Pro-Choice or Anti-Choice?

Susan Wicklund is a sensitive and compassionate woman. She is also an abortion doctor. Last week the Vital Conversations group of which June and I are a part discussed Dr. Wicklund’s book, This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor (2007).

Dr. Wicklund (b. 1954) closes the third chapter of her book with these striking words: “Abortion is about life: quality of life for infants, children, and adults. Everywhere and in every sense of the word. Life, not death” (p. 33).

There was nothing I read in the remainder of the book that seemed to contradict that statement. Thus, I have concluded that I will never again refer to the battle over abortion rights to be a battle between “pro-life” people and those who are “pro-choice.” The conflict is between those who are pro-choice and those who are anti-choice.

For a long time I have opposed the use of the term “pro-abortion,” for no one is really for abortion. It is always seen as the lesser of two evils, not something that is in any sense good in and of itself. That, it seems, is clearly the position of Dr. Wicklund.

As many of my Thinking Friends know, a section of my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism is on “The Issue of Abortion” (pp. 226-235). In those pages, I rejected the absolutist position that condemns all abortions, which tends to be the position of most Christian fundamentalists. But I don’t clearly state there that I am a pro-choice advocate. After reading and thinking about Dr. Wicklund’s book, if were I to write that section on abortion now, I would  advocate the pro-choice position more explicitly.

For me, one painful aspect of This Common Secret was that Dr. Wicklund has nothing but unfavorable things to say about Christians or Christianity. People identified as Lambs of Christ are mentioned at least four times in the book—and always in a negative way: they were among the most vociferous of the protesters who constantly harassed Dr. Wicklund. (The Lambs of Christ is an anti-choice organization, founded in 1988 by Rev. Norman Weslin, a Roman Catholic priest and retired U.S. Army officer. Some refer to them as a Christian terrorist organization.)

Whether you are pro- or anti-choice, I would recommend the reading of Dr. Wicklund’s book. It helped me greatly to understand the pathos surrounding the performing of abortions as well as the importance of having a doctor who does those procedures in a safe and supportive environment. And it caused me to feel great admiration for Dr. Susan Wicklund, a sensitive and compassionate person.

“To Know God is to Do Justice”

The always controversial Glenn Beck has stirred up quite a fuss by the outrageous remarks he made on his March 2 TV program. Fox News has removed access to the YouTube video of that show, but you can read about it here if you are not familiar with what he said.

Basically, Beck urged his listeners to leave churches that preach social justice, saying that the latter term is a code word for communism and Nazism. There has been an outpouring of outrage by many Christians because of Beck’s shocking statements. (You can read about Jim Wallis’ response here.)

Before I knew about the stir Beck created, I had already planned to write a blog piece with this title. Based largely on Jeremiah 22:15-16, the liberation theologians of South America have long emphasized that “to know God is to do justice.” Those words are in the title of a subsection in Gustavo Gutiérrez’ s book A Theology of Liberation (1988, pp. 110-2). It is also in the title of the fourth chapter of Robert McAfee Brown’s Unexpected News: Reading the Bible with Third World Eyes (1984).

The justice emphasized in the above works is clearly social justice, which includes such things as helping the “poor and oppressed” of society to have greater access to the necessities of life, free of exploitation by the wealthy and powerful.

In 1 John 4:7-8, we read, “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” But some might ask, What has that got to do with social justice?

I think the “third proposition” in Joseph Fletcher’s Situation Ethics (1966) is true: “Love and justice are the same, for justice is love distributed, nothing else.” Thus, paraphrasing the above Bible verses, we can say that everyone who does justice knows God, and whoever does not do justice does not know God.

So, thinking about what I wrote in the two previous postings about experiencing God, let me now suggest that not only have many or most people of other religious traditions not experienced God, many or most people of the Christian tradition have not experienced God either.

If loving / doing justice are the sure indicators of knowing God, as the Bible seems to suggest, then perhaps we can say there are some people in most religious traditions and some who are not “religious” who know God and there are many in all religious (and non-religious) traditions who do not know God.

And, if this be the case, we each must ask ourselves, Where does that put me? Have I truly experienced God? Do I know God? How is that shown by my love for others and by my actions for social justice?

The Idols of Harajuku

A few days ago the Winter Olympics in Vancouver ended, and it was quite a spectacle. But do you remember where the Summer Olympics were held in 1964? Yes, they were in Tokyo, and the Yoyogi National Gymnasium was one of the facilities built for those Olympic Games. That striking structure (picture here) was within comfortable walking distance from where our family lived when we first went to Japan, just two years after the Olympics.

Harajuku Station is the train station closest to the National Gymnasium, and you can see a picture and read about that well-known station here. Departing from the station, it is only a minute’s walk to the huge torii (the “gate” that marks the entrance into sacred space) in front of Meiji Shrine, the most important and most popular Shinto shrine in Tokyo.

