Saving Christians from Themselves

By John Ballard

Most Progressives, myself included, reacted to the Coathanger Amendment with dismay. After all the time and effort spent plowing the ground getting ready for eventual Congressional action on the Freedom Of Choice Act, the leadership of the House betrayed everyone by caving to one of the most odious demands of anti-abortion quasi-religious political types, that no federal dollars would be used to fund abortion (and this is where the good part comes in) except in the case of incest, rape or life-threatening danger to the mother.  I will explain. 

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Deborah White authors the Liberal Politics blog at About.com (part of the New York Times). My connection with her goes back to 2004 when I started blogging. My interest at that time was the abortion issue and I was under the naive impression that all I had to do was point out some of the faulty logic at both extremes of this very divisive issue and bring an end to an acrimonious argument. In a brilliant flash of insight, Deborah penned a powerful metaphor:Abortion is the New Prohibition.  Unlike prohibition which was enacted by constitutional amendment, the Roe decision of 1973 is analogous, and subsequent extensions of that decision with Casey and Carhart have divided national politics not unlike the prohibition of alcohol. (Criminalization of marijuana is the real modern equivalent, but millions are puffing away and there is no moral outrage matching that of anti-abortion forces.) 

Following last week's House compromise Deborah posted Pro-Choice Advocates Are Wrong to Block House Health Care Bill and I didn't know how to react. I grabbed Ian Welsh's excellent take urging Progressives to put up a better fight and agreed, adding "the abortion issue must be saved for arguing over the Freedom of Choice Act.The Stupak amendment is a legislative land mine set to blow up during that debate." I was shocked that my friend Deborah was so far off the mark.

After thinking about it for a few days I realized that the future of the abortion debate is not whether or not it will be legal (clearly it already is, protected by federal law and defensible in court) but if federal legislation would ever come to pass superseding what is now a very mixed and often contradictory collection of state statutes. FOCA will federalize the issue, clarifying what limitations, if any, will be placed on abortions. At the moment, any mention of the word in a group of strangers risks splitting the group unless they are all in agreement with whoever brings it up. As with gun control (and recently, health care reform) there are few moderates left in the abortion debate. The two extremes are either zero restrictions short of infanticide or total restrictions this side of conception.

Nevertheless many of us are in basic agreement with the original language of Roe which urged legislation clarifying what restrictions will be placed on abortion. Those limitations remain unclear for abortion, both a medical procedure and legally deciding exactly when a future tax-payer has the protection of the law. The aim of the proposed Freedom of Choice Act is to allow just what the name implies, a choice about whether or not a pregnancy is to be terminated by an abortion. Somewhere between extreme examples of near-homicide reported with late-term abortions and prohibiting any abortion after the moment of conception, elected representatives will be forced to struggle with inflammatory questions and pissed off constituents to produce bad-tasting medicine for the nation's political fever. 

That debate is way in the future. (Considering the political pain and suffering incurred by the health care debate and split over wars in Asia, it may not occur in my lifetime.) But until then abortion will remain a hot political issue. In fact, it is certain to be a major plank in any Conservative platform and will have the same appeal to political Christians that anti-reform forces have succeeded in uniting. 

[Disclosure: I am one of the "middle" who find abortion (like capital punishment, euthanasia, and war) to be morally reprehensible. But I am realistic enough to know that my opinions are and likely will remain minority views. I have no desire to make them obligatory for others. In the matter of abortion, I favor "choice" in the hope that a woman who becomes pregnant will choose not to have an abortion. I have a very dim view of abortion as a means of birth control, but I believe that is a matter between the woman and her conscience. And if her conscience allows abortion, it may be better that she not have an unwanted baby. But that is not the subject of this post.]

Progressives would be wise to anticipate a split in political groups now growing in religious soil, concentrating on the contradictions that are the basis for Jefferson's wall of separation doctrine. If the Palin and teabagger phenomena show nothing else, it is that many religious people, though primitive in their thinking, can be very powerful political forces. There are contradictions in their thinking that are not hard to identify. Logic and facts are far more potent in the long run than defamatory rhetoric or power politics. If the Obama phenomenon carries no other message, it is that patient, perhaps dull discussions will usually return better results than dramatic moves done quickly. (Ask John McCain if he had it to do over would he have selected Sara Palin as his running mate. On second thought, don't ask McCain about hasty decisions. He has a good heart but that seems to be his habit. Ask someone else.)

