Justin's Political Corner

Last week, Matt Barber and Shawn Akers were discussing the current Religious Right myth that the military was going to start to court-martial soldiers for sharing their faith.  It is not true, of course, but that isn’t about to stop Barber and Akers from repeating it and complaining that the Obama administration is implementing a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”-like program for Christianity in the military.

“We have people controlling the reins of government, right now,” Barber said, “particularly out of the Oval Office, who are calling evil ‘good’ and good ‘evil.’ They are elevating and celebrating deviant sexual behavior in the ranks of the armed services, which is in direct conflict with clear biblical admonitions against sexual sin in both the Old and New Testaments.”

H/T: RWW

WASHINGTON — Tim Keller is widely regarded as one of the leading intellectuals of evangelical Christianity, having pastored one of the most successful Protestant churches in New York City and written several best-selling books over the past few years.

Keller, who is in his early 60s, does not even like the “evangelical” label, preferring to call himself “orthodox,” and has largely steered clear of politics.

But the gay marriage debate has been front and center in the days leading up to this week’s Supreme Court arguments over two gay marriage cases, so when Keller spoke to a group of journalists at a forum sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center last week, he was asked several times about the issue.

Keller holds the view that marriage is between one man and one woman, but he has avoided focusing on the gay marriage debate, preferring to emphasize Christians’ responsibility to love their neighbor. He has said that “heterosexuality does not get you to heaven,” which earned him criticism from more conservative evangelicals.

At the EPPC forum, however, Keller made a somewhat surprising prediction, given the speed with which much of public opinion seems to be swinging in support of gay marriage. Large numbers of evangelical Christians, even younger ones, he said, will continue to hold the view that same-sex marriage runs counter to their faith, even as they increasingly decide they either support or do not oppose making it the law of the land.

“There’s a tendency to say, where are evangelicals going? I think they’re going to look more and more politically, actually, like conservative Roman Catholics, and like African Americans. I think that’s where they’re going,” Keller said. “But the inertia of the Bible keeps them from, I think, getting really very liberal when it comes to theology and social ethics.”

Keller clarified that “you can believe homosexuality is a sin and still believe that same-sex marriage should be legal.” This is the argument that some religious conservatives are already beginning to make, and looks likely to be the position that most evangelicals end up settling on. Articles on changing attitudes among GOP youth illustrate the move toward separating government-sanctioned marriage and church-sanctioned marriage.

Keller did not seem to share Rauch’s conclusion that a change in evangelical belief is inevitable. But he emphasized Rauch’s point that even if there is a change, it will take a long time. He argued that for the foreseeable future, many adherents of the evangelical faith will not abandon their religious views of homosexuality, even if increasing numbers of evangelicals support legal rights for gay couples.

Keller continued at some length to expand on Rauch’s point.

“If you say to everybody, ‘Anyone who thinks homosexuality is a sin is a bigot,’ he says, ‘You’re going to have to ask them to completely disassemble the way in which they read the Bible, completely disassemble their whole approach to authority. You’re basically going to have to ask them to completely kick their faith out the door,’” Keller said.

“And he says that’s not going to happen very fast. Now he hopes it happens eventually. He did say that. But he says to think that in two or three decades the needle — how many white supremacists are there anymore that are really out there? Not many. And to think that the same thing is going to happen about reservations to homosexuality is just la la land.”

Keller, later in the session, came back to Rauch and specified how long he thinks any change would take.

“He says if orthodox faith does morph to the place where people still have that high view of the text, they’re still people of the book, and we’ve completely embraced homosexuality as one way of loving and married, if that does happen it will take a long time, a very long time, not the sort of thing that could happen in 20 years or 50 years. In which case we need to learn to live together,” Keller said.

The most recent Pew survey of religious attitudes toward gay marriage indicate that Keller is correct.

On the question of whether gay marriage “would violate religious beliefs,” white evangelicals have basically not budged over the last decade. In 2003, 84 percent said it would violate their beliefs, while 14 percent said it would not, the survey shows. And in 2013, 83 percent said it would, while 16 percent said it would not.

