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Religion and Congress
A new study from the Pew Research Center Forum on Religion & Public Life reveals that the last election “had little effect on the religious composition of Congress,” even though “[m]any analysts described the November 2010 midterm elections as a sea change.” Should this be disappointing news for conservative Christians?
Shortly before I became a Christian in the mid-1980s, I was attending a Presbyterian church in Pittsburgh when I heard the term “pro-choice” for the first time. The PC(USA) pastor, a friend of mine, was advocating this peculiar viewpoint from the pulpit. Not familiar with the abortion debate at the time, my friend’s Christian logic struck me as odd. It was my awakening to liberal Christianity. I voted with my feet and left the church shortly thereafter.
Last November, Americans voted to jettison the liberal views of the 111th Congress in favor of a more conservative 112th edition. Or did we? The 111th and 112th are nearly identical in religious makeup according to the Pew study. How does this portend for social issues like abortion?
Good, actually.
“[T]his will undoubtedly be the most pro-life House since the Roe v. Wade decision,” said Richard Land of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Center. Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony List noted that 52 congressional seats, or 12 percent of Congress, have “strengthened” toward the pro-life position. But Paul Kengor, the director of The Center for Vision and Values at Grove City College, points out that Congress is now even more polarized on the life issue.
What changed? Worldview, of course.
In his classic work, Ideas Have Consequence, Richard Weaver wrote, “Those who have not discovered that world view is the most important thing about a man, as about the men composing a culture, should consider the train of circumstances which have with perfect logic proceeded from this.” Like millions of unborn babies killed with the assent of the liberal church.
Just as I rejected my friend’s preaching and worldview, Americans woke up to the importance of worldview and the liberal Democrats’ platform last year. Although the religious composition of the 111th and 112th Congresses may be nearly identical, there has been a sea change in religious worldview. That’s good news.
back to top18 Comments to “Religion and Congress”
Lee no offense, but your head is in the clouds. The election had nothing to do with abortion, and it takes deliberately ignoring the high unemployment rate to fabricate this moral “sea change” you’re dreaming of. Also, your leadership doesn’t care about abortion, and the GOP congress will give it only as much attention as your least influential members will insist upon. The issue is frankly no where on your parties list of priorities. Unless you believe the anti-abortion lies about the healthcare law and associate the GOP’s efforts to stand up for insurance company’s rights to deny coverage to CHILDREN with pre-existing conditions or claim that preme-babies have exhausted their life time limits with a pro-life agenda…you won’t see much about abortion on the House’s docket.
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“Just as I rejected my friend’s preaching and worldview, Americans woke up to the importance of worldview and the liberal Democrats’ platform last year.”
This remains to be seen. How much of the change was due to American’s fiscal concerns coupled with the fact that fiscal conservatives tends to also be pro-life? And how big of a change was it, really? 52 seats becoming “more pro-life” (but not necessarily “all the way pro-life”) out of 435 total seats? Is that a wholesale rejection of the pro-choice platform, or only a minor shift in the pro-life direction? How many seats (if any) became “more pro-choice”?
If Democrats regain House control in the next couple years will that mean that Americans “went back to sleep” regarding the importance of worldview and the liberal Democrats’ platform? Does it really count as having “woken up” when one nearly immediately goes back to sleep?
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I proffer the following comments.
First, the words “pro-life” and “pro-choice” are pretty fluid, and most politicians are wary of being pinned down on this issue. Of those who would call themselves “pro-life”, about half do not favor criminalization of abortion. Based on his earlier pieces, I would suspect that Wishing would refer to these folks as being “pro-choice”. So the reported data don’t say much.
Second, I’m not sure what this has to do with liberal Christianity. If my recollection is correct, Wishing is a member of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC). The OPC does not condemn certain views that Wishing would probably characterize as “pro-choice”, although those views may be a minority within the denomination. Such an acceptable “pro-choice” position is ably articulated in Dr. Woolley’s minority report of the Committee to Study Abortion. Thus, Wishing’s own denomination, which is generally thought to be quite conservative, allows a reasonable degree of Christian liberty on the question of abortion. So, it seems improper for Wishing to suggest that his personal convictions on this issue are somehow concomitant with the outer bounds of Presbyterian orthodoxy. For the sake of the church’s peace and purity, its officers should respect those who hold to Dr. Woolley’s view, and should not seek to bully them to change their opinion out of fear of being deemed unorthodox.
Third, why does it matter if Congress is more pro-life? If the Commerce Clause is as restrictive as Tea Partiers and many Republicans suggest that it is, then I see no Constitutional basis for passing federal legislation to restrict abortion. Congress can withhold funding in certain narrow circumstances (e.g., Hyde Amendment), but that’s it. It would seem hypocritical if conservatives suggested that the Commerce Clause grants Congress narrow authority on economic matters but that it grants broad authority on social matters.
