Re-escalating the Abortion Wars

Today’s blog post was long planned to be an article about Junípero Serra, who was canonized five years ago on September 23. But then Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on September 18, and among other things, that has occasioned the re-escalation of the abortion wars. 

From De-escalation to Re-escalation

On September 5, I posted “De-escalating the Abortion Wars,” in which I contended that currently many Catholics and conservative evangelicals are talking about a wide range of important ethical social issues and not focusing primarily on abortion. I thought/think that was a good sign.

But then RBG died.

And DJT immediately announced plans to nominate her replacement—and in complete reversal to the stance most Republican Senators took after Justice Scalia died in February 2016, Sen. McConnell announced that the Senate would hold confirmation hearings before the November 3 election.

Consequently, there was quickly a re-escalation of the abortion wars.

Vilifying RBG’s Position on Abortion

In supporting DJT’s pledge to nominate a conservative, “pro-life” successor to Justice Ginsburg, some of his staunch supporters began attacking RBG’s position on abortion.

The most abhorrent Facebook post that I saw in that regard was on Sept. 24 by a woman who was one of my missionary colleagues in Japan—and a post that was “liked” by another colleague and longtime personal friend.

That post showed an image of Hitler, accompanied by the words, “Supported the murder of 11 million Jews.” Below that image was one of Ginsburg with the words, “Supported the murder of 60 million babies.” The woman who made that post commented with just two words: “Trump only!”

Sadly, the recently deceased Supreme Court Justice who was so highly praised by so many people across the country was vilified by conservative evangelicals, and others, in ways that were untruthful, unkind, and, yes, unchristian.

Verifying ACB’s Position on Abortion

Last Saturday (9/26), DJT publicly announced that he was nominating Judge Amy Coney Barrett as RBG’s replacement on the SCOTUS.

The news media and social media have had a plethora of news articles and opinion pieces about Judge Barrett (ACB), so there is no need to duplicate information about her here.

But I want to focus on ACB’s position on abortion as that is partly what has re-escalated the abortion wars this month.

Democrats and many Independents, but perhaps only a few Republicans, are fearful that ACB’s confirmation to the high court will likely help overturn the Affordable Care Act. She might also help DJT win re-election, if the outcome of the Nov. 3 election is contested, as it may well be.

Further, since ACB is known for her “radical” proclivity to overturn laws rather than honoring them as precedents, her position on the Court could also endanger the right of same-sex couples to marry and the constitutional protections against discrimination based on gender that RBG championed.

But abortion is clearly the main reason many conservative Christians favor Judge Barrett’s confirmation to the high court now—even though a 9/24 poll indicates that a majority of U.S. voters think the winner of the Nov. 3 presidential election should nominate the next Supreme Court justice.

Barrett was a top contender for the empty seat on the SCOTUS in 2018, and of all those on DJT’s list as potential nominees, Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post called ACB (in this 7/4/18 opinion piece), “The Trump Supreme Court pick who’d pose the biggest danger to abortion rights.”

I was greatly saddened by the death of Justice Ginsburg for many reasons—and one of the main reasons was because of her death triggering the re-escalation of the abortion wars. What a shame!

Whatever Became of Sin?

Chapter Eight of my book The Limits of Liberalism is titled “The Limits of Liberals’ Views about Sin,” and this blog post is based on that chapter, which I have updated and slightly revised this month. In it, I make reference to psychiatrist Karl Menninger’s 1973 book published under the same title as this blog article. 

Defective Conservative Views of Sin

As is true with other matters that I have previously discussed in my book, the liberal ideas that I have often found defective are reactions to defective ideas that are prevalent in fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism.

For example, in the popular mind, sin is basically thought of as bad deeds, and sinners are thought to be bad people. That popular idea reflects the religiosity of the Puritans, whose ideas were rooted in Calvinism. They identified many “sins” they thought faithful Christians should shun.

