Citizen Columns

Citizen Columns >> Answer (October 5th, 2007)

Question

You support a group of peace activists who lobby against Canadian involvement in Afghanistan. Then they ask you to run for political office. Do you accept?

Answer

This is a political question, but it raises another issue for us: what exactly is the source of our unity in the parish?

Clergy love to please others, and this can get them into trouble. So the short answer is no. First, because the Orthodox Church does not permit its clergy to run for office. And secondly, because that's a wise rule. Any given parish will have a wide range of opinions on political issues, and if there are peace activists you can be sure there will also be active supporters of Canada's role in Afghanistan. The pastor has to minister to everyone, and can't let stands on political issues interfere with his primary vocation. I made this mistake when I first arrived in Ottawa in 2003. I attended a meeting of the Orthodox clergy in Ottawa where posters were being distributed urging parishioners to vote for "family friendly" candidates in the provincial elections. I was new to the city and assumed that this was what all the parishes were doing, so I left the stack of handbills in a prominent place at the back of the church on Sunday. At the end of the service an irate young woman showed me one of the offending notices and said she had hidden them away. "I don't know who put them there, but partisan politics has no place in church."

Politically, my parish is Conservative, Liberals, NDP and Green. We are remarkably united, but it's a unity around our faith in Jesus Christ and our life in the Orthodox Church.

There's a story from the fourth century Desert Fathers that fits here. A monk came to Abba Pimen, one of the famous elders, and said that his fellow monks had asked him to be their leader. Should he do it? The old man was hesitant, so the brother said to him, "But it is they themselves, father, who want me to be in charge of them". The old man replied, "No, be their example, not their legislator."

Father John Jillions