Embassy, May 9th, 2007
OPED
By Peter Harder
Canada’s Former deputy minister of foreign affairs at Ottawa’s Southminster United Church
How Faith and Community Dominate Foreign Policy
Excerpt…
This brings me to the need for greater public integrity. Here, I’ve learned a tremendous amount from His Highness, the Aga Khan, Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims.
In his convocation address at Columbia University last year, His Highness observed that expanding the number of people who share social power is only half the battle. The critical question is how such power is used. How can we inspire people to reach beyond rampant materialism, self-indulgent individualism, and unprincipled relativism?
The Aga Khan goes on to suggest that one answer is to focus on personal prerogatives and individual rights. This could include a passion for justice, the quest for equality and civic culture. But he points out that the right of individuals to look for a better quality of life within their own life-spans-and to build toward a better life for their children-these are personal aspirations which must become public values. This sense of public integrity, His Highness argues, will be difficult to nurture over time without a strong religious underpinning. In the Islamic tradition, the conduct of one’s worldly life is inseparably intertwined with the concerns of one’s spiritual life-you cannot talk about integrity without also talking about faith.
For me, the Imam of the Ismaili community has pretty well summed up my Mennonite/United Church faith and public life.
For example, as deputy minister of Foreign Affairs, I was privileged in being able to help shape Canada’s approach to globalization. I believe in free trade, and that economic space is greater that political space. The agenda of productivity, competitiveness, innovation and open markets is both necessary and good public policy.
Development assistance, infectious disease, climate change, energy, regional conflicts and counter-terrorism are all issues of heated discussion among concerned citizens and church activists, and rightly so. I want to assure you that for me and many of my colleagues in the government of Canada and governments and international organizations around the world, dealing with these issues is an expression of their values, of their faith.
Government is by definition not an NGO, nor a church. But the public servants with whom I’ve worked don’t park their values or their faith at the door. They strive for the civic virtue of Aristotle, they seek to work among Niebuhr’s children of darkness and they build the integrity of community of which the Aga Khan spoke. Their beliefs, their faith, animate their actions within the appropriate accountability structures of our democracy.
The preceding was edited excerpts from a lecture given by former deputy minister of foreign affairs Peter Harder at Ottawa’s Southminster United Church on April 29.
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