In addition to the obvious sins of breaking the Ten Commandments, until the middle of the twentieth century, and even later, evangelical Christianity that was based on Puritanism commonly condemned “sins” such as drinking alcoholic beverages, smoking, social dancing, playing cards, going to the movies, and the like.

That trivialization and narrowness of sin among conservative evangelicals led progressive Christians to cease talking about sin. Several years ago, I heard a long-time professor at William Jewell College publicly state that he rejected the use of the word sin, saying that it no longer signified anything meaningful.

Defective Liberal Views of Sin

On the other side of the theological spectrum, some liberals began to talk about human goodness and potentiality and to neglect ideas about human sinfulness.

Many liberal Christians of the past and present regard(ed) sin primarily as imperfection, ignorance, maladjustment, and immaturity.

What was popularly called sin was, they thought/think, largely a vestige of the animal nature of human beings that could be, and is being, overcome by Christian education, moral instruction, and spiritual striving. Some “sins” were, perhaps, problematic, but they could be overcome by human endeavor.

That is why Menninger (1893~1990) contended in his book that sin “was once a strong word, an ominous and serious word. . . . But the word went away. It has almost disappeared—the word, along with the notion” (p. 14).

Chris Hedges is the author of a book titled I Don’t Believe in Atheists (2008). A sub-theme of that hard-hitting book is the pervasiveness of sin and flawed human nature. Here is one of his most striking statements in this regard:

We have nothing to fear from those who do or do not believe in God; we have much to fear from those who do not believe in sin. The concept of sin is a stark acknowledgment that we can never be omnipotent, that we are bound and limited by human flaws and self-interest (p. 13).

Between the Extremes

As I emphasize in the tenth and final chapter of my book, in Christianity there badly needs to be a broad and heavily populated position between the extremes of conservative evangelicalism and liberalism. Fortunately, there are now some indications of that sort of position with regard to sin.

For decades, progressive evangelicals have been emphasizing the importance of combatting social sins, not just personal sins as is prevalent in conservative evangelicalism.

For example, back in 1992 Jim Wallis and a colleague published "America’s original sin: A study guide on white racism." That publication has been updated and expanded several times and was last published in 2015 as America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America (with Wallis listed as the sole author).

There is also, significantly, at least some recognition of the reality of social sin by those who are not evangelicals. Recently, there have been references in the “liberal” media to America’s “original sin,” and mentions of “the sin of racism.”

Speaking in Kenosha, Wisconsin, earlier this month, Joe Biden declared that “we’re going to address the original sin in this country . . . slavery, and all the vestiges of it.”

So now, perhaps, sin is being more widely recognized than it was 50 years ago when Menninger was working on his book. I hope so.

A Penney Worth a Lot

Most of you know about the J.C. Penney chain of stores. But do you know who J.C. Penney was? Perhaps only a few of you have ever been to his hometown of Hamilton, Missouri. And probably none of you have played basketball in the Penney High School in Hamilton as I did as a high school student. 

Penney’s Early Life

Since I received more-than-expected responses to the blog post I made on my birthday last month, the post in which I wrote about being a Missouri farmboy, let me introduce you to another northwest Missouri farmboy, a Penney who came to be worth a lot.

James Cash Penney was born 145 years ago (on September 16, 1875) on a farm two miles east of Hamilton, Missouri, about 75 miles mostly south of Grant City, my hometown, and a long drive home after a night basketball game.

J.C.’s father was a farmer—and an unpaid Primitive Baptist preacher. Even though the Penney farm was a fairly large one, the family was rather challenged financially, and J.C. started earning his own money at an early age—raising pigs (as I did) and watermelons (which I certainly never did.)

Penney’s Successful Life

Since he was financially unable to go to college, J.C. Penney worked locally for a while then moved to Colorado. In 1898, he began working for the Golden Rule dry goods stores in Colorado and Wyoming.

After buying one-third interest in a Golden Rule store in 1902, just five years later he was able to become not only the sole owner of it but of the other two stores. In 1912, he changed the name of all the Golden Rule stores, of which there were then 40, to the J.C. Penney Stores—but he never forgot the Golden Rule.