The survey of 1,501 adults that Pew released last week shows that, overall, 48 percent of respondents favor gay marriage and 43 percent oppose it. In 2003, 34 percent supported gay marriage and 56 percent were against it, revealing that, like many other polls have shown, there has been a significant shift in favor of gay marriage among all Americans.

But only 34 percent of all Protestants surveyed support gay marriage and 57 percent oppose it, with 9 percent undecided. That, however, is up from 2003, when 25 percent were in favor and 66 percent were against.

Among white evangelicals, support for gay marriage is even lower. Only 19 percent are for it and 75 percent remain opposed. Although that’s up from 2003, when 11 percent were in favor of it and 82 percent were against it, the survey still shows that a significant majority of white evangelicals are opposed to same-sex marriage.

Mainline Protestants, however, have shifted their views. In 2003, 42 percent were in favor of gay marriage and 45 percent were opposed. Now, it’s 52 percent in favor and 36 percent against. Black protestants are edging in that direction, but are still opposed in significant numbers, with 35 percent in favor and 52 percent against, up from 25 percent in favor and 65 percent against in 2003.

Keller did acknowledge that young evangelicals are “not incredibly exercised” about gay marriage, but it is still unclear where the majority of young evangelicals stand on the issue.

According to Pew, that group opposes gay marriage by a large margin, with 65 percent against it and 30 percent supporting it. 

A Public Religion Research Institute released a poll last week that focused on immigration, but also reported that 51 percent of white evangelicals under the age of 35 support gay marriage. The polls make it clear that younger evangelicals support gay marriage in larger numbers than their elders, but the exact number of supporters is still uncertain.

h/t: Huffington Post

In conservatives’ preferred vision of America, we are a white Christian nation. And it is true that in the not too far distant past, we were, at least in numerical terms, an overwhelmingly white Christian nation.  In 1944, 80 percent of adults were white Christians.  But things have changed a lot since then.  Today only about 52 percent of adults are white Christians. By 2024, that figure will be down to 45 percent. That means that by the election of 2016, the United States will have ceased to be a white Christian nation. Looking even farther down the road, by 2040 white Christians will be only around 35 percent of the population and conservative white Christians, who have been such a critical part of the GOP base, only about a third of that—a minority within a minority.

Part of this of course is the inexorable march of race-ethnic change.  The white share of the population is declining at a rate of about a half percentage point a year and is expected to continue to do so for the next several decades.  But the other part of the shift away from white Christians is less well-understood: the rise of religious diversity.

There are two components to the rise of religious diversity: (1) increasing numbers of Americans who practice a non-Christian faith; and (2) increasing numbers of Americans who are secular or unaffiliated with any religion.  A recent Pew report sheds light on these important trends.

Part of the reason for this rapid growth is generational.  Pew’s study notes that, among the youngest Millennial adults—those born 1990-1994, over a third (34 percent) have no religious affiliation.

There are significant social and political implications to these trends.  Pew and other data consistently show how liberal the unaffiliated are, particularly on social issues.  And they vote that way: in the 2012 exit poll, the unaffiliated supported Obama over Romney, 70-26.  In addition, those of non-Christian faiths supported Obama by 72-27.  To add to conservatives’ woes, their strongest group, white evangelical protestants (78-21 Romney) actually declined by 2 percentage points in the 2007-2012 time period.

h/t:  Ruy Teixeira at Think Progress Election

Evangelical megapastor, author, and television writer Rob Bell publicly expressed support for marriage equality Sunday, mincing few words as he offered a scathing critique of American evangelicalism.

Speaking before an assembled crowd at Grace Cathedral, an Episcopal church in San Francisco, Bell, an avowed evangelical who has been called the “heir to Billy Graham,” responded to a question about his personal views on same-sex marriage with a firm endorsement of the right to marry.

BELL: I am for marriage. I am for fidelity. I am for love, whether it’s a man and woman, a woman and a woman, a man and a man. I think the ship has sailed and I think the church needs — I think this is the world we are living in and we need to affirm people wherever they are.

Bell, who was promoting his new book What We Talk About When We Talk About God, also expressed frustration with conservative strains of American evangelicalism, saying their theologies “don’t actually shape people into more loving, compassionate people”:

BELL: I think we are witnessing the death of a particular subculture that doesn’t work. I think there is a very narrow, politically intertwined, culturally ghettoized, Evangelical subculture that was told ‘we’re gonna change the thing’ and they haven’t. And they actually have turned away lots of people… We have supported policies and ways of viewing the world that are actually destructive.And we’ve done it in the name of God and we need to repent.”

