The battle lines between education and the interim Alberta government have been drawn with the appointment of Gordon Dirks, former Rocky Mountain College president and present executive pastor of Calgary's Centre Street Church, to the ministry of education leadership role.
Based on leadership ability and experience in post-secondary education, which demands a high standard, his appointment as education minister should be a natural consequence of his professional growth rather than a matter of his personal beliefs.
However, it is precisely his Christianity that is ruffling feathers provincially.
Under his portfolio, issues of family planning, pro-choice or abstinence, mandatory gay-straight alliances, school prayer, and faith-based versus public schools, will come under his watch.
The question becomes, where does his morality end?
Or to phrase the question another way, where does his morality begin, and how will he be able to exercise his moral compass based on his faith in his role as minster of education?
In his past life, Dirks served as vice-president for the Canadian Bible College in Regina and assistant deputy minister for corporate services with the Alberta ministry of family and social services. From 1993 to 1996, he served as executive pastor for Beulah Alliance Church in Edmonton. In 1996, he became president of Rocky Mountain College in Calgary. Dirks also served as a member of the Calgary Board of Education and is presently the executive pastor at Calgary's Centre Street Church (CSC).
As a pastor of a socially active, well known and respected body of believers that invites those “full of questions, lonely or hurt” to find their place at CSC, he has had to face moral dilemmas and to look at people of all stripes in the midst of difficult times in their lives.
If we tie in his previous leadership roles in Saskatchewan and Alberta politics in social services and the Calgary Board of Education, he clearly has demonstrated competence in public office.
So why is there an issue with his faith when he has held public leadership roles in the past?
The biggest concern voiced against his appointment as education minister is his stance on lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender/questioning (LGBTQ) students and gay-straight alliances. As the executive pastor at Centre Street Church, he has claimed, “Same-sex relationships are an abomination to God.”
Other issues could come to the forefront during the byelection to be held on Oct. 27 in Calgary-Elbow.
How he chooses to react to his opponents to his biblically-based stance is of paramount importance to his Christian walk and leadership, and could potentially create a rift in public education circles about the role of faith- based schools, in addition to opening the age-old question of the separation of church and state in governmental affairs.
For a man of faith, these are times that define how you walk your talk. He can be a role model for those public leaders whose private faith has been left at the door of the office and sacrificed to political correctness, or he can become a leader we can look up to who lived by his beliefs no matter what the cost.
I pray that he becomes the latter.