Several years ago, some missionaries and other Christians in Japan announced that there was going to be prayer-walking in front of Meiji Shrine. That was being planned, of course, because Shinto was seen as a rival to Christianity and the devotion of the Japanese people going there was thought to be idol worship.

Hearing about the planned prayer-walking, I remarked that it was my opinion that the youth culture so prominent on the other side of Harajuku Station was the real opponent to Christianity and that attention ought to be focused there rather than on Meiji Shrine.

The youth culture of Harajuku seems to be unmitigated hedonism. And in Japan the word idol is regularly used to refer to cute young women in their teens and early twenties who appear regularly in the mass media. Probably few “idols” actually go to Harajuku, but most of the young women who go there would very much like to be idols.

While I would be surprised if most or even many of the Japanese who visit Meiji Shrine actually experience God there, I would not be surprised if some of them do. By contrast, it seems to me that the hedonistic young people who frequent the streets of Harajuku are quite unlikely to experience God there—or anywhere. So, I am far more concerned about the “idolatry” of Harajuku, and the hedonism of the young people of Japan in general, than about the perceived idolatry of Meiji Shrine.

The torii (sacred gate) at Meiji Shrine near Harajuku Station in Tokyo.

Ideas about God and about the Moon

Is there a man in the moon? There is a long tradition in the West that says there is. Or is it a rabbit pounding rice (mochi)? That is the old Japanese view. Look up “man in the moon” on Wikipedia (here) and you will find a great variety of ideas about who lives in the moon. It also seems that in the past some people actually thought the moon was made of green cheese.

Of course, because of modern telescopes and then actual travel to the moon, no educated person today believes there is some person or animal living on or in the moon or that it is made out of anything other than rocks and minerals of various sorts.

But what does this have to do with God? Well, people through the millennia have had different ideas about God, just as they have had about the moon. Can we assume, though, that whereas there is some basic truth about the nature of the moon, there is no essential truth about God? Should we believe that any idea about God is as good as any other?

In his book The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (1989) by Lesslie Newbigin, about whom I wrote in two previous postings (2/1 and 2/8), the British missiologist contends that religious pluralism “is the belief that the differences between the religions are not a matter of truth and falsehood, but of different perceptions of the one truth; that to speak of religious beliefs as true or false is inadmissible” (p. 14).

It seems quite clear that there are different perceptions of God or Truth, but all those perceptions are not equally correct, just as most of the varying ideas about the moon were not true. But, of course, we don’t have direct information about God like we have about the moon. Or do we?

Isn’t there experience of God? If there is, it is certainly not the same as experience of physical objects, like the moon. Experience of God is beyond the realm of science. But does that make it any less real?

The Bible is full of references to hearing God speak, sensing God leading, communicating with God through prayer, and other such experiences. Is there any validity to such experience claims? Or are those claims just subjective experiences with no real contact with an “objective” Being? I think that there are people, many people, who have experienced God to varying degrees and that those experiences are real and not just subjective feelings.

One question being considered by many today, though, is this: Is it only people who are Christians or in the Christian tradition who have experienced or can experience God? Again, I think not. But that doesn’t mean that all ideas about God are equally valid or true, just as all ideas about the moon are not equally true, and most have been clearly false, even though it is the same moon that is observed.

Founders Day at WJC

In 1821, Missouri became the twenty-fourth state in the United States, and twenty years later the University of Missouri opened as the first state university west of the Mississippi River. In 1849, with the discovery of gold in California, the Missouri towns of St. Louis, Independence, Westport, and St. Joseph became points of departure for emigrants bound for California, making Missouri the “Gateway to the West.” (The town of Kansas, which later became Kansas City, was not incorporated until the following year.) 

On February 27, 1849, the Missouri legislature granted a charter which created the first four-year men’s college west of the Mississippi. The college was begun with a significant financial contribution by Dr. William Jewell, a Columbia (Mo.) physician, legislator, and Baptist layman. Consequently, the new school named William Jewell College and located in Liberty (Mo.), at the edge of the American wilderness. 

Rev. Robert James, a nearby Baptist minister, was one of the members of the first Board of Trustees. According to the WJC website, his sons, Frank and Jesse, eventually made good on their father’s financial pledge to the college when Rev. James left the area to follow church members to the California Gold Rush. (Robert James died in California in 1850 when Frank was seven years old and before Jesse turned three.) 

Last week Dr. David Sallee, the current president William Jewell College, spoke at the first Founders Day chapel service, and it was a fine talk. He reminded the college community that “what we do now and must always do, is provide an experience that reminds us daily that our inspiration is grounded in the Christian faith of our beginning.” He also declared that the college “cannot allow its students to be intellectually lazy because of their religious beliefs.”

Dr. Sallee also emphasized that education “is supposed to open our minds, to make mirrors into windows (Sydney J. Harris), to help us see the possibilities, all influenced by one’s spirit. It is about integrating the intellectual and the spiritual to inform and guide our lives.” 