By the early 1920s, the J.C. Penney Company was one of the largest retail organizations in the country. But then in 1929 financial disaster struck. The stock market crash caused Penney to lose some $40,000,000.

Following a period of despair and then a period of rest in a sanitarium, he began to fight back, and he and his company became financially successful again.

In the 1930s he purchased the farm once owned by his parents. In later years, he gave money for the construction of a new library and then a new high school in his hometown of Hamilton.

Even though he had made numerous charitable contributions, at the time of his death in 1971 his estate was valued at $25,000,000. Truly, he was a Penney worth a lot.

But throughout his life, he sought to live by the Golden Rule, which was more than just the name of a dry goods chain store. In 1950 he published an autobiography titled Fifty Years with the Golden Rule.

Penney and Polk County

Many of you who are my personal friends know that June, my wife, is from Polk County in southwest Missouri, and you may even remember that she is a graduate of Humansville High School. But I didn’t know of J.C. Penney’s indirect connection to Humansville until earlier this year.

In 2012, the George Dimmitt Memorial Hospital in Humansville was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

In a lengthy PDF document about that hospital, I learned that Charles Dimmitt, the son of a pastor of the Methodist church in Humansville, donated funds for the construction of that hospital as a memorial to his son George, who died in 1928.

It turns out that Charles Dimmitt had been employed by the Golden Rule stores and then between 1913 and 1922 had become wealthy as an executive in the J.C. Penney Company.

The same document says that Dimmitt also purchased and donated the site for a city park and made a substantial contribution toward the community building in Humansville, which was the venue of June’s high school graduation service.

All of this, it says, was perhaps because of “the example for philanthropy set by J.C. Penney.”

Yes, J.C. Penney was worth a lot—and in ways other than financial.

Needed: Justice, Not (Just) Friendship or Even Money

Just as in 1968, racial tension in the U.S. has been rampant these last few months in 2020, and, again, just like back then, one presidential candidate is calling for LAW AND ORDER. But what is the most pressing need for People of Color, and how can the current unrest best be addressed?  

Are Reparations the Answer?

There have been strong calls by some for the U.S. government to provide reparations to the descendants of Black people who were formerly enslaved. In his long, oft-cited June 2014 piece in The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates makes a strong appeal for reparations.

If it could have been arranged, this month would have been a fitting time for reparations to be paid, for it was 170 years ago on September 18, 1850, that the Fugitive Slave Act was passed by the U.S. Congress, making the enslavement of Blacks in the South even more secure—and more odious.

Harriet Tubman escaped slavery in 1849, but then her daring work freeing other slaves by means of the Underground Railroad was made even more dangerous and challenging after the Fugitive Slave Act took effect the next year.

But there are many problems with reparations: how could it be satisfactorily determined who is eligible for reparations after all these years, and how could adequate funding be provided? With the massive expenditures on covid-19 relief this year, there is no possibility of funding being provided now, even if there were the will to do so.

Reparations are most likely not the answer to the problem of racial unrest in this country for the foreseeable future—or ever.

Is Friendship the Answer?

There has been much talk over the last sixty years about the need for racial reconciliation and for eliminating the segregation of Blacks and whites.

Near the beginning of “A Segregated Church or a Beloved Community,” the sixth chapter in his 2016 book America’s Original Sin, Jim Wallis recounts how in the 1950s Martin Luther King, Jr., sadly said, “I am [ashamed] and appalled that eleven o’clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in Christian America.”

Then Wallis went on to lament that still now “the racial segregation of US churches is nothing short of scandalous and sinful” (Kindle ed., pp. 97, 98).

While I strongly believe that churches should never be segregated because of unwillingness to accept people of different races/ethnicities and have long regretted not being a part of a church here in the U.S. with a significant number of People of Color, I now think that integration is not the primary goal we whites should seek.

Last month, Jennifer Harvey, a religion professor at Drake University in Iowa, wrote a powerful opinion piece for CNN. While her piece was largely in support of reparations, I was struck by her disparagement of all the work that has been done for “racial reconciliation” and the emphasis in recent years on “diversity and inclusion.”

