Scriptorium Daily
Yesterday I posted a letter from an Evangelical Obama voter here.
Today is Part III of the series that began here.
Dear Evangelical Obama Voter,
You are a good friend.
We work together on many important projects and I am thankful that you can model such an irenic attitude in our disagreements. No Christian should believe politics is all important and in our political disagreements we must keep that in mind. Friendship is one of the things more valuable than politics and I have no intention of this discussion weakening ours!
We both agree that human life should be protected. We both agree that this protection should begin in the womb, but does not end there. Our disagreement comes, I think, on means and not ends.
I have responded paragraph by paragraph to your letter to make sure I get your wording right. I have edited your remarks to get to those parts where we strongly agree or disagree.
Our readers can find your whole unedited post here.
The parts in block quotes are from you and I wrote the rest of the text.
You say:
I spend most of my time in our beloved Christian “subculture”, so I’m familiar with the typical arguments about whether or not a Christian can in good conscience vote for a Democratic candidate, especially in the case of the abortion problem. And I must admit, of all political issues, this is the one that keeps me up at night! The cause of life should always be at the forefront of any Christian’s political action. However, I feel that all too often, the Church has allowed political leaders to turn it into a wedge issue, its sole purpose to keep rich men in power, and in doing so, we’ve also allowed the definition of the pro-life movement to shrink beyond biblical teachings. That seems to me to be a very dangerous thing to do.
There are three quick things to say in response.
First, a Christian can, of course, vote for a Democrat. There are pro-life Democrats. Sadly one of them is not running for president.
Second, I worry about phrases such as “keep rich men in power.”
Senator Obama and Senator McCain are rich by the standards of both our families and will raise millions from rich men.
What does that have to do with it?
Such class warfare rhetoric is dangerous stuff. It has been used to do great harm in my lifetime. No Christian can think the rich God’s favorites, but the rich should be treated with justice. There is always a temptation to give special favors to the rich, but there is also a temptation to appeal to the masses with bread and circuses in order to win power. Christians cannot go either way!
Third, I suspect both of us need to be careful about accidentally cutting our losses on certain issues due to peer pressure. Populist peer pressure, even from fellow Christians, is not the sort that impresses us.
Instead I suspect the two of us are more likely to care about the opinions of artists, university types, and those in our cultural set or at least the cultural set we admire. This does not have to be a bad thing, but it can be.
Those groups are not keen on even the best features of the religious right. We don’t get courage points for riling up people to whom we don’t relate well naturally!
You do try to take great care that your opinions aren’t being formed merely in reaction to others. You rightly imply the danger of just buying into the Christian sub-culture, but those charms were not that sort that tempt either of us!
If Christian “group think” is a danger, and it is, then so is “academic group think.”
We don’t want to avoid the worst excesses of the religious ghetto only to become “useful idiots” sitting in the back of secularism’s bus!
I know you agree about this, but it is a question of which is the greater danger to us.
Finally, abortion is a wedge issue, because it represents a real division in our nation. Senator McCain has voted in a pro-life manner all his life. Senator Obama has voted in a pro-choice manner. Their views on abortion are good windows into how they make decisions and whom they turn to for advice.
Any one issue can be used to obscure other bad things a candidate believes, but it isn’t obvious to me that this happening in this election.
For me some issues trump others in deciding where to cast my ballot.
If it became clear that one of the candidates was an anti-Semite, then it would not be a “wedge issue” to bring it up. No person of good faith would vote for a known anti-Semite regardless of his positions on other issues.
In my lifetime such a situation happened in France when the far-right candidate got into a presidential run-off with a socialist candidate.
The far-right candidate was an anti-Semite or something very much like one. If I had been a voter in France, I would voted against the “rightist” candidate with strong anti-Semite views and for the leftist candidate (whose other views distress me), because an anti-Semite is beyond the pale.
Senator Obama has a very extreme view on abortion.
The issue for traditional Christianity is not whether Senator Obama is a leftist or a Democrat. One can be a good Christian (obviously) and be both. Rather the key question is whether wanting “partial birth abortion” to be legal is a disqualification for winning a traditional Christian’s vote.