Fred Clark's post yesterday points out an easy to identify split among Christians. To simplify he calls them religious evangelicals and political evangelicals. His post focuses on the immigration issue, but as I read the abortion/coathanger amendment kept playing in my mind. It seems that the long shadow of Francis Schaefer has fallen across the evangelical path with toxic results to core values of the faith. 

On the one hand, you've got your religious evangelicals. They're born-again Christians who go to church twice every Sunday, read their daily devotions, try not to say "geez" because that's almost just as bad as swearing, feel guilty that they haven't done more to witness to you because they genuinely don't want you to go to Hell, and they just really Lord they just really just pray, Lord, all the time that, Lord, Jesus would just really just guide their daily lives.

We're talking about Ned Flanders. Nice folks. I like them a lot. I mean, I wouldn't want them designing the science curriculum for my kids' school, and I almost never vote for the same people they vote for, but those things aren't these folks' main focus. They're mainly about serving Jesus as their personal Lord and savior and trying to get others to do the same.

On the other hand, you've got your political evangelicals. On paper, these people look very similar to the Ned Flanders types. The difference is what they regard as paramount, as most important. For your political evangelicals, who you vote for and what is taught in science class is all that really matters. They may go to the same church as Ned, and they may attend just as often, but when push comes to shove that religious stuff isn't nearly as important to them as the pride and power of politics.

I confess to having to look up "Ned Flanders." I'm not a Simpson's fan. But I have known and loved Ned Flanders types all my life. They are the seed stock from which I grew. (I can recall my maternal grandmother not approving of fishing on Sundays because it was not appropriate for the Lord's Day. And even in the roughest of farming times my paternal grandfather would never do anything more on his farm than feed his animals and milk the cows. All the other work could wait.)

The issue of immigration is still in the pipeline, but when it comes up Fred Clark's insights are worth recalling.

For a quick and easy illustration of the difference between these two groups, ask either one about immigration policy.

For religious evangelicals, immigration is looked at through the lens of two centuries of the missionary movement. Immigration, they believe, brings the mission field home. The categories of documented and undocumented are irrelevant in this view. The only categories that matter are saved and unsaved. Unsaved immigrants are a field white unto harvest. And saved immigrants are brothers and sisters in Christ. The former should be considered the focus of evangelism, the latter of fellowship.

Hence the existence, dating back to the 19th century, of evangelical "home mission societies" which have long helped to settle refugees and newly arrived immigrants, helping them find housing and learn the language and customs of their new home. And the existence, also, of ethnic immigrant congregations -- often called "missionary" churches -- sharing facilities with established English-speaking congregations.

This piece in today's Chicago Tribune nicely captures the attitude toward immigration that arises from a primarily religious evangelicalism.

The discussion within Wheaton Chinese Alliance Church reflects a shift among the nation's evangelical community as more pastors push for comprehensive immigration reform. In recent years, many influential evangelical leaders have moved from silent opposition to outspoken support for immigration reform, citing biblical foundations and Christian duty to care for strangers.

Last month, the National Association of Evangelicals, which represents about 45,000 U.S. churches, called on the Obama administration to establish a process by which undocumented immigrants could earn legal status. NAE President Leith Anderson said the group recognized the surging number of immigrants, mainly Latino and Asian, filling evangelical churches. ...

Matthew Soerens, immigration counselor at World Relief DuPage and co-author of the book Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion and Truth in the Immigration Debate, said the stronger support for reform is due to the realization that immigrants are changing the face of the American evangelical church.

"We see this as a biblical issue grounded in the Scriptures, and primary to what we believe," Soerens said. "But what is also true is the demographics of our country is changing with immigration, and evangelical leaders realize that the fastest growth they are experiencing is among immigrant congregations."

Two of the largest evangelical churches in the area, Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington and Wheaton Bible Church in West Chicago, now have Spanish-speaking congregations and support immigration reform. ...

