The book's title is "The Rise of Christian Nationalism" in Canada. I think the book seems to conflate Dominionists with ANYONE on the Christian right.
I think the author didn't figure out if this book was really about Dominionists OR the Religious Right.
If it is about the latter, you can't say it's about the rise of Christian Nationalism.
I don't even know what Christian Nationalism is. I'm not a Dominionist.
I'm also annoyed at how the author reads too much into things.
For instance:
For nearly three years, Harper succeeded in keeping his attendance at East Gate Alliance under wraps, and when Lloyd Mackey finally broke the story, most of his press-gallery colleagues were stunned. Some speculated the Conservative leader must have been dragged there by his gregarious, motorcycle-riding spouse, but the opposite was true. Laureen Teskey had grown up in Alberta’s Turner Valley watching her mother’s growing obsession with a fundamentalist sect drive a wedge in her parents’ marriage, and she now gave religion a wide berth. She seldom set foot in East Gate and Buitenwerf claimed never to have met her. “She’s not interested in spiritual things,” Deborah Grey confirms.
For Harper, it was yet another reason to keep his faith to himself. After all, some ultra-conservative evangelicals believe in “headship”—the notion that, as the biblically anointed head of his household, a husband has every right to march his helpmate straight to the pews, or anywhere else. Owning up to his solo attendance at East Gate Alliance might raise awkward questions with a constituency that already had suspicions about whether Harper was really one of their own.
She draws that conclusion without proof. And it's not an airtight inference.
Did anyone question the people at Eastgate? Would that be something they would really think? Does Harper really believe in an Evangelical idea of "headship" (somehow I doubt it). You're expected to take Marci McDonald at her word.