After the chapel address, those in attendance sang “God of Truth and Joy,” a hymn written by Dr. J. Gordon Kingsley, president of the college from 1980-1993. The words of the first verse are:

God of truth and joy,
Teach us how to learn.
Grant us strength of mind and will,
Thy glory to affirm.
Let us servants be,
To lead Thy world aright.
Guide us through our onward years,
Thy will our inner light.

At the close of the service, I felt a sense of pride that 110 years after its founding, I graduated from William Jewell College. And I am happy to be living now in Liberty where I can have constant contact with WJC and its intellectual and spiritual vitality.

Picture with Dr. Sallee last fall after I received the 50-year medallion from William Jewell College.

Witnesses of Truth

“Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” is a question that those who give testimony in court must affirm with an oath. But what does such an oath mean now that there are more and more people who think that there is no Truth, just various subjective or relative truths?

As I have written in previous postings (Oct. 22 and Oct. 26), I firmly believe there is absolute Truth. But I have previously, and do again here, reject the charge that I am an absolutist. And I readily acknowledge that there have been massive errors made by those who thought their apprehension of Truth gave them the license to force that view on others.

Thus, I think there is significant wisdom in the statement, “Believe those who seek the truth; doubt those who find it” (André Gide, 1869-1951, French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947).

 I also was impressed with the prayer that was used recently in a chapel service at William Jewell College:

From the cowardice that dares not face new truth,

From the laziness that is contented with half truth,

From the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth,

Good Lord, deliver me.

(These words, said to be a “prayer from Kenya,” are found in George Appleton, ed., The Oxford Book of Prayer, 1985, p. 115.)

Further, I like this prayer by Pope John XXIII (April 11, 1963; emphasis added).

May God banish from our hearts whatever might endanger peace.

May God transform us into witnesses of truth, justice, and love.

May God enkindle our wills so that we may overcome the barriers that divide, cherish the bonds of mutual charity, understand others, and pardon those who have done us wrong.

May all peoples of the earth become as brothers and sisters, and may the most longed-for peace blossom forth and reign among us always.

I like Pope John’s prayer, partly because it illustrates how being a witness of Truth does not make one a warrior or an arrogant bigot, although, certainly, there have been warriors and bigots who were so perhaps because they believed in absolute Truth.

If we take seriously the claim that Jesus is “the truth” (John 14:6), as I do, we must also take with equal seriousness Jesus' command that his followers practice love for one another. In that same chapter, Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (v. 15), and then in the next chapter he says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (15:12).

Being a witness of Truth means seeking to practice love and to work for justice for all people. Ideas of truth which have led to warfare, injustice, intolerance, imperialism, exploitation, and the like are not the Truth as revealed by Jesus, the Prince of peace and the Lord of love.

Religion, Faith, and Spirituality

Recently, along with others in Milton Horne’s “Bible study” class at Second Baptist Church, I have been reading The World’s Religions: Worldviews and Contemporary Issues (second ed., 2005) by William A. Young. It is a fine book, but I don’t like Young’s definition of religion: “Religion is human transformation in response to perceived ultimacy” (p. 4). It seems to me that transformation is the aim or purpose of religion, not what it is.

Although it is no longer in print, I think the definition by Frederick J. Streng in his Understanding Religious Life (third ed., 1985) is better: “Religion is a means to ultimate transformation.” Streng goes on to explain: “An ultimate transformation is a fundamental change from being caught up in the troubles of common existence (sin, ignorance) to living in such a way that one can cope at the deepest level with those troubles” (p. 2).

In keeping with this view, religion can be described as what we humans do in order to achieve something. But that is one of the main reasons I have long sought to make a distinction between religion and faith. Religion is basically human efforts or attempts to gain something (salvation, peace of mind, harmony with the universe, etc.). Faith, by contrast, is response to God’s grace.

As we all know, many people now make a distinction between religion and spirituality, usually largely dismissing the former and embracing the latter. In general, that distinction is good and important. Spirituality is our basic attitude toward reality in the light of our awareness of God (the Ultimate, the Absolute, the Eternal, Mystery, the Great Spirit, or whatever term we want to use for that which transcends the physical world) and our actions on the basis of that attitude.

Religion is primarily a means toward an end. Faith, or spirituality, is more an end in itself. That is true of real worship also. Of course, worship can be engaged for the purpose of trying to get something from God, a means to an end. But true worship is focused on God and is basically praising God with no intention of getting something in the process. Whatever benefits we do receive are by-products, not direct effects from effort expended.

I have just finished speed-reading Faith and Belief (1979) by Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1916-2000), who was for several years director of Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions. In this scholarly work, Smith clearly points out the difference between faith and religion as well as between faith and belief, contending that faith is prior to, and superior to, both. I may write more about Smith’s ideas later, but here let me cite a very short paragraph in Smith’s book, a statement I like very much.

“Faith is a saying ‘Yes’” to truth” (p. 163).

In that statement I think Smith means Truth. Religion is a search for Truth; faith is accepting, responding to, committing our lives to Truth. Spirituality, then, is how we live and act on the basis of that commitment.