sacrifice. But the speed and completeness with which many churches surrendered their voice, their gatherings, and their public witness revealed something important: we had already, long before COVID, made our peace with irrelevance. The pandemic simply made it visible.
"The Charter of Rights and Freedoms
is not a privilege — it is Canada's supreme law, built on the recognition of
the supremacy of God. It belongs to the people, not to Parliament."
At the same time, the pandemic years produced something beautiful: a remnant of faithful Canadians — pastors, doctors, lawyers, truckers, parents, and ordinary believers refused to be silent. They paid a price for their courage. Some lost their jobs, reputations, or freedom. Yet they showed that the salt had not entirely lost its flavour and that the light had not gone out.
Those Who Dared to Speak Showed Courageous Faith
History remembers the famous voices. But most of the people who stood up during this period were not famous at all. They were nurses who refused to stay silent when they saw what troubled them. Pastors who kept their church doors open, knowing they risked heavy fines. Parents who pulled their children out of schools and fought lonely battles in courtrooms. Federal employees who accepted unpaid leave rather than violate their consciences.
Among the pastors who bore public witness at considerable personal cost were Artur Pawlowski, Tobias Tissen, Tim Stephens, Henry Hildebrandt, Peter Wall, and James Coates — men who understood that a shepherd does not abandon his flock when the pressure mounts. Pastor Steven Michel of Crosspoint Baptist Church in Navan, Ontario, led services for more than 14 hours over a single weekend, with attendance limited to 10 people, so that every one of his members could worship.
Politicians, including Derek Sloan, Randy Hillier, Maxime Bernier, and Joel Lightbound, raised their voices in legislatures and public squares, often at the cost of their careers. Legal organizations such as the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms fought case after case in the courts. At enormous professional risk, medical professionals challenged the dominant narrative and called for open, honest factual debate.
And there were thousands more whose names will never appear in any book. Christians who prayed daily for justice and for righteous leaders. Families who quietly homeschooled their children rather than surrender them to an increasingly hostile curriculum. Elderly believers who refused the vaccine and accepted isolation rather than compromise their consciences. Truckers who drove across the country to say simply: enough.
"And this I pray,
that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all
discernment." Philippians 1:9
The Truckers' Freedom Convoy: A Glimmer of Hope
In the winter of 2022,
something remarkable happened. Thousands of Canadians — truck drivers and their
families, farmers, tradespeople, veterans, mothers and fathers and grandparents
— converged on Ottawa from every corner of the country. They came to be heard.
They came in peace. And for a few weeks, they gave many Canadians who had grown
weary and discouraged a reason to hope.
The images from that
convoy are ones that will not easily be forgotten: overpasses lined with
cheering supporters, Canadian flags waving in the bitter cold, strangers
sharing meals and prayers, people from every background united by a simple
conviction that their government had gone too far.
The convoy was imperfect, as all human endeavours are. But it was genuine. It was peaceful. And it represented something many Canadians had stopped believing possible: ordinary people standing together and saying they valued their freedom more than their comfort.
"Greater love has no one than this,
than to lay down one's life for his friends." — John 15:13 Our veterans understood this. So did the
truckers who risked everything to make their voices heard.
The government's response was deeply troubling. The Emergencies Act — a law designed for genuine national crises — was invoked for the first time in Canadian history against peaceful protesters. Bank accounts were frozen without court orders. Participants were labelled terrorists. The full weight of state power was brought to bear on Canadian citizens who had committed no violence and had not broken any serious law.
Whatever one's view of the
specific policy disputes that motivated the convoy, Canadians of every
background should be troubled by a government that responds to peaceful dissent
with financial punishment and emergency powers. The freedom to protest, to petition,
and to be heard is not a privilege granted by the state. It is a right — one
that generations of Canadians fought and died to secure.
Among those who paid a
personal price were Tamara Lich and Pat King — neither of whom committed acts
of violence, yet both of whom experienced incarceration. Their stories serve as
a reminder that the freedoms we take for granted are only as secure as our
willingness to defend them.
"The nations have
sunk down in the pit which they made; in the net which they hid, their own foot
is caught." Psalm 9:15
Canada's Institutions Under Pressure
Canada's system of rights
and freedoms was not built in a day, and it was not built without cost. The
Canadian Bill of Rights of 1960 and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of 1982
represent the accumulated wisdom of a civilization that had witnessed what
happens when governments are allowed to operate without limits — and chose to
build something better.
Central to that system is
a simple but profound idea: the government does not grant rights. Rights are
inherent to human beings, made in the image of God, and the role of government
is to protect them, not to dispense or withhold them according to political
convenience.
The COVID-19 years tested
that principle severely. Courts ruled that significant restrictions on
religious gatherings were justified as reasonable limits in a free and
democratic society. Whatever one makes of those rulings, the broader pattern is
worth examining honestly: the machinery of rights protection, when subjected to
sustained political pressure, proved less robust than many Canadians had
believed.
