Theologies of Word and State: Some Reflections on the Ottawa Shooting

The shooting in Ottawa on 22 October 2014 has uncovered the remarkable way that the Canadian state remains theologically constituted. In some ways, this is a relatively uncontroversial argument. The White House press conference immediately following the attacks made a link between the Canadian support for military action against the Islamic State and the deaths of both Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent on October 20 in Quebec and Cpl. Nathan Cirllo of the Argyll and Sutherland Higlanders on the October 22. When one says that Ottawa shootings have a religious dimension, the gut response is that my argument will be about Muslims in Canada and the potential for radicalization.

However, I am less interested in the link to the “Islamic State” and more interested in the ways that the putatively secular, multicultural Canadian state is doing theology in this moment. The chatter in the public sphere has mostly revolved around Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s invocation of the War Measures Act in 1970, especially because the alleged shooter was Québecois. The last time in recent memory that this sort of panic happened in Ottawa, it was because the Front du libération du Québec (FLQ) kidnapped the British Trade Commissioner, James Cross, and the Quebec Labour Minister, Pierre Laporte. Trudeau’s response at the time was to meet ideology with ideology. If the FLQ adopted a Marxist ideology to denounce the embeddedness of the Canadian political economy with elite American power and to call for a new Quebecois political sovereignty, Trudeau criminalized them and argued that they represented “the emergence of a parallel power which defies the elected power in the country” that “must be stopped.” Both the FLQ and Trudeau articulated their political positions in secular ideological terms.

The responses from the official party leaders have revealed that these state ideologies have always been theological. Prime Minister Stephen Harper framed the National War Memorial where the shooting occurred as “a sacred place that pays tribute to those who gave their lives so that we can live in a free, democratic and safe society” and also sent his “thoughts and prayers” with Patrice Vincent. New Democratic Party Leader Tom Mulcair cast the “thoughts and prayers of everyone here in our nation’s capital” with Cirillo’s family as an act of Canadian solidarity in a society marked by ideological difference. In addition to mentioning the War Memorial as “one of our nation’s most sacred monuments,” Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau also reached out to the Muslim community to say that “acts such as these committed in the name of Islam are an aberration of your faith,” calling for “mutual respect and admiration…to prevent the influence of distorted ideological propaganda posing as religion.” While the debates among these party leaders has been fierce in the past, they demonstrated that they represent three strands of the same Canadian state theology: bound by our solidarity in times of war, the coming together of Canadians of all political and ideological stripes is a sacralized bond.

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