This is the first time Bell has offered public endorsement for the right to marry, a significant shift that will likely make waves given his prominence among (the more moderate/liberal) evangelicals.

We need more evangelicals like Rob Bell, and less like the Religious Right/NAR/7MD/Prosperity Gospel types that dominate the TVs and radios. He’s one that I like.

h/t: Jack Jenkins at Think Progress LGBT

Adding to his ever-growing list of fears, conservative commentator Erik Rush suspects that President Obama will work with the American Psychiatric Association to classify Christianity as a mental illness in order to take away their rights and detain them indefinitely. Rush, who ironically encouraged a possible Romney administration to begin prosecuting and disenfranchising liberals, writes that the health care reform law will be the mechanism that will enable Obama to begin targeting Christians for persecution.

Some of Rush’s insane rant in the far-right Canada Free Press site that he posted on:

Now, while the APA is the premier psychiatric association in America, driving what passes for all conventional wisdom with regard to mental illness, in recent years it has been accused of being more agenda-driven than representing hard, scientific and medical assessments of mental disorders. Decidedly liberal-leaning, in recent decades it has essentially redefined such things as homosexuality, gender identification disorder, and pedophilia to reflect what pressure groups and the liberal intelligentsia wish, rather than continuing to describe them as psychologically aberrant.

One begins to see how having such a biased organization whimsically defining and re-defining mental illness in light of recent political developments might be, shall we say, troublesome to say the very least.

For example: It has been established that the oxymoronical Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) signed into law in 2010 is anything but affordable. Worse, its detractors rightly indicated that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s admonition that it must be passed so that we could see what was in it was dangerous as well as idiotic. Well, the poison pills therein are already being revealed in the form of hidden regulations that either incur cost, or impinge upon constitutional protections.

…

Along with his disdain for European society and what Obama perceives as the vestiges of imperialism, colonialism, and white supremacy (which includes America), he also despises that which gave rise to it, which serves as its cultural adhesive, and which stands as the chief impediment to a Marxist America: Christianity.

In the case of those who pose the most dire threat to Obama’s designs – Christians – these will certainly be targeted. After all, who more demonstrably epitomizes mental instability in the eyes of the Marxist atheist than those who commune with and rely upon that which is unseen? To the Marxist, God is no more real than Elwood’s “Harvey,” and even more antiquated than the Constitution.

Hey - did you hear they carted Mr. Rush off in a straitjacket last night? I had no idea he was mentally ill! Well, better that than he shoots up a school or something…

h/t: Brian Tashman at RWW

One thing I kind of love, as a lover of dramatic irony going down in real life, is contrasting the inevitable elders squawking “kids these days” with the actual realities of how irritatingly great kids these days often are. Like 19-year-old Zack Kopplin, who is making news going on the rampage against voucher schools that are basically being established with an eye towards using public funding for religious instruction. He has an editorial up at Melissa Harris-Perry’s blogabout how serious the problem is of voucher schools replacing science education with creationist religious beliefs.

Here are a few highlights from creationist voucher schools I have identified:

• The Beverly Institute in Jacksonville, Florida, teaches “Evidence of a Flood,” and “Evidence against Evolution,” and ”The Evolution of Man: A Mistaken Belief.”
• Creekside Christian Academy in McDonough, Georgia says,“The universe, a direct creation of God, refutes the man-made idea of evolution. Students will be called upon to see the divine order of creation and its implications on other subject areas.
• Life Christian Academy in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma says their life science class will “lead the student to recognize that God created all living things and that these living things are fearfully and wonderfully made.”  Evolution is taught only in history class, where students “evaluate the theory of evolution and its flaws.”  The school uses the creationist Bob Jones and CSI curriculums.
• The principal of the Claiborne Christian School, in West Monroe, Louisiana, says in a school newsletter, “Our position at CCS on the age of the Earth and other issues is that any theory that goes against God’s Word is in error.” She also claims that scientists are “sinful men” trying to explain the world “without God” so they don’t have to be “morally accountable to Him.”
• Trinity Academy, in Gary, uses the creationist ABeka curriculum and says it “presents the universe as the direct creation of God and refutes the man-made idea of evolution.”
• Rocky Bayou Christian School, in Niceville, Florida, says in its section on educational philosophy, “God mandates that children be discipled for Christ. They must be trained in the biblical world view which honors Jehovah, the sovereign Creator of the universe. It recognizes that man was created in the image of God” and says “Man is presumed to be an evolutionary being shaped by matter, energy, and chance… God commands His people not to teach their children the way of the heathen.”
• Wisconsin Lutheran High School, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, says in its biology syllabus that it teaches, “evolutionists are ‘stuck’ because they have no god, therefore they must believe in evolution” and “young earth evidence a disaster to evolutionists.”

