(LifeSiteNews) — On this week’s episode of The Van Maren Show, Jonathon speaks with author Michael Wagner about his book Canada: The Past, Present, and Future of the Canadian Christian Right, whose 18th anniversary edition, to which Jonathon wrote the forward, is being released next year.

Jonathon began the episode by asking Wagner why he decided to write the book in the first place. Wagner said he wanted to respond to the established narrative of history that Canada has been on a progressive, post-Christian path from its inception – which ignores the fact that there was significant backlash from Canadian Christians to its progressive trajectory.

Wagner also explained that when he was looking for topics to write about while working for Reform Perspective Magazine, he noticed there was no published book that provided a historical defense of the Canadian Christians.

“Canada was generally speaking founded on the Christian worldview and a different worldview, what you can call secularism, or progressivism, or whatever, came in to replace the Christian view. And there are thoughtful people on both sides, although I think the progressive side is wrong, but there were thoughtful people on the Christian side who defended it thoughtfully, and they deserve to have their view shown,” he said.

Jonathan noted how the book really highlights that the typical historical narrative is contrary to what we see in recent Canadian history, pointing to the example of the backlash to Pierre Trudeau’s 1969 Omnibus Bill, which decriminalized abortion and homosexuality, liberalized divorce laws, and essentially kicked off the sexual revolution in Canada.

“Gwen Landolt, thankfully, did write a book called Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s Great Betrayal … and she has this fabulous story that she tells about when a million Canadians signed a petition to protest the decriminalization of abortion,” Jonathon said. “Marshall McLuhan, for example, the great scholar, was a member of Toronto Right to Life, [and] a very, very hardcore pro-life activist who once advocated showing abortion videos on TV to resensitize people to the horror of what was happening. George Grant, probably one of the best-known Canadian philosophers, a devout Anglican, and a very pro-life person.”

Wagner expanded on Grant, stressing that his book English-Speaking Justice, which has a powerful section written against Roe v. Wade, was, “as far as I can tell, the most articulate presentation of the pro-life position from a political perspective,” the author said. Wagner further noted that Grant was held in very high esteem by political scientists across Canada when he attended university, but his pro-life views were often omitted.

“He was best known in the 1960s and into the ’70s as a Canadian nationalist because he wanted to keep Canada’s national identity separate from the United States. So that’s why he was famous, so many leftists liked him in particular. And so his name was held in very high esteem, but his pro-life side was often kind of neglected and ignored,” Wagner said.

“He put forward the very important point that unborn human children are human and deserve human rights. And if we’re going to arbitrarily declare the unborn child not to be human, that gives the government the power to unilaterally declare other humans not to be human either.”

To hear more from Michael Wagner about his book, tune in to this week’s episode of The Van Maren Show.

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