Jack Layton made his spiritual home in the liberal United Church of Canada. He was a member of the historic, social-activist congregation, Bloor Street United.
The New Democratic Party leader, who died Monday from cancer at age 61, followed his wife, Olivia Chow, to the downtown Toronto church after she joined it in the late 1980s.
The United Church of Canada is the nation's most progressive Christian denomination, having begun to ordain homosexuals in 1988 and women in 1936. The large Protestant denomination, with about 500,000 active members, also began in the 1950s to fight for universal health care.
Even though the New Democratic Party is often associated with secular people and atheists, Layton often talked proudly of the "social gospel" values that fueled NDP founder Tommy Douglas, a Baptist preacher who was appalled in the 1940s at the treatment of working and sick people. Layton also appreciated the theology of NDP MP Bill Blaikie, a United Church minister and thinker.
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