What always interests me about defenders of creationism is how they clearly don’t think of children as people in their own right, but instead property that you use to enact your ideological obsessions. Teaching kids creationism is bad for them. In fact, Kopplin’s campaign is primarily built around the argument that if all children have a right to a publicly funded education, we are failing to honor their rights by giving them a bunch of Christian nonsense instead of a proper science education. Replacing biology with creationism is likely to cut off many otherwise bright students from a career in science, and can limit the colleges they go to.

On this blog, a lot of time is spent investigating patriarchal attitudes about women’s roles, and how in a patriarchy women are expected to be a servant class to cater to men and not people in their own right. In this system, children face a similar kind of oppression. As women are believed to be the servants of men, children are believed to be extensions of the father, and to display utter fealty to his way of thinking so he can demonstrate his power to other men. 

That’s why conservatives are so dogged in trying to find ways to get into the schools and replace biology with creationism. It’s a symbolic battle for them. Winning it is achieving a symbolic demonstration of their belief that the father’s right to brainwash his child trumps the child’s right to an education.

Yes, I know that a lot of fathers don’t want their kids to learn biology, and that should, in theory, conflict with the Father Owns Your Ass mentality that drives this. But it’s not like we’re dealing with logical people here, first of all. And second of all, because of this, anyone who prefers biology is quietly set aside as undeserving of the role of the patriarch, and thus someone whose desires for his children doesn’t count. Thus is the way of wingnuts.

h/t: Amanda Marcotte at The Raw Story

The Presidential Inaugural Committee has selected the Rev. Luis León, an Episcopal priest in Washington, to deliver the benediction at President Barack Obama’s inauguration ceremony on Jan. 21, replacing the Rev. Louie Giglio, the Atlanta pastor who bowed out after controversy erupted over an anti-gay sermon he gave in the mid-1990s.

León, who ministers at St. John’s Church, an Episcopal parish near the White House and the one that Obama most frequently attends with his family, confirmed his selection to The Huffington Post via phone on Tuesday night.

“I’ll be doing it,” said León, who declined to elaborate until the news was officially announced. A source close to the Presidential Inaugural Committee, speaking on background because the news had not been announced, confirmed the selection of León to The Huffington Post. The source said the official announcement would be made in coming days. The selection was first reported by CNN.

The choice is a contrast to Giglio, a conservative evangelical who was until last week best known for his work combating human trafficking. That work was eclipsed when reports and audio emerged of a Giglio sermon in which he spoke out against the “aggressive agenda” of the gay community and said gay people could change their sexual orientation “through the healing power of Jesus.”

León’s own parish is known for welcoming openly gay members. The church, which has openly gay, non-celibate priests and has had a gay bishop, announced this summer that it would bless same-sex partnerships and ordain transgender priests. This month, the Washington National Cathedral, an Episcopal church, announced that it would also begin same-sex marriage ceremonies.

Obama and his family have attended St. John’s many times during his first term. Former President George W. Bush, attended the church regularly as well. León gave the invocation at Bush’s 2005 Inaugural.

Giglio’s selection was announced last Tuesday, along with that of Myrlie Evers-Williams, the widow of civil rights activist Medgar Evers, who will deliver the invocation at the inauguration. Giglio’s controversial sermon was reported on Wednesday, and he announced his withdrawal on Thursday, saying his prayer would be “dwarfed by those seeking to make their agenda the focal point of the inauguration” and that speaking on gay issues “has not been in the range of my priorities in the past 15 years.”