Harvey insists that “we need to be clear that friendships are never a substitute for justice.”

Thus, while definitely important, friendship/reconciliation is not the primary answer to the problem of racial unrest abroad in the land.

The Need for Justice/Equity

In her highly acclaimed book Caste (2020), Isabel Wilkerson writes, “We are not personally responsible for what people who look like us did centuries ago. But we are responsible for what good or ill we do to people alive with us today” (p. 387).

Accordingly, rather than focusing on reparations for the past, what is needed most now is the creation of a more just, equitable society.

If we whites want to help People of Color (PoC) have better lives in this still-racist society, we need to focus most on legislation and law enforcement that, among other things, combats police brutality against PoC; corrects the inequities in the prison justice system; and eliminates discrimination in housing and discriminatory finance charges for both houses and cars.

To do this we can support various nationwide organizations, such as the ACLU, for example, which urges us to Demand Justice Now.

Holy Troublemakers

The Honorable John Lewis, the noted civil-rights leader who served in the U. S. House of Representatives from 1987 until his death earlier this year, tweeted in June 2018, “Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”

Rep. Lewis is not included in Daneen Akers’s 2019 book published under the title Holy Troublemakers & Unconventional Saints, but perhaps he will be included in the second volume already planned. 

Introducing Holy Troublemakers

Some of you may know of Mike Morrell. He was the sub-author of Richard Rohr’s book The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation  (2016). Among the many hats Mike wears, he curates the Speakeasy network, which is a collective of bloggers, who among other things review books.

I have received and reviewed a few books for Speakeasy, and that is how I came to read Akers’s book about “holy troublemakers.” I didn’t know when I requested it that it is a book for young readers, but the stories of 36 “troublemakers” were of sufficient interest to this old man, although I didn’t need the 16-page Glossary at the end.

Akers’s attractive book tells the story of a wide variety of people, beginning with Alice Paul and ending with Wil Gafney. (After a bit I caught on that the people are introduced in alphabetical order by their first names, and later I found out that Rev. Gafney is a former student of Thinking Friend Michael Willett Newheart, a former student of mine.)

Some of the “holy troublemakers” and/or “unconventional saints” included are some of my favorite people about whom I have written about in this blog—people such as Francis of Assisi, Florence Nightingale, and Gustavo Gutiérrez.

The book also includes many people whom I learned about for the first time, such as Ani Zonneveld (a Malaysian Muslim), Irwin Keller (a Jewish rabbi), and Lisbeth Melendez Rivera (a Puerto Rican active now with Rainbow Catholics).

As described on the HolyTroublemakers.com website, “Holy Troublemakers and Unconventional Saints is an illustrated children’s storybook featuring the stories of people of diverse faiths who worked for more love and justice in their corner of the world, even when that meant rocking the religious boat.”

Introducing Akers

Many of the people introduced in this book grew up as conservative Christians, as did author Akers herself, who says on page two that she “grew up in a deeply loving family with five generations of roots in a conservative Christian denomination,” which I found out elsewhere was the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Akers quite apparently grew into embracing a broad ecumenical religious worldview and a warm, accepting attitude toward other people, especially those who suffer discrimination or societal mistreatment.

As we are informed on the website, Akers’s book “emphasizes the stories of women, LGBTQ people, people of color, Indigenous people, and others too often written out of religious narratives.”

Two-thirds of the people introduced in Akers’s book are women, and just over half are people of color. Moreover, even though she is a white Christian, Akers includes Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists in her book—and also a chapter on Valarie Kaur, a remarkable Sikh woman.

At least ten of the 36 troublemakers/saints are LGBTQ people, and six or more others are allies. Akers informed me that there are so many profiles of LGBTQ holy troublemakers and unconventional saints in the book because that's “a demographic that's too often been excluded from religious narratives.”

