“He shall have dominion . . . from sea to sea . . .” (Ps. 72:8).

A Canadian Epic

From Sea unto Sea is the title of perhaps the best in a four-volume, popular and exceedingly well-written series of Canadian histories. The account of the relatively recent spread of European civilization across North America is one of the most fascinating stories in history. It is a story full of action and adventure, human interest and geographical discovery, confusion and frustration, hardship and achievement. The westward expansion of the United States is more or less familiar to us who are south of the border. (It is frequently glamorized and caricatured in “Western” shows.)

Even less familiar to most of us than the United States story is the not less fascinating and remarkable parallel account of Canada’s somewhat more recent spread “from sea to sea.” That is in some respects a very improbable story. Consider the facts that the geographical and natural commercial connections of most of the inhabitants of Canada are north and south rather than east and west; most of the Canadians Jive nearer to the United States than to one another. Canadians who wanted to go from Montreal or Toronto to Vancouver, B.C. had to travel by way ofChicago and the United States. In defiance of these geographical and commercial considerations the nation’s development was from east to west. In moving west that development had to surmount almost impossibly difficult geographical barriers. The uniting of the country as a dominion was eventually accomplished only by the building of a railroad. Construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway was an incredibly difficult feat of engineering and prohibitively expensive for a nation of perhaps one-tenth the population of the United States, scattered across an area larger than the 48 states. Although it seemed to be a very doubtful economic venture, it was a political necessity. The fantastic story of how it was planned and built was told by Canadian author Pierre Berton in a double volume, entitled The National Dream and The Last Spike. The author traced the way in which the government was persuaded to devote millions of dollars to what must have seemed for most of the people a very remote and impractical project. There was no way that it could be financed privately. The account outlines the dream and the often apparently insurmountable obstacles to its realization. In the exasperating manner of democratic politics, what one government can decide another can reverse a year or two later. There were endless frustrations that wore out and broke men. Then there were the unbelievable difficulties of discovering a possible route, by no means a certainty when the survey parties groped for passage across the mountains of British Columbia. The route crossed passes where over fifty feet of snow might fall in a winter and climbed grades so steep that at one point the railway builders later resorted to spiral tunnels to reach the Kicking Horse Pass.

At one point the difficulties, costs and failing government support drove even the hardiest leaders of the enterprise to the point of abandoning it. Just when failure seemed inevitable, the railroad was saved by the Saskatchewan revolution of the French Canadian, Louis Riel. The government, finding itself suddenly compelled in the dead of winter to quickly raise an army and transport it to that remote prairie province to quell the revolt, had no means to accomplish that except by the as yet far-from-completed railway. The government was assured that the troops could be moved and so they were hastily collected and transported , at times on open flat cars in bone-chilling winter weather through some of the coldest wilderness on the continent, north of Lake Superior. From points where the constructed line ended they had to cross the uncompleted gaps by sleighs or on foot, at one point across the glare ice of Lake Superior. The movement of troops which quelled the Riel revolt, demonstrated the need for and value of the railway and finally persuaded the reluctant government to bail it out when it seemed certain to collapse. Thus the railroad , promised when the Confederation took place in 1867, became a reality in 1885 and helped to knit the scattered colonies into a nation.

No “Civil Religion”

Although some of us may find this history fascinating, may we as Christians virtually identify the growth of the nation with the Kingdom of Christ—as Canada’s adoption of the name “Dominion” from the prophecy of Christ’s Kingdom in Psalm 72* might suggest? Is the “Dominion of Canada Christ’s Kingdom”? Although Christian patriotism might move us in that direction, we ought to see clearly that such a move is out of order. We may not adopt the properly criticized “civil religion” that would do that. Neither Canada, nor the United States may be simply identified with the Kingdom of Christ. Despite their Christian traditions, there is far too much in both countries that is far from Christian.