León is the 14th rector of St. John’s Church. He began his tenure there in 1995, after serving as rector of Trinity Church in Wilmington, Del., and St. Paul’s Church in Paterson, N.J. He is known for building inner-city parishes through spiritual leadership, preaching, stewardship and outreach that involves parish members in the community. He teaches courses nationwide in parish building and stewardship and is a frequently requested commencement speaker.

León began his spiritual journey when he was baptized into the Episcopal Church in Guantánamo, Cuba. In 1961, when he was 12 years old, he came to the U.S. on the “Operation Peter Pan” flights out of Cuba, joining thousands of children whose parents feared for their future in Cuba. When he arrived in America he was supported by the Episcopal Church in Miami.

h/t: Huffington Post

In an email entitled “What will religion look like in the year 2060?”, the AFA warned about the coming onslaught against Christians, who currently make up over three-quarters of Americans. The group’s predictions include that Christians will be brutally discriminated against like blacks in the Civil Rights Era, government will take children from parents at birth, and any city with “Saint” or other loosely-religious name will be forced to change.

The full email:

What will religion look like in the year 2060?

Conservative Christians will be treated as second class citizens, much like African Americans were prior to civil rights legislation in the 1960s.

Family as we know it will be drastically changed with the state taking charge of the children beginning at birth.

Marriage will include two, three, four or any number of participants. Marriage will not be important, with individuals moving in and out of a “family” group at will.

Churchbuildings will be little used, with many sold to secular buyers and the money received going to the government.

Churches will not be allowed to discuss any political issues, even if it affects the church directly.

Tax credit given to churches and non-profit organizations will cease.

Christian broadcasting will be declared illegal based on the separation of church and state. The airwaves belong to the government, therefore they cannot be used for any religious purpose.

We will have, or have had, a Muslim president.

Cities with a name from the Bible such as St. Petersburg, Bethlehem, etc. will be forced to change their name due to separation of church and state.

Groups connected to any religious affiliation will be forced out of health care. Health centers get tax money from the state, making it a violation of church and state.

Get involved! Sign THE STATEMENT.

Sincerely,

Donald E. Wildmon

As absurd as they may be, these 2060 predictions may not even rank among the AFA’s most extreme ideas. The group’s spokesman has called for kidnapping the children of same-sex couples through a modern-day “Underground Railroad” system. When one man heeded this advice and aided a woman in kidnapping the daughter of a lesbian woman, the group advised him to flout American laws and flee the country. AFA also organizes against any individual or company that shows the slightest tolerance for LGBT people, including Office Depot, Urban Outfitters, Home Depot, JC Penney, and Google.

h/t: Scott Keyes at Think Progress

Social conservative heavyweight James Dobson dedicated his radio show this morning to discussing Friday’s shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, and like Mike Huckabee and Bryan Fischer, concluded the shooting was caused by Americans “turning our back on God.” Specifically, he believes there are consequences to women getting abortions and marriage equality:

DOBSON: Our country really does seem in complete disarray. I’m not talking politically, I’m not talking about the result of the November sixth election;  I am saying that something has gone wrong in America and that we have turned our back on God.

I mean millions of people have decided that God doesn’t exist, or he’s irrelevant to me and we have killed fifty-four million babies and the institution of marriage is right on the verge of a complete redefinition.  Believe me, that is going to have consequences too.

And a lot of these things are happening around us, and somebody is going to get mad at me for saying what I am about to say right now, but I am going to give you my honest opinion: I think we have turned our back on the Scripture and on God Almighty and I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us.  I think that’s what’s going on.

 As Hemant Mehta has pointed out, religious venues are no safer from such tragedies, so the exception Huckabee, Fischer, Dobson, and others anoint for themselves is a mere fabrication of superiority.

James Dobson, shut the fucking hell up!

H/T: Zack Ford at Think Progress LGBT

Tim Scott, who is set to replace Jim DeMint in the Senate, got his start in politics when he was elected in 1996 to the Charleston County Council. One year later, according to his 2010 campaign website, “he placed a plaque of the Ten Commandments outside council offices to show his support for the Ten Commandments as a guide for conduct, especially within the county chambers.”

