The bizarre Ms. May

http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=270373

[National Post] 29 Jan 2008--Green party leader Elizabeth May has done as much as she could to extricate herself from the controversy she touched off last week when she stated in a press release about Afghanistan that "forces from a Christian/ Crusader heritage will continue to fuel an insurgency that has been framed as a 'Jihad.' " She is still trying to blame the Conservative party and the press corps for her failure to make it clear that her use of the phrase "Christian/Crusader heritage" was what the Romans called oratio obliqua. Apparently, she has reached the age of 53, and spent an entire career in advocacy and public service, without learning the intricacies of that handy-dandy device known as the quotation mark.

It would be one thing if a Muslim political candidate had allowed those words to go out under his name, but Ms. May is studying for the Anglican priesthood -- an unusual vocation for someone at the head of a political party in the Western world. Given this, the correct presumption in her case might be that she meant to refer to the "Christian/Crusader heritage" of Canadian troops without any irony or derisive connotation at all.

On the other hand, given the state of the contemporary Anglican church, there may well be some ordained ministers so liberal that they really do think the term "Christian" has acquired overtones of fanaticism and imperialism.