By any definition, Faytene Grasseschi’s book is a mishmash. Marked: A Generation of Dread Champions Rising to Shift Nations is part Christian testimony, part religious prophecy, and part bad history and even worse economic theory,[1] which may explain her reluctance to answer questions about it.
When asked if she stood by what she wrote, Grasseschi conveniently couldn’t remember what she had written. “I would have to refresh myself,” she told a journalist covering her December 2023 nomination as the Progressive Conservative candidate in Hampton-Fundy-St. Martins. Follow-up questions were batted away as, quoting her, “radical, extreme, woke, left-wing conspiracy theories.”
Premier Blaine Higgs wasn’t concerned. If anything, he was delighted in his candidate, a self-declared “Jesus freak” with a Joan of Arc complex.[2] “I want to thank each and every one of you for recognizing the conviction, the determination and the pure ability of this young lady right here,” he told party members who had just acclaimed Grasseschi as their next candidate. Later, he added that her acclamation was “democracy in action.”
In part, it was, although Higgs should be concerned because Marked contains extreme views that may violate his own party’s rules.
But first, what does it mean to be “marked” and what is a “dread champion”? To be marked, Grasseschi explains, is to be “set apart as a carrier of His heart, revelation, and intent for the nations of the earth” (23). It is to be selected, chosen, even anointed. Following the prophetic vision of the American evangelist James W. Goll, Grasseshi insists that she has been marked as a dread champion. “This is the hour,” Goll wrote in 2003, “when the DREAD CHAMPIONS – true brothers and sisters of Jesus – are released to tread upon the dreary spirits of fear, fainting, and failure. This is an hour when God’s enemies shall be made footstools for His feet!” (261) But fear not, Goll assured his flock. “The Lord Himself will defend His anointed with heavenly reinforcements in that day. Yes, these are the days when the DREAD CHAMPIONS – the Days of Giants of Faith and Humility – shall walk the earth again” (262).
As a dread champion – as a modern-day Noah, Abraham, or Moses – Grasseschi believes that Canada has gone off the moral rails and that it is up to her and other giants like her to return it to its biblical foundations. To this end, and with every ounce of her being, she opposes same-sex marriage, which she describes as “anti-biblical” (139), and the right to choose.
On same-sex marriage, she believes that 2005 represented a moral turning point. “The leaders in the nation at the time were working hard to change the age-old definition of marriage from a legal covenant between a man and a woman to a legal covenant between two persons (meaning a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, man and dog, woman and fish – I am being a bit cheeky here, but it is the reality of what these definitions could eventually mean)” (69).
If Higgs isn’t aware that his candidate in Hampton-Fundy-St. Martins thinks that same-sex marriage could lead to interspecies marriage, he should be. And if he is aware, he should explain why it’s alright in his books.
In a December 2006 vote, Parliament easily defeated a motion to restore the traditional definition of marriage. For Grasseschi, who was watching from the public gallery, it wasn’t just a vote. It was a “moral battlefield” and she resolved that her “hand would have to be pried off the sword at the end of it all.” Still, she learned something from what she called this “clear win for the gay agenda”: “It is my belief that the initial legislation from the spring of 2005 opened a door in the spirit realm over our nation and gave sodomistic strongholds greater leverage and greater access over the mindsets of the citizens of Canada” (146-47).
Meanwhile, abortion constitutes “unjust bloodshed on the land of a nation” and it “locks up the heavens and restrains the harvest in that nation” (82). Since the Supreme Court’s 1988 decision in R v Morgentaler, “it has been open season on the womb” (83).
Grasseschi repeats pro-life misinformation about “a direct link between breast cancer, cervical cancer, and abortion” and she asserts that “8 out of 10 women who have abortions struggle with depression for the rest of their lives” (256). There isn’t and they don’t. According to the American Cancer Society, “the scientific evidence does not support the notion that abortion of any kind raises the risk of breast cancer or any other type of cancer.” And according to an American study published in a peer-reviewed medical journal, abortion is “not a statistically significant predictor of subsequent anxiety, mood, impulse-control, and eating disorders or suicidal ideation.”
When did Canada go off the rails? In the 1960s, and Pierre Trudeau was driving the train. “Trudeau was the Minister of Justice, and then the Prime Minister, during the era when sodomy was legalized, abortion was legalized, gambling was brought in, human rights were exalted over the will of God, and no-fault divorce was legislated. This man’s era almost single-handedly dismantled the traditional moral fiber of our nation. The current generation was now wading in the ocean of social ruins that came from this dismantling” (255).
Presumably, Grasseschi’s use of the word sodomy in this instance means sex between consenting male adults. But does she really want to incarcerate men for having sex with men, which Canada did as late as 1971 when Everett Klippert was finally released from prison? It’s a fair question because, in her words, “dishonoring the Lord’s divine order in sexual relations causes His face to be turned from that nation as He is forced by His own spiritual laws to rebuke all we set our hands to” (83). Grasseschi doesn’t define “the Lord’s divine order in sexual relations” but I am guessing that it is cis and heteronormative. Finally, and for the record, Pierre Trudeau decidedly did not legalize abortion and, as a practising Catholic, he opposed abortion on demand.
What did Canada get for “legalized sodomy, no fault divorce, public gambling, and abortion” (85)? A weak dollar, according to Grasseschi. “Our dollar dropped from $1.05 to $.60 to the U.S. dollar! Was this a coincidence or God’s laws in action?” (85). Her question implies its own answer. In fact, she has proof. When the government of Stephen Harper was elected in 2006 – “the most socially conservative government that we have had in decades” – the dollar shot back up. “My take on all of this is simple and biblical: righteousness exalts a nation” (86).
It’s not surprising that Grasseschi declined to answer questions about her book. Smart, articulate, and politically savvy, she understands the need to reach voters who don’t want to establish the Kingdom of God in one small corner of New Brunswick, but who do want a reliable healthcare system and reliable health information, not misinformation about abortion, cancer, and mental health.
But it is surprising that the Progressive Conservative Party signed off on her nomination. After all, Grasseschi would have had to answer this question on her Nomination Candidate Application: “Have you ever been accused of, or been engaged in, activities that promote, or could be seen to promote, the discrimination or hatred against people on the basis of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, family status, or disability?”
If she is honest, and I don’t doubt she is, she would have checked “Yes.” Reasonable people can disagree about same-sex marriage, but what is linking same-sex marriage to interspecies marriage, to men marrying dogs and women marrying fish, if not the promotion of discrimination or even hatred?
Donald Wright teaches at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton.
[1] Faytene Kryskow, Marked: A Generation of Dread Champions Rising to Shift Nations (Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image Publishers, 2009).
[2] Marci McDonald, The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2011), 149-50.