That's interesting. Here in America, "evangelical Christian" almost unfailingly also means "Republican," and the Republican Party is adamantly opposed to the sort of liberalized immigration reform being endorsed by these religious evangelicals.

That conflict hasn't gone unnoticed by the political evangelicals. Professional douchebag Mark Tooley -- whose job as president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy is to politicize American Christianity for the benefit of the right-wing foundations that fund IRD -- denounced the religious evangelicals at the NAE and elsewhere for failing to adhere to a strict Lou-Dobbs, xenophobic, Tea Party chauvinist, barbarians-at-the-gate party line scapegoating of immigrants.

"Several NAE members have denied endorsing the immigration resolution. Did the stance actually emerge from NAE's constituency? Or was it simply 'handed down from on-high' by NAE elites?

"This controversy is not only about immigration policy ... It is also about NAE's increasing politicization and elitism, a dangerous trajectory veering towards irrelevancy and pioneered by the National Council of Churches."

The NAE's position on immigration arises directly and organically from its religious perspective. Tooley's position on immigration arises directly and inevitably from his partisan politics. How they each respond is a function of what each regards as most important -- what drives them and shapes their identity.

For the Ned-Flanders types, that essential identity has to do with their Christian piety. That's why religious evangelicals are such nice people and why they make excellent next-door neighbors.

For the Mark-Tooley types, that essential identity has to do with their anything-to-win grasping after partisan power. That's why political evangelicals are such despicable assholes.

No question where Fred Clark stands. One line deserves repeating... a strict Lou-Dobbs, xenophobic, Tea Party chauvinist, barbarians-at-the-gate party line scapegoating of immigrants. Couldn't have said it better myself.

Shift now to abortion and continue looking for contradictions. They may be hard to spot among Roman Catholics (They got the politics and religion balancing act worked out centuries ago.) but the evangelicals come from a different place politically.

• Extreme "pro-life" arguments against any destruction of human life comes apart with in vitro fertilization, an important part of which involves "deselecting" (a polite word for "killing") all but two or three fertilized eggs, and then deselecting one or two more in case they all survive implantation in the uterine environment. (Octomom is the result of not having done this part.)


• "Incest" is a commonly used lay term with many different meanings. Most people skip past the term without thinking, presuming that it always means relations between siblings or a parent-offspring union. But what about first cousins? Or second cousins? Or adopted children who unknowingly couple with a sibling? This is a term crying out for clarification.


• "Rape" is an even more sticky problem. Here we have a case of a health fertilized egg often with two identifiable parents, which under the terms of the Stupak amendment will be eligible to be aborted and paid for with federal money. From a legal standpoint, "rape" might officially involve two legally married people, a man and a woman.

This comment left at Deborah's post points to a couple more contradictions.

...how can someone who calls themselves pro-life be anti health-care for the child and the mother? I mean pregnancy is one of the most expensive parts of health-care. Premiums for businesses are often based on the number of women who are at the reproductive age. So how can someone who is pro-life like the Palintoligists be anti health-care reform. I guess they are only pro-birth not pro-life. As a Catholic I may not agree 100% with my church, but at least they are pro-life. No war, no cap punishment, health-care for our poor and needy, no abortion, no embryonic stem cell research. I think the Palintoligist bible bashers need a little lesson in boolean algebra. Maybe then they will see that they have no logic. But wing-nuts never use logos as part of their rhetoric. They are all about pathos, it works better on their sheep.

(It might also be remembered that there is a long history of anti-Catholic bigotry among protestants of all stripes. And the leftward movement of the Episcopal Church,  the quintessential "middle way" denomination, split asunder the North American branch of the World Anglican Communion. No matter what they say, old-fashioned Christians are very uncomfortable with queers.)

This line of thinking can go on to other issues, but the main point is that the Stupak amendment is not as odious as it first seemed. In fact, having put into legislation three circumstances which allow federally-funded abortions, part of the groundwork has been laid for future discussions when the Freedom of Choice Act eventually comes into the spotlight. 

My thanks to Deborah White for making the point.
I hope others will agree.