Fourth, Weaver and Kuyper don’t employ the term “worldview” in the same way at all. So, it seems a bit inapposite to turn to Weaver in support of Kuyper’s Kantian reformulation of Reformed theology, of which Wishing is apparently an advocate. DG Hart and David VanDrunen (both good OPC men) provide helpful critiques of Kuyper’s Christian worldviewism. Wishing would do well to consult their work before suggesting implicitly that Christian worldviewism is somehow a test of Christian orthdoxy.
Peace.
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The commerce clause is not necessary to criminalize abortion. It already falls under premeditated manslaughter. All that is needed is a government willing to treat it for what it is.
Abortion is not a social matter, is a criminal matter. Denying someone else’s rights, in this case the right to life, is what defines our criminal system, as the government’s primary role is preventing, investigating, and prosecuting those who abuse their freedom to restrict the freedom of another.
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Woolley’s minority report available here.
Is this superceded, though, by the Statement on Abortion adopted at the 39th general assembly? That one seems fairly unambiguous about personhood beginning at conception and voluntary abortion (except to save the life of the mother) being murder.
Worth noting, though, that despite his contrary views on abortion (assuming he didn’t subsequently recant them), Woolley remained in good standing with the OPC until his death in 1984.
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#3: What would you say are the circumstances under which the federal courts should have jurisdiction in a murder case instead of the courts of the state in which the offense was committed?
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Rom,
Even if one assumes arguendo that abortion is “premeditated manslaughter”, how would that fact alone confer authority to Congress to be able to enact laws restricting abortion?
Federal criminal laws, after all, still need to find a source of authority within the Constitution. Commerce Clause, Spending Clause, etc. There’s no Premeditated Manslaughter Clause.
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Buddy,
I have several friends who are OPC elders and who share Dr. Woolley’s view on abortion. I’m not aware of any issues.
It should also be noted that Dr. Woolley remained in the OPC. The author of the majority report, later jettisoned the OPC for D. James Kennedy’s PCA. I’d guess that Frame’s strident social conservatism was a better fit within Kennedy’s denomination.
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I should have specified what I meant by “government” in comment 3. I meant that abortion should be prosecuted under as manslaughter under the state governments, as they are the ones who judge these cases. Again apologies for not being clear. No state would need to appeal to the commerce clause to do so.
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Oh goody! Thousands of female victims of rape and incest, and thousands of others whose lives and health are threatened by pregnancy will be prohibited from protecting themselves. And, of course, hundreds of thousands who are pregnant and know they can’t afford to, or are not competent to become parents are going to bring unwanted children, very likely to become burdens on the state into the world.
All because, for solely political reasons, the SBC changed its mind about its particular god’s will.
Hey, hey all you good Christians out there, how many women are you going to kill today? How many orphans are you going to create and how many women are you going to force to bear their rapist’s child?
Shame on you!
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Abortion was barely even an issue in the recent election. It was almost all about the economy and the debate over the proper role of government. Why does Lee Wishing now think the outcome might tell us anything about the current Congress’s view of abortion one way or the other?
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“Abortion was barely even an issue in the recent election.”
Conan was obviously not paying attention to the Stupak ammendment controversy and its impact on support for the health care bill.
The proper role of government further separates into the constitutionally defined roles of the executive. legislative. and judicial branches and the increasing usurpation of power not expressly delegated to those branches. Congress passing laws using an overstretched commerce clause as a fig leaf, unelected executive bureaucrats resorting to their own regulations rather than legislation enacted by elected representatives of the people, courts deciding political questions by resorting to penumbras and adumbrations when no support can be discerned in the actual text of the Constitution, all of these relate to the continuing controversy about “abortion rights.” The general world view, the basic premises, presuppositions, and categorical imperatives that guide moral reasoning are critical to discerning moral actions. The mere belief that they are on the side of helping people, absent any proof of effectiveness, is enough to convince progressives that any power exerted toward their ends is moral in and of itself.
Outbursts like Arcadia’s concatenation of canards aren’t so much symptoms of disordered thinking, as they are emblematic of a faulty world view.
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Ken,
Certain anti-abortion groups did run political ads relating to that issue, but the ads ran primarily in evangelical media outlets. While this may have had some small impact on the election, it probably didn’t have much. After all, the GOP primarily picked up votes from political moderates, who had favored the Democrats in 2006 and 2008. It would surprise me if more than a small fraction of moderates could even tell you about the so-called controversy over the Stupak amendment.
