Canadian-U.S. Differences

The July 15, 1985 Banner featured a remarkably illuminating article by Robert S. Fortner dealing with the differences between Canadian and U.S. policies regarding television. These differences reflect, in part, a difference between the ways in which the two countries deal with their ethnic groups. Unlike the U.S. “Canada wants to provide a separate Canadian cultural identity to each large group within its diverse people.” “Therefore, unlike U.S. television, CBC focuses on including the many groups who make up bilingual and multicultural Canada. And since Canada’s many groups retain their individual ethnic qualities, CBC’s concern to present ethnic groups authentically on television is stronger than is that concern in the United States.”

These observed differences are bound to strike anyone who has lived or traveled extensively in both countries. A visitor to Toronto is impressed by the obviously diverse ethnic neighborhoods in that metropolis. And anyone who has lived in English Canada is in for even more of a shock when he first visits Quebec. In our observation, one who is rather limited to the English language may have a much easier time traveling in the various countries of Europe than he will in Quebec. The notion of a Federal judge monitoring a school to ensure that the numbers of English and French students fall within certain percentages in the way that some judges do exercise that kind of control in seeking to achieve a certain mix of black and white in some of our city schools would be ludicrous in Canada. Canada has had to learn to live with enormous ethnic differences between its provinces, and has been doing so in a way that is markedly different from what we know south of the border. Whether or not we like that difference, we are hardly in a position to make a critical judgment of it.

Criticizing South Africa

More than ever in recent days the news has been focusing attention on South Africa. TV newsmen, ever seeking something sensational, have been highlighting police efforts to stop rioting in some parts of that country. And many congressmen and clergymen have been indulging in what has long been a Liberal hobby of maligning the South African government, or “Bashing the Boers,” as a recent Wall Street Journal called it, in this case seeking sanctions if that government does not immediately desist from using force to stop the rioting, arson, looting and murder that some blacks are perpetrating on others.

Rather frequently mentioned in the news as an example of government repression is the prolonged imprisonment of Nelson Mandela. An article in the Dutch paper Getrouw, points out that he had been offered his freedom if he would promise to refrain from violence. This, Mandela refused to do. The article recalled the generally overlooked reason why he was imprisoned. In 1963 a guerilla outfit was rounded up with an arsenal of 210,000 hand grenades, 48,000 land mines, about 50 tons of explosives (enough to destroy the city of Johannesburg) and a list of 106 targets including police stations, communications offices and the homes of black policemen . Nelson Mandela, a leader of the banned African National Congress, was one of the ten who were charged in this affair. He confessed to three of the four charges of breaking the law against communism and admitted aiming at the violent overthrow of the government. His writings had been advocating revolution rather than reform. He had written, “We of the Communist Party are the most advanced revolutionaries of modern history . . . .” After citing a number of such details from the March 1, 1985, South African Digest, the Getrouw writer remarks dryly that all this must be overlooked to describe Mandela today as merely “democratically oriented.”

That the apartheid system is unjust and needs correction is being more and more widely recognized, not least in South Africa, where significant changes are being made. How to make these changes without destroying the whole country in a blood bath as one black tribe fights another for control, as such tribes have been doing in other parts of Africa (without much outside criticism), is the question which almost no U.S. critic of South Africa faces.

The August 2 Wall Street Journal article already mentioned pointed out, “The present crisis pretty much got under way when the leftist TransAfrica, Inc. stirred up public temper in the U.S. Only later did the conflagration spread to South Africa, where it was orchestrated in part by the African National Congress, a socialist outfit that eschews moderation for radicalism. An especially ugly part of the recent violence in South Africa is the killing of black moderates by black radicals.”

Minding Our Own Business

The conclusion of the article seems appropriate: “Throwing official sanctions into this tinderbox scarcely strikes us as a prudent way to avert or at least postpone a South African maelstrom. Trying to reform apartheid is a delicate task of diplomacy, and the Congress ought to leave it to the executive branch, at least until it has dealt with the domestic problems the Constitution defines as its business.”

The final remark about the U.S. Congress needing to “mind its own business” applies with even greater force to the performance of our June CR Synod regarding such matters. Our Church Order stipulates that, the “assemblies shall transact ecclesiastical matters only, and shall deal with them in an ecclesiastical manner” (Art. 28). In the light of that principle, consider that the synod devoted a reported nine hours of futile floor debate to discussing South Africa, while it dismissed in about 15 minutes the over 50 properly presented and Biblically based protests against last year’s decision about women in office. It made that decision after delegate Edward Knott had pointed out that the grounds advanced for that proposed dismissal were obviously false! Recall too that a carefully prepared Biblical case against universalistic views which the Lethbridge church, upon classes’ instructions, brought to the synod was brushed aside with less than two minutes of attention on the floor of the assembly!

When the church disregards our Biblical guide, even the common sense requirements that we “mind our own business” no longer seems to restrain our follies. (That requirement, it should not be forgotten, is also Biblical [Cf. Prov. 26, 17; 1 Peter 4:15]. Applied to matters such as distinguishing church from state business, it is really the principle which our fathers called “sphere sovereignty”.) We, as churches, as well as individuals, badly need to get back to the Bible and to minding our own business.