I think it is, but that is not just my view or that of the Evangelical sub-culture. The Roman Church has also come to this conclusion. The Orthodox Church also overwhelmingly condemns a “pro-choice” position. Like bigotry it is a deal killer for us.
Candidates might be able to persuade me regarding other views, but not about the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!
Traditional Christians sometimes do get stuck voting for candidates who are good on basic issues, but weak on other ones. I wish this were not so and that every candidate was a Bobby Jindal or a Sarah Palin. Sadly, most are not.
If Senator Obama were pro-life, then I believe he would win many Christian votes that he will lose because of his pro-choice ideology.
Using an example of a writer whose ideas we both detest, you say:
With one simple title, the book claims an inordinate level of exclusive truth for its teachings.
In much the same way, I think your statement about the Christian’s duty in this election does that. Because I know you, I know that you make that statement having thought through all the various ways in which the cause of life may be advanced and having decided that a vote for McCain is the most effective means of advancing that cause.
However, what your statement literally says is‚ “If you don’t agree with my idea of what kind of political action (i.e. the appointment of Supreme Court justices) will work to advance the cause of life, than you’re not a traditional Christian and you’re not truly concerned with the cause of life.”
That’s unsettling to me.
I agree (as you shall see) that Christians can disagree about means to ends. We both agree on the end (eliminating abortion), but disagree with the means that are best to do it.
Unfortunately Senator Obama does not agree with us on the “end.”
If Senator Obama also had as his goal making abortion illegal and simply had a different way of getting there, then we could agree to disagree. However, Senator Obama favors keeping abortion legal and is doing all he can to keep it so. Senator Obama has pledged to do this and I have no reason to doubt his word on this issue.
Senator Obama intends to keep abortion legal, but might fail (for complex reasons I am sure you could tell me).
Senator McCain intends to make abortion illegal, but might fail (for complex reasons I could tell you).
Surely you would agree that in judging a candidate intent matters? Neither of us would vote for a candidate who intended to hurt the poor even if we thought (by some fluke) that he might not do it.
Senator Obama is fundamentally wrong about his goals and on an issue that matters in a deep way . . . as you concede.
If Senator Casey, a pro-life Democrat, and not Senator Obama were the nominee, then we would not be having this discussion. The morality of abortion would not tip the scales to make it impossible for a traditional Christian to vote for the Democrat candidate.
You say:
And that plays right into the hands of those who would use abortion as a wedge issue but would never dream of acting on it. Because I know you, I know this isn’t your attitude or your intent‚ but you are a rare person in that regard. This attitude is killing the Church, both in terms of our own unity and in terms of our appearance to secular society.
In fact, the pro-life cause has made real progress. It is only twenty years ago that Reagan made it possible to be a national nominee who was pro-life! Some forms of abortion are now illegal. Attitudes have changed. The young are more pro-life than their grandparents!
John McCain is seriously pro-life. He has always voted that way . . . and has carried his conviction to the point of adopting a baby through Mother Theresa. She is now a beloved teenage daughter.
Does that sound like a man who is just giving lip service to the pro-life cause?
Unity is a good thing. God knows I hate schism, but disagreement is not the only bad thing.
Another thing that has killed the Church historically and is killing my own former (and beloved!) Anglican communion is an inability to take stands. On some issues we cannot compromise . . . though we don’t have to be jerks in expressing our point of view.
People who take strong counter-cultural stands are often hated. Of course some pro-life (or Republican or religious right) leaders have been jerks or fools.
By no accident, they often are given big microphones by secularists. Both types of extremist need each other. They even raise money off each other by playing to the fears of their followers.The good news is that we are not stuck with such people or tactics!
The face of my party and of the life movement in the future is not some preacher on the television, but leaders like Bobby Jindal of Louisiana.
Sarah Palin who just brought her lovely baby into the world knowing it will have some struggles in life is also a pro-life leader in my party.