The lesson is not that our
institutions are beyond repair. It is that institutions alone are never enough.
Rights are only as real as the culture that defends them — and that culture is
shaped, above all, by the convictions of its people. When Christians withdraw
from public life, when churches stop speaking into the moral and political
questions of the day, the vacuum does not stay empty. It fills with other
voices, other values, other visions of what a good society looks like.
"The Constitution of Canada does
not belong to Parliament or to the Legislatures; it belongs to the
people." — Nova Scotia (A.G.) v. Canada (A.G.) [1951]
This is why the call to
civic engagement is not a distraction from the gospel. It is an expression of
it. Christians are called to love their neighbours — and loving your neighbour
includes caring about the laws that govern their lives, the schools that educate their children, and the freedoms that allow Christians to live according to their conscience.
The Compromise That Silenced the Church
There is one decision that
the Canadian Church made — quietly, gradually, without ever quite realizing its
full consequences — that has done more to diminish our public voice than almost
anything else. It is the acceptance of charitable tax exemption status under
the conditions set by the Canada Revenue Agency.
When a church registers as
a charitable organization, it agrees to remain politically non-partisan. It
agrees not to influence its members in partisan political matters, not to
campaign for or against political parties, and not to speak from the pulpit in
ways that could be construed as political advocacy. In exchange, it receives a
tax exemption — a not insignificant financial benefit.
On the surface, this seems
like a reasonable arrangement. Churches are not political parties. Pulpits
should not become campaign platforms. These concerns are legitimate.
But the practical effect
has been a Church that is afraid to speak about abortion, about parental
rights, about the definition of marriage, about the content of school curricula
— because any of these topics might be deemed "political" and jeopardize
the tax exemption. And so, generation by generation, the Church has become
quieter and quieter on the very questions that matter most to the families
sitting in the pews.
"No servant can
serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else
he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and
mammon." Luke 16:13
Jesus asked a pointed
question: Are not our children worth more than a tax exemption? Is not freedom
of conscience worth more than a financial arrangement with the government?
This is not a call for
churches to become partisan political organizations. It is a call for churches
to rediscover their prophetic voice — to speak the truth in love on the great
moral questions of our time, without fear and without apology. The prophet's
role was never to endorse political parties. It was to speak God's truth to
power — to kings and rulers and ordinary people alike — and to call the nation
back to righteousness.
The unions and
professional associations of this country do not hesitate to advocate for their
members on political questions. The Church of Jesus Christ, which carries the
most important message in human history, should not be less courageous than a
trade union.
Remember for Whom Our Veterans Fought
Every year on November
11th, Canada pauses for two minutes to honour those who gave their lives in
service of this country. We stand in the cold, we bow our heads, we lay wreaths
at cenotaphs from Newfoundland to British Columbia. And we say: we will not
forget.
But what exactly do we
remember? What was it, precisely, that those men and women fought for?
They fought for the next
generation. They fought against tyranny — against the idea that the state has
the right to tell its citizens what to think, what to say, where to go, and how
to live. They fought for the freedom to worship, to raise families according to
their own values, to speak the truth without fear of punishment. They fought
for the freedom of conscience — the God-given right to live according to one's
deepest convictions.
My father was a French
Canadian who volunteered for the army before conscription in World War II —
something unusual for a young single man with no obvious obligation to do so.
He joined an English infantry unit and fought in Sicily. He came home physically
uninjured, but carried the weight of what he had seen for the rest of his life.
He died at fifty-five. He never spoke much about why he went. But watching him
sit in silence through those war documentaries on television, I came to believe
I understood: he went because it was the right thing to do.
"Greater love has no one than this,
than to lay down one's life for his friends." — John 15:13
We honour our veterans
most truly not by placing flowers at a monument once a year, but by refusing to
surrender — quietly, incrementally, without a fight — the freedoms they
purchased at such tremendous cost. Not a single shot has been fired on Canadian
soil in the battles of our generation. The erosion of our rights has happened
through legislation, through regulation, through the slow cultural drift away
from the values that once defined us.
The Christian believer, of
all people, should understand what is at stake. We are not merely fighting for
political freedoms, valuable as those are. We are fighting for the space to
raise our children in the faith, to speak the truth of the gospel without legal
threat, to live according to the convictions of our conscience before God.
These are not negotiable. They are not privileges. They are the inheritance of
every Canadian — and we have a responsibility to pass them on.
What Can We Do? Standing on Guard for Thee
It is easy, looking at the
landscape of Canadian public life, to feel overwhelmed. The forces arrayed
against Christian values in education, law, media, and culture are real and
powerful. The pace of change has been rapid. And the Church — which should have
been the voice of sanity and stability — has too often been absent.
