Brian D McLaren has second thoughts about what the pro-life movement is doing to our country, our faith, and your own soul.
He read Randall Balmer’s Thy Kingdom Come (Basic Books, 2006). (The central thesis of Balmer’s book is summarized in this Politico article, “The Real Origins of the Religious Right”: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133.)
It helped him understand the movement’s backstory. Balmer and Kruse (Kevin Kruse’s book One Nation Under God (Basic Books, 2015)) helped him see that hidden beneath the surface, two of America’s most deeply-embedded motivations — racism and greed — had joined forces to use the pro-life movement as a cover for their own agenda, which wasn’t pro-life: it was extreme right-wing and white nationalist. When he saw this,...He reached this conclusion that a group of political, economic, and religious powerhouses have combined efforts to use the unborn to win over sincere Christians (and others) to support their multifaceted agenda, first incidentally, and then intentionally. With unlimited lobbying and marketing power at their disposal, they attracted people to the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, but gradually required them to support everything hidden beneath the surface.He writes that when you vote Republican, you vote for all of the following:
Make abortion illegal through criminalization.
Assure that contraception not be covered by health insurance.
Separate families at the border, put children in cages apart from their parents, and instill the fear that family members may simply be “disappeared” by the U.S. government when they cross the border.
Increase access to guns of all kinds and do nothing about mass shootings, adopting the NRA’s policy of “the more guns, and the more destructive guns, the better.”
Deny people with pre-existing conditions access to affordable health care, and maintain quality health care as a privilege for the rich.
Deny climate change, oppose renewable energy, and support fossil fuels, gas guzzling cars, and the de-protection of public wilderness and indigenous lands through a “drill, baby, drill” philosophy.
Be unconcerned about facts unless they back up your political agenda, and create “alternative facts” whenever necessary.
Make it harder for minorities to vote by alarming white people about voter fraud, an infinitesimal problem which Republicans exaggerate, while simultaneously supporting voter suppression.
Oppose equal rights for LGBTQ citizens, and protect the right of straight religious people to discriminate as desired against LGBTQ citizens.
Provide advantages for Christians and Jews, and disadvantages for Muslims and other religious minorities.
Promise to reduce the national debt while actually increasing it through massive tax breaks for the super-rich, and through massive military spending and military intervention.
Reduce social services needed by the poorest among us, including public transportation, public health services, childcare support, parental leave, etc., putting poor and vulnerable people in ever-greater risk, so tax breaks may be given to the rich.
Oppose sex education in schools.
Support the death penalty.
Support militarization and a new nuclear weapons race.
Minimize the value of higher education, keep it as expensive as necessary so that only the privileged can access it easily, and do as little as possible about student loan debt.
Support mass incarceration, the “war on drugs,” privatization of prisons, and other policies that discriminate against people of color.
Increase corporate profits for the rich by weakening labor unions, putting workers in a position of increasing insecurity.
Reduce public protections from mega-corporate misconduct, especially environmental protections, disproportionately hurting the poor and people of color as well as the planet.
Provide huge tax breaks for the richest of the rich, claiming that their increased wealth will “trickle down,” even though it doesn’t.
Shift funding from public schools to private schools, especially conservative Christian ones, again hurting poor and minority families the most.
Underpay teachers, first responders, health care workers, and childcare workers, and oppose all efforts to address the minimum wage.
Refuse to address systemic racism, or even admit it exists, and be more concerned about Colin Kaepernick kneeling as an act of peaceful protest during the national anthem than a police officer kneeling on a black man’s neck or shooting a black man in the back seven times.
Assist Israel in dispossessing Palestinians, and discount the civil and human rights of Palestinians, calling any critique of the nation of Israel an act of anti-Semitism.
Create widespread fear of immigrants, especially Mexican and Muslim immigrants, and actively or tacitly support acts of racist hate against minorities.
Stop accepting refugees.