The city was promptly sued for this blatant violation of the First Amendment. By 1998, Scott’s colleagues had decided to remove his display and settle the lawsuit. When challenged on why he was wasting taxpayer dollars, Scott replied that “whatever it costs in the pursuit of this goal is worth it.”

Scott’s unconstitutional grandstanding as a county councilmember made him a favorite of the Christian right in South Carolina and put him on the track that he’s followed ever since. Scott returned to his roots while addressing a Tea Party rally in January, hosted by Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition, ahead of a GOP primary debate.

Scott claimed that the “greatest minority under assault today are Christians.” “No doubt about it,” he emphasized. (Note that Scott says 1995 in the video, but he misspoke – he was elected in 1996 and posted the display in 1997.)

Tim Scott actually believes what he said about Christians being a minority under assault. Never mind that Christians aren’t a minority. Never mind that Christians control every branch of government at every level. Never mind that Christians aren’t under assault in any conceivable way.

Still, Scott feels that Christians are a minority under assault because Christians like him are being prevented by the Constitution and other Americans – Christian and non-Christian alike – from forcing everyone to live in accordance with their extreme views and beliefs. It’s a bit like the Taliban claiming that the Afghan government is attacking Islam.

h/t: People For The American Way

In the autumn of 1978 the Washington Association of Churches and the Washington State Catholic Conference jointly published a six-page pamphlet they called “Abortion: An Ecumenical Study Document.” Their work offers a fascinating snapshot of Christian thinking at the time and raises some equally fascinating questions about what, exactly, has happened in the last 35 years.

The pamphlet does not contain a position statement. Quite the opposite, in fact. From the beginning, the authors explain that such an agreement is impossible: ”Clearly there is no Christian position on abortion, for here real values conflict with each other, and Christian persons who seek honestly to be open to God’s call still find themselves disagreeing profoundly.”

At the time, five years had passed since the Rove v. Wade decision, and the Church, broadly, was wrestling with ethical and spiritual complexities the decision brought to the surface. WAC, which existed “to express and strengthen the unity Christians have in Jesus Christ” had asked member denominations to create a study group because strong feelings on the question of abortion were threating that mission. In the absence of an agreement, the study group articulated a set of shared values and then assembled statements on abortion from member denominations.

Some of the contents would come as little surprise to anyone aware of today’s struggles over abortion ethics and rights. For example, the Catholic Church pronounced that even when pregnancy threatens a mother’s life, abortion “increases the overall tragedy.” Catholicism has wavered over the centuries about when a fetus becomes a person with a soul, but the hierarchy has been consistent in its opposition to abortion after ensoulment, which is now proclaimed to happen at conception. Furthermore, the Catholic hierarchy has long sought to enforce its ethical judgments via civic and criminal codes, and 1978 was no exception: “A legal context in which abortion is presented as a legitimate way of resolving tragic situations creates an atmosphere that reduces respect for the value of life. Ultimately, such an atmosphere dehumanizes the lives of all who live in it.”

What might be surprising is how little the other denominations represented in the 1978 study group agreed with them. Consider the following statements:

Because Christ calls us to affirm the freedom of persons and the sanctity of life, we recognize that abortion should be a matter of personal decision. —American Baptist Churches

The ALC recognizes the freedom and responsibility of individuals to make their own choices in light of the best information available to them and their understanding of God’s will for their lives, whether those choices be in regard to family planning or any other life situations. —American Lutheran Church

The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) believes that the mother has an overwhelming stake in her own pregnancy, and to be forced to give birth to a child against her will is a peculiarly personal violation of her freedom … . The fetus is seen as a potential person, but not fully a person in the same developed sense in which the mother is a person with an ability to think, to feel, to make decisions, and choices concerning her own life… . That prior right however, carries with it a tremendous responsibility, for human life, even potential human life is valued. —Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

Abortion should be accepted as an option only where all other possible alternatives will lead to greater destruction of human life and spirit… . We support persons who, after prayer and counseling, believe abortion is the least destructive alternative available to them, that they may make their decision openly, honestly, without the suffering imposed by an uncompromising community. —Church of the Brethren