So what do we do? Where do
we begin?
We begin where every
genuine movement of God has always begun: on our knees. Prayer is not a passive
retreat from engagement. It is the foundation of it. Before Nehemiah lifted a
single stone to rebuild Jerusalem's walls, he wept and prayed and fasted for
days (Nehemiah 1:4). Before the early Church turned the Roman Empire upside
down, they gathered in an upper room and prayed together for ten days. Prayer
is not the last resort of the powerless. It is the first resource of those who
know where true power comes from.
"Draw near to God
and He will draw near to you." James 4:8
But prayer must lead to
action. The same Nehemiah who prayed also picked up a trowel. The same
disciples who prayed at Pentecost walked out into the streets of Jerusalem and
proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus Christ at the risk of their lives. Faith
without works, James reminds us, is dead (James 2:17).
So here, practically, is
the call:
Pray — with urgency, with
persistence, with faith. Pray for righteous leaders. Pray for the protection of
children. Pray for the Church to wake up. Pray for your pastor, your
neighbours, your government.
Speak — share the gospel
in your everyday conversations, simply and without fear. Plant seeds. You are
not responsible for the harvest. God tends to that. You are responsible for the
planting.
Vote — according to your
convictions, not merely for the lesser of evils. Support candidates who share
your values. Engage with local politics: school boards, municipal councils,
provincial legislatures. These are not secular arenas that Christians should
avoid. They are the places where decisions are made that affect the lives of
your children and neighbours.
Give — your time, your
resources, your talents. Support organizations that are fighting for parental
rights, religious freedom, and constitutional liberties. Support your local
church generously. Consider whether your church's charitable status is limiting
its prophetic voice — and what, together, you might do about that.
Parent — take back the
education of your children. Know what they are being taught. Engage with
teachers and school boards. Speak up at parent council meetings. Consider
alternative educational options where necessary. The government does not have
the right to determine the moral formation of your child. You do.
"You, therefore,
my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that you
have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will
be able to teach others also. You therefore must endure hardship as a good
soldier of Jesus Christ." 2 Timothy 2:1–3
None of this requires you
to be a pastor, a politician, or a public intellectual. It requires only that
you be faithful — in the place where God has put you, with the people He has
put around you, with the gifts He has given you. The greatest revival in history
may well be made up of thousands of ordinary acts of faithfulness, performed by
ordinary believers who simply refused to be silent.
Romania's revolutionary act of freedom was influenced by Christians of all denominations. They revolted against the strong communist regime that ended in 1989. Romania was among the original countries that contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall and, ultimately, to the fall of the USSR.
"The Securitate's persecution of Tokes was to rally a small but dedicated parish to his defence and to evoke tremendous sympathy throughout the ecumenical religious community in Timisoara. This community seemed to come spontaneously to his assistance, and just as spontaneously, freedom from tyranny became the common cause for the thousands who surrounded the Reformed Church, particularly after it was clear that the Securitate had abducted Tokes. Tokes was supported in a moment of euphoria by his own faithful parishioners and by an ecumenical community of believers (Adventists, Baptists, Catholics, Orthodox, and Pentecostalists), who in turn inspired the community at large to take their destiny into their own hands. In that moment, they transcended their ethnic divisions and their religious rivalries and united on the basis of their common human dignity in their desperate thrust against overwhelming odds for the freedom that most of them had never known. The citizens of Timisoara came to the conclusion that it was better to die with dignity than to continue to live in slavery."Taken from a documentary titled, "
THE ROLE OF RELIGION IN THE ROMANIAN REVOLUTION by Earl A. Pope," source: https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1622&context=ree
So I said:
“Woe is me, for I am undone!
Because I am a man of unclean lips,
And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King,
The Lord of hosts.” Isaiah 6:5
In Isaiah 6:8 to 10, we read,
Also, I heard the voice of the Lord, saying:
“Whom shall I send,
And who will go for Us?”
Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.”
And He said, “Go, and tell this people:
‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;
Keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’
“Make the heart of this people dull,
And their ears heavy,
And shut their eyes;
Lest they see with their eyes,
And hear with their ears,
And understand with their heart,
And return and be healed.”
In the Book of Hebrews, we observe many biblical figures who volunteer to fulfill God the Creator's request and follow God's will. These are examples of courageous faith.
What about you? You hear the voice of God in your heart, yet you hesitate, replying, "Why me? I am so unqualified for the task." It is God in you who will do His work, not you, not your skills, not your resources, not your master's degree. All He wants is a willing heart to obey. Here am I! Send me. If you are one of the many who believe that Christianity should not be part of politics and discourage anyone who is willing to take a stand in our society, read Hebrews 11: 33, who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness.
"With men this is
impossible, but with God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26