Jindal and Palin are the future of our movement. If you grew up in the “bad old days” when we were represented by sketchy television preachers and party hacks it is hard to realize the change that years of hard pro-life work made in the Republican Party.
I am not ignoring rising Democrat stars such as Heath Shuler and Bill Casey. When they are your nominees for President, you can be sure that many of us will look hard at them.
Heath Shuler would get my vote over a pro-choice Republican. The problem is that Congressman Shuler is not your nominee and his is not the platform on which your nominee is running.
You say:
I’d much rather refer to Jim Wallis’ book God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get
It, which lays out a great argument for Christians acting though but not shackling themselves to political parties, since both at their heart are
about seeking power, which is not exactly a biblical virtue.
I would feel better about Jim Wallis if he had not been making the same claims (and writing roughly the same book) since I was a college student!
Nobody sane thinks we should be shackled to a political party.
Nobody who lives in California could be! Most races (of late) are between the lesser of two evils. I am not a Schwarzenegger Republican!
However, I think it a bit precious to be against “seeking power.” I am against seeking power for its own sake or as an end, but surely to fulfill one mission (to love our neighbor) one could seek some power to do so effectively (earn money?). There are bad people in politics, but I have also known some good ones in both political parties. It is easy enough to throw rocks, but not everyone in the religious right is a phony or a hypocrite and not all of them are just looking to stay in office.
Some are. Those people are wrong and we should avoid them when we can. Fortunately, life is not all politics. . . though college life has proven just as political at times (secular and Christian) as government politics in my experience!
You say:
But I will make my case, briefly. Whenever I’m asked how I can be pro-life and be a Democrat, my answer always seems to surprise people. It’s because neither party is pro-life enough for me. I hate abortion, and I hate the death penalty. I hate the situations that make people think abortion is the only option they have. I hate that poverty, which is mentioned far more in the Bible than most issues that Christian march to the polls for, is ignored in the Church. Neither party is fully committed to the cause of life, so I have to pick and choose, as we all do, come election day.
I say:
I don’t think this quite true. The nominee for the Democrat Party doesn’t like poverty, but Senator McCain doesn’t either.
They disagree about means to ends, but agree on the goal.
When it comes to abortion this is not true as the Democrat nominee wants to see abortion, even in terrible and hard cases, fully legal. That is out of bounds to me.
It is true that both parties contain hypocrites who do not care. There are Republicans who support free markets because they don’t care about the poor. There are Democrats who support government solutions just to get some taxpayer money. Both parties have bad citizens.
Nobody has a monopoly in good intentions. Sadly one party has nominated a pro-life candidate and the other did not, so all things are not equal in this case. It is sad that because of this situation abortion is a partisan issue. If Democrats had nominated one of their pro-life leaders, it would not be. I support your bold choice to work for Democrats for Life to bring on that good day.
After all I am no McCain fanatic and never have been.
You say:
This election is particularly difficult in that sense. While Senator Obama is rabidly pro-choice, he’s already been forced to backpedal on his stance for the general election (as all candidates must and do, much to supporters chagrin). While Senator McCain is more likely to back Supreme Court nominees who might vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, there are several problems with that. First, it’s really anyone’s guess if that would actually happen. Far more than once, justices haven’t proven to be quite as predictable as a nominating president might hope. Second, it looks like, barring a major shift between now and November, Senator McCain would face an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress, which would make nominating yet another ultra-conservative, in the wake of Roberts and Alito, very difficult at best.
I reply:
At least I have hope with McCain. With Obama all the hard work and gains of the last two decades will surely be lost.
Second, I do not despair about getting McCain’s choices through the Senate. As you pointed out not all Democrats (even in the Senate!) are ideologues. Many will vote to approve a qualified choice by the president . . . as Republicans did with Clinton’s choices.
I would be surprised if a justice like Roberts (who is very mainstream and well liked) would not get confirmed. Surely your party is not that in the grip of the abortion lobby?