The temptation to confuse patriotic sentiment and Christian convictions may sometimes be more subtle than we might expect. Dr. Harry Boer a while ago tried to defend the World Council of Churches’ support of African Communist guerillas by arguing that they were only doing what our U.S. colonial fathers were doing with probably less justification, in the Revolutionary War against England (June 1982, RES Theological Forum, Outlook, March 1983, p. 18). The fallacy of such a cynical appeal to national prejudices ought to be obvious. Why should we assume that the Revolutionary War was justified? One who has read the Canadian version of that event, or even the novels of Kenneth Roberts, written from the perspective of Loyalists who were driven northward by the threats and violence of revolutionary agitators, might begin to question that. Recently the Seventh Day Adventist publication Liberty (July-August 1983 issue) traced the story of Rev. Jacob Duche, Jr. an Episcopal minister who opened the 1774 session of the Continental Congress with prayer and the reading of the 35th Psalm, of which John Adams said that it was “as if heaven had ordained that psalm be read this morning.” He also opened the second session. As the independence movement grew he and others began to question how taking part in it would be harmonized with his vows, as a clergyman in the Church of England, to be faithful to the king. Caught in this crisis of conscience, he eventually had to leave for England , branded as a traitor, with his property confiscated. After the war-fever had died down, on returning to Philadelphia, he was received by President Washington in an apparent gesture of apology.

The United States can certainly not be simply equated with the Kingdom of Christ. Even if there were no question about the legitimacy of the American Revolution, that would in no way make it a plausible pretext on which to justify Christian churches using church funds to support anti-Christian guerillas who ai:e shooting Christian missionaries.

In our December Outlook, Rev. Jelle Tuininga (p. 16) called attention to the way in which our churches’ World Relief Committee, similarly confusing the Christians’ and the churches’ calling with national and governmental responsibilities, has blundered into political agitation to reverse the U.S. government’s anti-Communist policies in Central America! He pointed out that this venture is the more ludicrous in urging Canadian churches to advise the U.S . government about Central America!

In our concern to avoid adopting a “civil religion” which identifies the United States or Canada with the Kingdom of Christ, we must also avoid the probably more common mistake of our age of assuming that there is little or no connection between the two. If we believe and confess the prophetic vision of Psalm 72 that Christ “shall have dominion from sea to sea,” doesn’t that imply that the Dominion of Canada as it spread from Atlantic to Pacific Oceans-and the earlier and parallel development of the United States between these two oceans are “His dominion,” and that behind and through their sometimes fascinating and thrilling and sometimes blundering and exasperating histories He is in sovereign control of their destinies? Of course it does!

Christ Is King

It was the glory of Abraham Kuyper’s career a century ago that he saw and tried to testify to this Biblical truth not only as a pastor but also as a working Christian citizen and politician. It was his confession that not a square inch of territory was exempt from this sovereign rule of Christ. His limited success in realizing that kind of dedication to Christ in the politics of the country, and the current abandonment of his aims by those who have succeeded him, do not make his purpose invalid; they only highlight the current apostasy of his successors.

Many of our Canadian immigrants, like our forefathers, uprooted from their old home country to find a place in a new and developing land, have sensed something of the calling and adventure as Christians of sharing in that enterprise under the direction and in the service of Christ the King. We who live south of the border need to be reminded that we have the same Christian calling and commitment.

The calling to serve the Lord Christ in all of the business of living may not be separated from the varied development and business of life around us, but neither may it be simply identified with and lost in the increasingly secular and antiChristian developments of our countries. The Emperor Constantine in the 4th Century and King Charlemagne in the 8th Century may have been mistaken in some of their methods of trying to Christianize their realms, but they were right in the1r purpose to acknowledge Christ as King of Kings. They were in that respect more consistently Christian than today’s “Christian” politicians who settle for a government that will only tolerate Christianity , but is forbidden to encourage it. Even pagan Nebuchadnezzar was driven to confess much more than a tolerant neutrality (Daniel 4:34–37). The fact of the matter is, as the Bible never ceases to remind us (Psalm 2:12 for example), and as we are prone to forget, that Christ is King and everyone will sooner or later be completed to acknowledge that rule either in conversion or in condemnation. Our aim for ourselves and others must be conversion. “His dominion shall be from sea to sea . . . to the ends of the earth.”

*J. Bartlet Brebner’s, Canada A Modern History , p. 289.