Recommending Akers’s Book

This book may have too much emphasis on LGBTQ people for it to be broadly recommended. On the other hand, maybe for that very reason, it needs to be recommended for a wide reading public. After all,

LGBTQ LIVES MATTER

In particular, I especially recommend this book to two types of families: to those who have family members or close friends who are LGBTQ—and to families who harbor negative feelings toward LGBTQ people.

The book is a bit pricey, but it is a beautifully done and valuable book. It could certainly be a good investment for parents to purchase and to read/discuss with their children over 36 days. 

De-escalating the Abortion Wars

Abortion is extremely contentious, and for more than 45 years now, there has been considerable “warfare” between “pro-choice” and “pro-life” people. Is there any way to de-escalate such negative polarization?  

The Abortion Wars

James Davison Hunter is a “Distinguished Professor” at the University of Virginia and author of the seminal book Culture Wars (1991).

“The Issue of Abortion” is a major subsection of the ninth chapter of my book Fed up with Fundamentalism, and as I mention there, Hunter (b. 1955) has suggested that abortion could well be the catalyst for America’s next civil war.

That kind of talk didn’t end in the 1990s, though. In May of last year, the conservative Christian Post featured an online article titled “The coming civil war over abortion.” That same month, The Guardian posted “Christian rightwingers warn abortion fight could spark US civil war.”

Among Christians, abortion was primarily only a Catholic issue until Francis Schaeffer convinced Baptist pastor Jerry Falwell in 1979 to use it to gain political power—and the abortion wars have now raged for four decades among Christians as well as in society at large.

In this election year, abortion is at the heart of the political “wars” between the Republicans and Democrats. Vice President Pence said in his acceptance speech last week,

President Trump has stood without apology for the sanctity of human life every day of this administration. Joe Biden, he supports taxpayer funding of abortion, right up to the moment of birth.

(It has often been said that truth is the first casualty in war, and Pence’s last statement is misleading and untrue.)

De-escalation Efforts

In spite of the rhetoric being used by the Trump administration and its staunch conservative evangelical followers, there are both Catholics and evangelical Christians who are seeking to de-escalate the abortion wars by broadening their ethical concerns.

In 1972 a group of Catholic sisters organized for social justice as the Network. They became widely known because of their first Nuns on the Bus tour in 2012. (In 2014 I wrote about them and their leader, Sister Simone Campbell, here.)

Long known as just NETWORK, their website is NetworkLobby.org and they are promoting PopeFrancisVoters.org in their campaign against the current President. Even though they are Catholics, they say little about abortion and much about a broad gamut of social justice issues.

Ron Sider, the founder of Evangelicals for Social Action, is an example of a Protestant evangelical who has through the years been strongly against abortion. But long ago he began to emphasize the importance of being “completely pro-life,” publishing a book by that name in 1987.

In de-escalating the abortion wars, Sider was the editor of a book published earlier this year under the title The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump: 30 Evangelical Christians on Justice, Truth, and Moral Integrity.

A Spark of Light

Jodi Picoult is a superlative novelist, and I was greatly impressed with her 2018 novel A Spark of Light. In fact, I decided to write this blog article mainly because of reading it.

The novel is about just one day—a very fateful day when there was a shooting in an abortion clinic.

Picoult skillfully narrates the deep thoughts and convictions of all the people involved in that tragic day: the shooter, the policeman seeking to get the shooter’s hostages released, the protesters outside the clinic, the women inside the clinic, and the doctors and nurses providing the abortion services. 

Dr. Willie Parker (b. 1962)

The doctor performing the abortions that day is based on a real-life abortion doctor, Willie Parker, who tells his story in Life’s Work: A Moral Argument for Choice (2017).  

Even though it will be quite perplexing to some, Parker believes that performing abortions and “speaking out on behalf of the women who want abortions” is his Christian calling and his “life’s work” (p. 16).

For all of you who wonder how a Christian can justify abortion, I highly recommend reading Picoult’s novel and/or Parker’s book. Doing so thoughtfully, I believe, would go far toward de-escalating the abortion wars.