You say:
Third, and perhaps most important, what does this barrage of single-minded justices do to our third branch of government? The Court was designed to be a battleground for opposing political ideology. If we pack the Court for one issue that may or may not get heard, and then may or may not go our way, what have we gained?
I say:
Nobody has ever accused Roberts or Scalia of being single-minded! Both are very bright men with complicated views on many issues. They do not march in lock step with each other either.
Conservatives did not make abortion (or gay marriage for that matter) a court issue. The left did. If Roe/Wade is overturned, then the process will return to the legislatures where it belongs. Conservatives do not want to legislate from the bench, after all.
You say:
Could we see the persistence of decisions that perpetuate an inequitable society which increases the number of abortions? Could we see less
hesitancy toward capital punishment at the federal and state levels?Aren’t these things that damage the cause of life?
I reply:
I am no great fan of capital punishment, but surely there is a difference between a killer who was given a full jury trial with many appeals who is executed after many years and a third-trimester baby killed in a clinic over a weekend?
I hope the court is not in the business of securing economic equity. The attempt to secure that has not gone well.
You say:
I understand this is an unpopular argument to make with the conservative Christian community, and that’s fine. However, until we loosen our bonds to strict political ideology and think in a much more complex manner and act accordingly in the public sphere, we are always going to lose.
In fact, as most of the presidential elections of my lifetime demonstrate, we do not always lose. Sometimes good things happen. When Roe is overturned, your party will gain a great blessing. People such as I am will be able to look at national elections without abortion getting in the way! We will have other options.
We should not be ideologues ever. We should think hard and act cautiously.
I agree with all of that. None of it is inconsistent with a firm and principled pro-life stand.
You say:
When the Church is the champion of those who most desperately need her, from the unborn to the wrongfully accused on death row, to the Afghani
bride at her bombed out wedding, to the mother who fears she cannot feed one more mouth, then the cause of life will advance. Until then, if we
keep our politics too small for the cause of life, we will be guilty of squelching it.
The Church should champion all those people, but we need not hear “the state” when the question is asked, “How shall we help?” This is too simple and borders on idolatry. Let’s not give the state all power!
I want to keep politics small and in its place . . . but let our compassion flow in an unlimited way in many different channels!
You say:
But regardless of what action we take, we must remember, on both political sides, it is Christ’s teaching that must guide us, not a compromised
political platform. We can argue healthily and should about whether capital punishment or poverty are life culture issues, but we cannot alienate each other because we’ve decided on political action and call it a religious issue. The Religious Right is dying. We are watching the end of the Right’s manipulation of the evangelical church, and it is the dawn of a new era for Christian involvement in politics. Let’s not fall into the same patterns as before.
I want to end here, because I agree with so much of it.
Poverty is a pro-life issue. We must have solutions for it, but I don’t think statist solutions are hopeful ones. Otherwise, I would support them. That is the “same old politics” just in a different direction!
Sadly for my friends on the left the religious right is not dying, but changing (evolving!) to become stronger.
New leaders (Jindal and Palin) are emerging.
Why don’t I believe in the impending death of the religious right?
I have heard it all before and it does not die.
In 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 I read that this was the “end of the religious right.” Instead of death, I have watched the development of better communicators (such as Hugh Hewitt) and better political leaders coming to replace the old warhorses.
But there is so much else to do besides politics . . . which though important is not all important.
I am a Christian before anything else. Nobody should manipulate the church and nothing should have our ultimate allegiance other than the Kingdom of Our Lord.
Sadly His Kingdom is not yet and so we must do the best we can to help the hurting, feed the hungry, right wrongs, and vanquish the darkness of our time. In doing so we will frequently be abused, misunderstood, and, yes, even manipulated by all sides. We must be guided fully and ultimately by a prudent attempt to do what is best for all God’s children.
I will get that wrong at times.
The duty to protect must begin with our youngest children. Protecting innocent human life from murder is one of the main functions of the state. Christians can disagree about other powers to be given to government, but not about that one.
This side of Paradise a Christian is not looking for the One but for the best we can get.
That is why, with no great enthusiasm but confident that I must, I will vote for John McCain.
