Preston Manning has good advice for Christians in Canada, and the founder and former leader of the Reform (now Canadian Alliance) Party had a pulpit from which to dispense it. Now removed from the hurly burly of daily political life, the "professing and practising Christian" who against the odds earned the respect of Parliament and the country was a feature speaker at the "Fresh Start" banquet celebrating the 75th anniversary of historic Peoples Church in Toronto.

Manning warned his listeners that "Canada is in danger of suppressing freedom of conscience and religion in the name of separation of church and state, and lapsing into an ineffective moral relativism."

Failure to pay proper heed to the enormous reality of spiritual beliefs and convictions that persists in our populace, he says, threatens "not only of religious Canadians, but of all Canadians-religious and irreligious alike."

And banning faith from the public square in Canada, including "the expression of religiously-based moral judgments," quashes moral debate, leaving us with an impoverished understanding of right and wrong and a diminishing ability to arbitrate the differences of opinion between different groups.

"The solution for governments and politicians to the perceived problems of the mixing of religion and politics-and there are real problems-is not to pretend that they can be kept separate in two watertight compartments but for governments and politicians to learn to manage the interactions between the two," says Manning.

"And the challenge for faith communities is not to retreat into a complete privatization of faith which some are inclined to do, or to allow militant activists to discredit faith communities by their extremism, but to learn to live and act responsibly at the interface of the spiritual and the political," he declared.

Turning to Scripture, Manning observed that when Jesus first sent His disciples out to do public ministry, He also gave them guidelines for conducting themselves in the public arena. "I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as wise (as shrewd) as serpents and as innocent as doves" (Matt. 10:16).

"Jesus Himself provides us with examples of what it means to speak and act shrewdly, in public places, and not foolishly," explained Manning, highlighting the day the scribes and Pharisees tried to get Jesus into political trouble over the issue of taxes. "Is it lawful to pay tribute to Caesar?" they asked.

Jesus called for a coin and turned the question around. Whose inscription is on it? Of course, it was Caesar’s. "Then render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s but unto God the things that are God’s," replied Jesus. This, says Manning, was not just a great sound bite-but a shrewd answer both spiritually and politically.

In another situation (Luke 9:52), Jesus and His disciples came to a Samaritan village on their way to Jerusalem, just days before His crucifixion. When the village refused to receive Jesus, two of the most spiritual of His disciples were ready to "command fire to come down from heaven and destroy them."

This religious extremism of the worst kind, says Manning, existed in the hearts of Jesus’ closest followers. But Jesus rebuked this impulse in no uncertain terms. "His disciples were to be like Him in their dealings with the common people-harmless as doves. They were not to conduct themselves in such a way as to scare the people they were trying to reach and help.

"What is the most common fear of ordinary non-religious people about believers? The fear that we would ram our convictions and positions down their throats if we thought we could get away with it," he says.

So what is the advice for Christians in Canada today? "We need to stick closer to Jesus in this regard. He was charged by His opponents with many things. But one charge they could not make because it would not have been believed was that He purposed to impose His views on others.

"He invited people to follow. He didn’t compel them to follow. He respected their freedom to accept or reject Him, even their freedom to crucify Him, because that’s how God operates."