Christians on the religious right have an opportunity with the upcoming Obama administration, but I doubt seriously evangelicals will take advantage of the chance they have been given.
I’ve already let my opinion on Legislating Morality be known, so I won’t rehash it now. The time has come for Christians to shift from talk and reliance on governance to take action and really make an impact on sin.
Our hope is not with the Republican Party, nor is it with the Democrats. But we have an opportunity with Barack Obama, a professed Christian whether you believe in his views or not, and a Democrat-controlled congress.
Opportunity to Reduce Abortions
While the Pro Life movement has focused on trying to reverse Roe v. Wade and enacting laws which push the limits of the High Court’s decision, many Pro Choice people have repeatedly emphasized a desire to reduce the number of abortions. Two of those persons would be Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
But the Religious Right does not take any statement on reducing abortions seriously unless it is accompanied by effort to make abortion illegal. There is extreme mistrust whenever a pro choice person says they don’t like abortion but believe it should be a woman’s right to choose.
It is time to call them on it. But doing so requires setting aside the primary focus of the Pro Life movement to repeal Roe v. Wade and replacing it with assisting women in unwanted, unplanned pregnancies. I personally believe President-elect Obama and Mrs. Clinton when they say they do not like abortion but believe it should not be made illegal. If they are lying to try to lessen the impact of their pro choice position, we will find out if we try to team up with those who are pro choice and try to help women deal with their unwanted pregnancies in other ways.
One of the more liberal shows on network television, Boston Legal, recently had an episode nearly entirely about abortion. The power of the episode was in the lack of propaganda. It told a story which brilliantly displayed the complexity of the issue. A young teenage girl sought a court order to allow her to get an abortion. One of the liberal attorneys, Shirley Schmidt, did not want to represent her because she had an abortion when she was young.
When Shirley spoke of how it haunted her and stayed with her forever, you could not help but to feel her pain. Shirley is pro choice, but she did not want to interfere with the mother’s desire to refuse an abortion, because she believed there was no way a teen could fully understand the ramifications of having an abortion. And she strongly suggested that although she thought abortion should be legal, no woman, under normal circumstances, should choose to have an abortion for the horror will stay with her for her entire life.
There are many, MANY pro choice people (if not even a majority) who would work side by side with pro life Christians to help pregnant women who may desire to choose an abortion.
Will it be easy? NO! Of course the pro lifers will want to keep abortion completely off of the table and the pro choice persons would not. There would have to be compromise in both camps for a partnership to work. The issues are numerous, but the benefits are tremendous: fewer abortions.
Maybe even fewer pregnancies.
At some point, focusing on overturning a court decision for 35 years rather than engaging the issue at ground zero brings responsibility for abortions on those who are so opposed.
I really believe that. If the pro life movement had even split the efforts evenly between the legal solution and building a support network for women, the number of abortions which have taken place over the last few decades would be dramatically less in number.
When a group in Colorado Springs consulted a film production company for continuing their advertising and expanding into tv ads, they were convinced to steer from the “abortion is murder” mantra and move towards helping women. What happened? The number of abortions went down. I forget the exact numbers my friend told me, but my understanding is the number of abortions were more than cut in half.
Not just abortions
The opportunity with Obama goes far beyond the issue of abortion. He claims (and I, again, believe him) he wants to work with the 47% who did not vote for him. If evangelicals take the high road and team up on other issues, Christians will have the chance to shape the policy and programs enacted by the Obama administration.
That doesn’t mean they will look like conservative Republican plans, but the finger of Christ can be involved in deep ways as Christians humble themselves and shift from fighting for a legal system which exacts their morality to exemplifying the care for the oppressed, the fight against injustice, and the love for all people modeled by Jesus Christ.
This post is already longer than I planned. The opportunities are vast for the Church to shift from political agenda to getting their hands and feet dirty with the downtrodden, the castaways, the broken. The current political and cultural climate has yielded us a chance to get back to being Christ to the world. Will we take it?
I think I agree with everything you said here, although I don’t believe that many in the pro-choice movement are serious about reducing the numbers of abortions (exception: condoms). The same could be said about some in the pro-life movement, but their are at least two pro-life groups in Ft Wayne that help women at risk for abortion. What really makes me sick is how abortion services are sometimes advertised. In Fort Wayne planned parenthood has a billboard that makes abortion look like the fun choice that comes with no regrets or consequences. They were actually promoting their services and trying to drum up business. The leadership of the pro-choice movement seems to not only want abortion to be safe and legal, but also cheap, easy, publicly funded and without guilt.
Mark Grorud
February 8th, 2009