See federal government (except the military) as the problem, and reduce government to a size where it can do little beyond fighting wars, leaving us vulnerable to pandemics, foreign interference in our democracy, and other dangers.1
Randall Balmer writes that abortion opposition as the origin of the religious right is a myth that quickly collapses under historical scrutiny.
In fact, it wasn’t until 1979—a full six years after Roe—that evangelical leaders, at the behest of conservative activist Paul Weyrich, seized on abortion not for moral reasons, but as a rallying-cry to deny President Jimmy Carter a second term. Why? Because the anti-abortion crusade was more palatable than the religious right’s real motive: protecting segregated schools. So much for the new abolitionism.2An NPR Interview with Kevin Kruse on "How 'One Nation' Didn't Become 'Under God' Until The '50s Religious Revival reviews the history of ‘one nation under God’.
As this new religious revival is sweeping the country and taking on new political tones, the phrase 'one nation under God' seizes the national imagination," Kruse tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "It starts with a proposal by the Knights of Columbus, the Catholic lay organization, to add the phrase 'under God' to the Pledge of Allegiance. Their initial campaign doesn't go anywhere but once Eisenhower's own pastor endorses it ... it catches fire." Kruse's book investigates how the idea of America as a Christian nation was promoted in the 1930s and '40s when industrialists and business lobbies, chafing against the government regulations of the New Deal, recruited and funded conservative clergy to preach faith, freedom and free enterprise. He says this conflation of Christianity and capitalism moved to center stage in the '50s under Eisenhower's watch.3Patrick Carolan and Brian McLaren share the opinion that it is time to change the abortion debate in America. The abortion debate, as currently framed, has raised huge sums of money for non-profits and political organizations, especially those on the right. It has also provided leaders of both parties with a simple issue around which to mobilize voters: for Republicans, the rights of the unborn, and for Democrats, the rights of women.
We must acknowledge that there aren't only two positions on abortion. It would be more accurate to say there are five, with purists on either end of the spectrum, and in the middle, three groups that account for the majority of us, those who are against abortion but do not want to criminalize it, those who support abortion rights but who would like to see abortion rates reduced, and those in between who see wisdom (and problems) on both sides. If we get beyond the old two-sides framing, we can drop the old pro-life versus pro-choice binary entirely. The fact is that life and choice are not mutually exclusive, and in a democracy, we can hold our own moral convictions about life and choice, rooted in our religious traditions, without feeling that others should be forced to live by them. … Again, I know that virtually all of you, my white Christian pro-life friends, are completely sincere in your desire to see human life treated as sacred and abortion rates reduced. And I am not asking you to change that desire! I only wish you would consider the possibility that your moral sincerity is being politically manipulated, leading to unintended and highly dangerous consequences.4María Teresa (MT) Dávila, associate professor of Practice, Religious and Theological Studies at Merrimack College, North Andover, Massachusetts, comments that hyper focus on the abortion issue obscures the call of common good and paired with the political manipulation of the issue, draws a false line in the sand and creates a litmus test for the role of people of faith in the public square that obscures the multiple ways in which we participate in a culture of death. She shares recent church teachings to raise up a number of examples.
Church teachings, including Pope Francis' third encyclical “Fratelli tutti”, emphasize the duty of all people of good will to be agents of action to promote the common good. The Catholic concept of a consistent ethic of life challenges us to answer the question of the Parable of the Good Samaritan about who is my neighbour? Christians are to be known by their love. We need to answer the supplemental question about who does Jesus call us to love? Ourselves? Others?
The rejection and exclusion of persons with disability and the elderly (Fratteli Tutti, 19).
The racial marginalization and racist violence toward African Americans, Latinos and Latinas, Asian Americans (especially since the start of the pandemic) and Native Americans (Open Wide Our Hearts).
Environmental destruction, misuse of natural resources and climate change denial (Laudato Si', especially 6, 14, 66-69).
The rejection and mistreatment of migrants and refugees at the border and globally (Fratteli Tutti, 37-41).
Gender violence, domestic violence and gender inequality, which place many women in crisis situations, especially when becoming pregnant (Amoris Laetitia, 54).6
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