This summer, I was asked to write a couple of guest commentaries for CHP leader Jim Hnatiuk while he spent his well-earned vacation time out of the country.

And what was this Christian politician doing on vacation?

While secular parties of the political Left and Right were rocked by scandals about parliamentarians abusing their office for personal gain, Jim travelled with his pastor to the impoverished South American country of Ecuador to give away his most treasured possession: the faith that makes his marriage, his family, and his community happy and stable.

I couldn’t help comparing this act of selfless generosity with the allegations of venality in secular politics, because it so vividly illustrates the vapidity of one of the most common aphorisms of politics: Don’t mix religion and politics!

In truth, it is not mixing religion and politics that most gravely threatens the well-being of the citizenry; it is the lethal blend of politics with religion!

This fact is vividly illustrated in the carefully researched and scholarly work of academic Robert Rummel, whose book Death By Government attests to the fact that in the 20th century, the bloodiest hundred years in human history, the leading cause of unnatural death by far was governments that, in the name of official atheism, slaughtered hundreds of millions of their own people: the communist regimes of Mao Tsetung, Lenin and Stalin, Erik Honneker, Pol Pot, and Nikolai Ceacescu, not to mention the impact of Adolf Hitler’s anti-Biblical occultism!

Thinking of these facts, I couldn’t help picturing a hypothetical election in which the choices on the ballot contrast an atheist with a Christian. One candidate’s core world-view is: A hundred years from today, what the heck difference will it make? The other firmly believes that one day he (or she) will stand before Almighty God to answer for the integrity and honesty with which he (or she) represented the voters.

When you look at marking your ballot in that light, it’s pretty much a no-brainer, isn’t it?

At the risk of repeating myself: it’s not religion and politics that threatens the well-being of the citizenry; it’s mixing politics with religion!

And after watching the scandals in Ottawa this summer, wouldn't you agree that it’s time for Canadians to try a party whose members have internalized those time-tested Commandments that say, among other things, thou shalt not steal; not to mention thou shalt not kill?

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