The overwhelming majority of moderates are pragmatists. The number of abortions in the US is so high that criminalization simply seems too impractical. Until we can convince unwed, poor, uneducated, urban women to stop using abortion as their primary form of birth control, I don’t expect public opinion to shift much. I grieve that that’s the case. But I fear that it’s the reality we face. Besides, even if the SCOTUS reversed itself on Roe/Casey (which is unlikely), few states would have much success passing meaningful restrictions on abortion. At some point, we have to stop posturing and start getting down to brass tacks.
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Ken: Please look up the words “almost” and “barely,” as used in my post. Abortion was an issue in the election — it always is in American politics — but this time around it was a minor one.
That’s what I’m saying — the main message of the Republican candidates was about taxes, jobs and government power. Abortion came up here and there, but it was not front and center.
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I find it interesting Arcadia that you find Christians for being backward for not wanting to punish the child for the sins of the father. I truly believe you simply want to be contrary to what Christianity stands for no matter whether it would fit your own ideology or not.
Some advice, I highly recommend reading the stories and interviews with women who were raped and then got abortions, as well as those who kept the kid.
Indeed shame on us Christians for not killing kids for what their fathers did, and for not killing kids because they were unwanted. So what if Jesus said the child should not bear punishment for the sins of the father or to care for the unwanted and orphaned children?
If you want to reduce the number of people who grow up to be burdens on the state, civil marriage will have to be treated like the original legal contract that it was, essentialy a contract legitimizing the children resulting from it in order for inheritance purposes as well as having someone to care for you in your later years. (sounds and frankly is very unromantic) That is pretty much what civil marriage was since ancient Greece. Only certain religions actually have the idea of loving your spouse and seeking romantic and sexual fulfillment from it. The reason why in the US religious and civil marriage were bonded into one was because the culture was quite Christian for quite some time and thus the two were seen as the same thing, which is why in the current era same-sex marriage proponents have some footing to stand on, because if marriage is simply a legally recognized union of two people who love each other, (which civil marriage never was nor is nor will be if you wish to continue the species without having the kids end up being burdens on the state) then the state can’t discriminate on the basis of gender. But since civil marriage is essentially a legal contract to produce legitimate kids, well, there is not much of an argument that can be made in the favor of same sex marriage as they can’t physically reproduce. If people claim supposed intolerance, then I ask why marriage was not redefined in ancient Greece to not only include homosexuality but also pedophilia? The fact of the matter was that they used their religion to inscribe “value” to such relationships, where marriage was just a contract to have kids. Why do you think the phrase “women for duty, boys for fun, goats for delight” came about?
Now I am not going to defend that mentality. If homosexuals want the same or similar significance that Christianity puts on traditional marriage, they should fight that battle on the religious field. I actually expect they would gain much ground, as most churches have already thrown out the Biblical views on marriage and divorce, as can be seen in the no fault divorce culture that has been adopted by many congregations in mainstream Christianity, as well as in a significant portion of evangelical Christianity. There they would have firm ground to stand on because if Jesus’s words concerning divorce are ignored, how about what He and others stated about God making them male and female and the two being one?
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Can labels stay pretty much the same while worldview changes? I suppose so. In this case, I hope so.
But the worldview of congress is almost meaningless while the worldview and lifestyle of the American people basically stays the same–essentially selfish, materialistic, relativistic, greedy, addicted to celbrity and entertainment, politically correct, unfaithful, expecting entitlements, easily manipulated and intimidated and obsessed with race-gender-class issues.
Politicians will not save us, not even decent ones.
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Sad to say, the American people, by and large, still think and follow basically what the media tell us to think and follow. They/we, in numbers too large to dismiss, still worship self and feelings. They/we still go out and get abortions as heartlessly as ever.
America will soon get mad at this congress too, regardless of what congress actually does, because the media will tell us to. We cannot help it. Too many American young people have been impoverished in their education and they have lost our Founding vision. They don’t even understand it and if they did, they might turn from it anyhow. Either way, they ARE turning from it. We have turned instead to nanny-stateism, pretty much, recent rhetoric notwithstanding. We are spending ourselves into profound debt and bankruptsy and show no signs of genuine discipline. We are destructive to children and families in the extreme and our culture is profane, over-sexualized, selfish and void of a necessary work ethic.
41 percent of our babies are born out of wedlock and many who are born in wedlock, will soon lose a parent in the home to a divorce. Children hardly have a chance here. The Boy Scouts have been under vicious attack for decades with few coming to their aid. The US military completely caved to social engineering advocates and political correctness. It is homosexualist now. They have lost clear sight of their mission to defend us and have embraced the mission to embrace whatever leftists tell them must be embraced. Passports and other legal documents are changing and will soon no longer say “Mother” or “Father” but “Parent 1″ and Parent 2.” What about “Parent 3″ and Parent 4?” We say we love children but we selfishly destroy them and the world and families they need in which to grow up healthy and true.
But there is a worldview change in congress!? Big woop. The people must get a WV change, and soon!
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