Before he was a politician, Preston Manning was a Christian.
The Society of Friends distinguishes between a Quaker by birth and Quaker by conviction.
Preston is both a Christian by birth and by conviction.
He grew up in the shadow of two great Alberta Christian premiers: his proxy grandfather William "Abie" Aberhart, a premier, high school principal and radio preacher; and his father Ernest Manning, a premier, dairy farmer and also a Sunday radio preacher.
Preston made up his own mind about his Christian faith after characteristic patient research and analysis. He made up his mind and accepted Jesus Christ as a young man, and has stayed the course with his conviction for 60-odd years.
When he went into politics, he continued a tradition established by Aberhart and his father that faith is to be lived in the real world. The sacred and secular are inseparable and God can be present in politics.
Aberhart and Ernest Manning did not believe in theocracy, nor does Preston.
As well-grounded populists, the three respected the institutions of the state and believed they should be separated and protected from the institutions of religion.
However, in his new book, Faith Leadership and Public Life: Leadership Lessons from Moses to Jesus, Preston writes "expressions of faith and public life cannot be kept in separate watertight compartments" because "real people in open societies with religious traditions and convictions simply do not do so."
The time has come and gone when a provincial premier can also be a Sunday radio preacher, as Manning himself has acknowledged.
He believes, nonetheless, that people of faith engaged in politics live at an intersection of faith and public life, and should do politics differently and be a credit to their faith and other faith communities.
His book is a guidebook to navigating that interface, written by a self-described scout and trailblazer on the frontiers of Canadian politics.
Preston argues that Christians are singularly equipped to do political reconciliation following the example of Jesus, who in 36 moths, 2000 years ago, started a movement based on reconciliation that now has one billion adherents today.
Preston will have his 76th birthday in June, and given his intellectual energy and sharp political mind, could well write more books. This is his fourth, if you include his co-authorship with his father of the 1967 paperback Political Realignment, published with Ernest Manning's name on the cover.
His political and faith lectures and speeches and his role as the backroom sage of Canadian conservatism continues, but this may be his publishing coda.
This book will be attacked or ignored, especially by a breed of Canadian – Toronto – journalists, broadcasters and writers who think that expressions of Christian faith in public life are to be hounded or silenced.
Consider the source of the attack and don't ignore the profound lessons for faith in the public square that Preston Manning draws from the lives and work of Moses, David, the Babylonian exiles and Jesus.
- Frank Dabbs is a veteran political and business journalist and author of the 1997 book Preston Manning: The Roots of Reform.
