Tristan Emmanuel - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Emmanuel was raised in Waterloo, Ontario as part of a nominally Lutheran family. After earning a Bachelor of Arts degree and attending divinity school in the United States, he was ordained as a minister in the Reformed Presbyterian Church General Assembly. He operated a small freight delivery company in Ontario's Niagara region in the 1990s, and served as the pastor of Living Hope Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Vineland. He later worked toward a Master's degree at McMaster University's Divinity School, writing about the efforts of early Christian apologists to lobby Roman Emperors.

In 1999, Emmanuel founded Equipping Christians for the Public-square. He remained its president for several years, before resigning in 2008.

Emmanuel was a candidate for the socially conservative Family Coalition Party in the Lincoln electoral division in the 1995 Ontario provincial election. He was quoted as saying, "It's time to have a principled party that understands there's a higher power than the government, a power we believe is God." Emmanuel argued that problems of unemployment and economic development could only be solved by a free-market system, and called for the government to shift welfare services to community organizations. He also opposed the Progressive Conservative Party's workfare proposal, which he described as "nothing more than slavery". He finished fourth against Progressive Conservative candidate Frank Sheehan.

Emmanuel ran against prominent federal politician Sheila Copps in a 1996 by-election as a candidate of the Christian Heritage Party of Canada. In this campaign, he called for harsher prison sentences and an increased focus on the rights of victims. He argued that Canada's Young Offenders Act should be abolished and corporal punishment reintroduced to schools, and was quoted as saying, "If an eleven-year-old murders someone, I think his life should be taken." He finished ninth in a field of thirteen candidates. Emmanuel also ran for the Christian Heritage Party in the 1997 federal election, and finished fifth against Liberal incumbent Walt Lastewka. Later, he described both the Family Coalition Party and the Christian Heritage Party as political dead ends.