Christians have a responsibility to limit the size of their families and to practice responsible birth control… . .where there is substantial reason to believe that the child would be deformed in mind or body, or where the pregnancy has resulted from rape or incest … termination of pregnancy is permissible. —Episcopal Church

 The status of the fetus is the key issue. That status is affected by consideration of the fact that it is the organic beginning of human life. Further, its status is defined by its stage of development, its state of well-being, and its prospects for a meaningful life after its birth.
—Lutheran Church in America

Human life develops on a continuum from conception to birth. At some point it may be regarded as more “personal” and higher in “quality.” At some undesignated time, the value of this life may actually outweigh competing factors; e.g., the vocational and social objectives of the family, etc. —United Church of Christ

Our belief in the sanctity of unborn human life makes us reluctant to approve abortion. But we are equally bound to respect the sacredness of the life and well-being of the mother, for whom devastating damage may result from an unacceptable pregnancy. In continuity with past Christian teaching, we recognize tragic conflicts of life with life that may justify abortion. —United Methodist Church

The artificial or induced termination of pregnancy is a matter of the careful ethical decision of the patient, her physician, and her pastor or other counselor and therefore should not be restricted by law … —United Presbyterian Church

Today when we think of Christianity and abortion what comes to mind may be clinic picket lines; or “personhood” zealots who insist that microscopic fertilized eggs merit the same hard-won civil rights as walking, talking, thinking, breathing men and women and children; or even the fanatics who have now murdered eight doctors in the name of life.

The picture of Christianity revealed in the 1978 study document is very different. Mind you, across the board we do see an ancient religious tradition that treats life as sacred and human life as the pinnacle of creation. Outside of Christianity, these are not points of universal agreement. A secularist might treat the loss of early embryonic life with pragmatic acceptance—more than half of fertilized eggs self-abort; human reproduction is a funnel designed so that lots of false starts produce a few healthy adult offspring.

The Protestant denominations involved in the ecumenical study group were mainline traditions that today are considered theologically liberal. Most continue to affirm quietly that abortion decisions are best trusted to a woman and her understanding of God, with spiritual council and community support. It may be more surprising to many people that at the time many biblical literalists similarly saw abortion as a matter of individual decision. Jonathan Dudley, CNN commentator and author of Broken Words: The Abuse of Science and Faith in American Politics, lays it out:

In 1968, Christianity Today published a special issue on contraception and abortion, encapsulating the consensus among evangelical thinkers at the time. In the leading article, professor Bruce Waltke, of the famously conservative Dallas Theological Seminary, explained the Bible plainly teaches that life begins at birth:

“God does not regard the fetus as a soul, no matter how far gestation has progressed. The Law plainly exacts: ‘If a man kills any human life he will be put to death’ (Lev. 24:17). But according to Exodus 21:22–24, the destruction of the fetus is not a capital offense… Clearly, then, in contrast to the mother, the fetus is not reckoned as a soul.”

The magazine Christian Life agreed, insisting, “The Bible definitely pinpoints a difference in the value of a fetus and an adult.” And the Southern Baptist Convention passed a 1971 resolution affirming abortion should be legal not only to protect the life of the mother, but to protect her emotional health as well.

The WAC members sought to discern God’s will through a combination of scripture, tradition, reason and experience, but evangelical Christians claim to speak from the authority of the Bible alone, a Reformation principle known as “sola scriptura.” Consequently, one striking feature of their shift on abortion is that biblical authority now must be invoked to support an anti-abortion stance. 

Culture warriors who think they speak for God—the new God, the one who hates abortion in any form at any point in gestation for any reason—are hoping that young American Christians won’t go to the trouble. That is why, even as they keep the focus visual, they carefully avoid images of early abortions, in which the actual tissue removed may look downright boring. They avoid indicating size, since at six weeks, the gestational sac is about the size of a dime. They also avoid images of fetal anomalies, which could remind viewers that occasionally a fetus has no viable path to becoming a person and might even raise questions about whether God guides pregnancy more than any other natural process. 

To date this strategy has worked, but technology may be changing the conversation once again. As the evangelical consensus against abortion has grown, the procedure itself has become a shrinking target. 

h/t: Valerie Tarico at AlterNet