Susan Eagle: politics and the pulpit
By Kenzie Love
mlove9@uwo.ca
"Tell me the stories of Jesus I love to
hear."
On a snowy but bright Sunday morning, Rev. Susan Eagle leads
about 12 congregants at Kilworth United Church in singing William
H. Parker's 19th century hymn. Small but possessed of a powerful
singing voice, her stirring soprano echoes over the somewhat empty
pews, which she later acknowledges may be the result of the daylight
saving time change the night before, the beginning of children's
spring break that weekend and the after effects of a spring blizzard.
The bleak story Eagle has to relate that morning probably isn't
one most people love to hear, though her passionate delivery certainly
makes them take notice. She's recounting Ezekiel's vision of the
Valley of Dry Bones, which she notes can be glimpsed close to
home. She recalls the time a couple of years ago when a homeless
advocacy group asked her to spend 24 hours on the street. She
grumbled initially, as she'd done something similar just a few
years before, but the experience proved valuable.
"I needed the freshness of this terrible wastefulness of
human lives," she says. But if the experience reawakened
her to the plight of the homeless, she acknowledges there are
limits to human efforts in situations like this. There are times,
she says, when humans must look to God for help, times where "no
laws or armies or acts of Parliament would be enough."
Government may be no match for God, but Eagle has a history of
putting the two forces to work. She has served on London's city
council for the past 11 years, but religion and politics first
intersected in her life before she'd become a minister or a politician,
or had any idea those roles were in the cards.
Growing up the daughter of a minister in 1950s Toronto, she had
an unpleasant taste of the higher standard children of clergy
were expected to uphold, and wasn't keen to repeat it. She did
enroll in the seminary at Victoria University's Emmanuel College
in the early 1970s, but saw it as an interesting field of study
rather than job training.
It proved to be both. Although she studied traditional theology,
Eagle's passion was reserved for feminist and liberation theology,
areas she'd previously known little about but found far more exciting
than anything she'd learned in Sunday school.
The discovery came while she was serving as student council president
during her first year of seminary, a position that exposed her
to the plight of tenants and staff on campus whose rights she
believed the university was undermining. Liberation theology,
the belief in political activism as a tool to bring justice to
the poor and oppressed, inspired her to stand up for their cause
at university board meetings, but she realized it had applications
beyond campus as well.
"I would say that both my exposure to feminist and liberation
theology, as well as the politics of the community I was in, opened
my eyes to great potential for a social gospel ministry,"
she says, "and I would say that's where I felt the call."
She was ordained as a United Church minister in 1977.
Two decades later, concern for vulnerable tenants sparked another
change in Eagle's life. Her work as an outreach minister in London,
where she'd settled in 1984, had revealed the appalling living
conditions facing some residents of the city's east end.
Many of her clients were living in substandard, cockroach-infested
apartments and she believed they were getting little help from
city hall. At the same time, the city had more responsibility
for them than ever before, with the province offloading to municipalities
many services it had previously provided. Eagle hadn't paid much
attention to city council in the past, but she saw it offered
another platform for tackling the same issues as her outreach
ministry. She won election to it in 1997.
In many ways the two roles have complemented each other, allowing
her to maintain a focus on public health and housing. But they
have also conflicted, at least in the eyes of others. In 1998,
Eagle joined a delegation travelling to Texas to lobby against
the execution of Stanley Faulder, a Canadian who had been convicted
of murder.
 |
| Photo by Kenzie Love |
| Susan Eagle (left) confers with fellow Housing
Advisory Committee member Judith Binder. |
She went as a representative of Canadian Christian churches,
but some warned that defending a man who'd killed a grandmother
would cost her politically. Eagle wasn't sure, but knew principle
had to trump politics, a stance she has held throughout her term
on council.
"Sometimes people say to me, 'Well if you vote that way,
you won't get elected next time,' " she says, "and I
say, 'Well, okay, that's not my goal anyway.' "
But Eagle has won every election she has contested so far, perhaps
because, ironically, that hasn't been her goal. As predicted,
the trip to Texas drew angry reaction from many of her constituents,
but most seemed to appreciate her principled stand. It's an approach
that has also succeeded on council, according to London Controller
Gina Barber. Eagle is a shrewd politician, she says, but one with
an obvious sense of conviction Barber believes comes in part from
her ministerial background.
"It gives a degree of constancy, shall we say, to the message
that she gives," she says, "despite the fact she can
be quite strategic. She's pretty clear in her moral and social
convictions, and I think that can also make her quite effective."
When asked to attach a label to her convictions, though, Eagle
doesn't have an automatic response. She believes in equality,
inclusiveness and human rights, but rejects the common description
of these beliefs as leftist, preferring the term "social
gospel." But while these values owe much to her religious
philosophy, she doesn't see standing up for them as unique to
her position.
"At the end of the day, I have to live with myself as a
person," she says, "and whether I'm a minister or not,
if you vote other than by conscience, you start to live a double
life."
In the eyes of some, Eagle's double life would have started when
she ran for office. The 2005 "Who Runs Your World?"
poll conducted by BBC News found religious leaders to be the world's
most trusted group in civil society, and politicians the least.
But she didn't suffer any loss of faith at Kilworth United, where
she has served since coming to London.
Sipping on a cup of coffee after the service, parishioner Shelley
Colpitts says the only opposition she has heard comes from people
outside the congregation.
"One man said just a couple of weeks ago, 'Oh, she's too
political,' " says Colpitts. "So I asked him, 'Have
you ever been to church?' When she brings her social justice issues
to us, she makes us realize how lucky we are not to have these
issues. And in a sense I guess that's political because it gets
us to move a bit."
Eagle argues there's a difference between politics and partisanship.
She doesn't lobby for parishioners' votes any more than she tries
to convert constituents to the United Church. Despite their close
proximity in her life, she keeps church and state separate, which
she feels some fail to realize.
"I think that's where people make the mistake of assuming
because I'm a politician and a minister I'm going to get up every
Sunday and give the NDP position on this or that or I'm going
to take a partisan political position. My job as a minister is
to raise questions so that people can act in conscience."
