Tag: pro-life

People who make me ashamed to be a Christian

I am no saint and am full of faults and prejudices of my own but there are some kinds of Christians I find embarrassing and who give Christianity a bad name. Among them are:

Christians who support a man who gleefully puts kids in cages at the Mexico border.

Christians who (quietly) support the burning down of hotels designated as reception centres for refugees.

Christians who use the cloak of clericalism to nakedly climb the hierarchical ladder.

Christians who refuse to receive holy communion from a person of colour.

Christians who use their position of trust to use and abuse the weak and vulnerable and those who cover up for them.

Christians who greedily exploit and denude the environment, or treat it with reckless abandonment.

Christians who blame those who are gay for sexual abuse in the church.

Christians who want nothing to do with Christians of other denominations.

Christians who disown a family member simply because he/she is gay (even though God created everyone in God’s own image and likeness).

Christians who send gay teens to special camps to undergo so-called ‘conversion therapy.’

Christians who advocate erecting walls and barriers between nations and peoples rather than building bridges.

Christians who, in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence, continue to deny the reality of man-made climate change.

Christians who are repulsed by transgender people, even though they have no idea about the life-long pain and trauma transgender people go through.

Christians who agitate about some pro-life issues while studiously ignoring others.

Christians who confidentially tell you that they just hate having all those foreigners around. (Who knows what diseases they might have?)

Christians who vociferously attack the current pope while tolerating no criticism of his immediate predecessors.

Christians who anonymously report or delate other Christians to those in authority for not being, in their view, sufficiently orthodox.

When Christianity is not about love, then it is about nothing.

What being pro-life really means (and why yesterday was a good day)

Yesterday, the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives and Nancy Pelosi was sworn in as Speaker, making her third in line to the presidency. It was a good day for democracy and many people rejoiced.

Of course, most evangelicals and many in the American Catholic Church did not rejoice. They don’t like the Democrats or Pelosi. They have bought into a rugged individualism type of politics and religion that rewards wealth and hard work and individual freedoms like the right to carry weapons (it’s why they can support a twice-divorced, tax-avoiding, sexist, racist, foul-mouthed president as someone specially anointed by God). For others, their opposition to Pelosi and the Democrats has got to do with abortion. This one issue frames their entire political thinking.

Of course, abortion is a critical issue. Preserving life, protecting the most vulnerable and defenceless, has a particular urgency for Christians because it is literally about life or death.

But what many forget is that being pro-life is more than being anti-abortion. It is to support life from womb to tomb. It is to seek to do all we can to protect and enhance life outside the womb as much as inside the womb.

This is known as having a consistent ethic of life – that, as Christians, we support everything that is pro-life and oppose everything that is anti-life. The late Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago described this stance as ‘the seamless garment’ approach to life issues. Christians believe that all human life is sacred because every human being is created in the image and likeness of God. And so, for us, all issues to do with life are of one piece, like a “seamless garment” (a reference to the garment Jesus wore before his crucifixion which was woven seamlessly from top to bottom).

Life issues are interrelated, interconnected, seamless. As Cardinal Bernardin put it: “Those who defend the right to life of the weakest among us must be equally visible in support of the quality of life of the powerless among us: the old and the young, the hungry and the homeless, the undocumented immigrant and the unemployed worker.”

If we are committed to “preserving life” (opposing abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, etc), we should also be committed to “enhancing life” (supporting social justice, care of the earth, those on the margins). In other words, being pro-life is all-embracing.

That is where most in the Republican Party and in other right-wing parties get it wrong. It is certainly where so many conservative Catholics and evangelicals get it wrong. Already the newly inaugurated right-wing, evangelical president of Brazil is opening up the Amazon to even more exploitation and is rolling back hard-earned rights won by minority groups. Where is the Christianity in that?

Trump is not pro-life

One of the most shocking aspects of the long and troubling US presidential election campaign has been the support Donald Trump received from the Christian right. Of course, the Christian right has supported the Republican nominee for president for decades. Evangelists like Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and others have always been cheerleaders for GOP candidates, using the party of Lincoln as a vehicle to promote their own socially and economically conservative agenda. Aware of the size of this constituency (though it is now shrinking fast) and the influence of its leaders, GOP candidates always make sure to have the Christian right on their side.

Whether one supported their agenda or not, it was easy to see why the Christian right would coalesce around the candidate of the Republican Party. Over more than 30 years, they have shared the same values and worldview. But this year is different. This year the Republican Party nominated a candidate who, one would have thought, could not possibly be endorsed by any respected Christian leader of any denomination. A three-times married narcissist who not only mocks the disabled, disrespects women, uses xenophobic and inflammatory language about immigrants, stirs racial tensions, and threatens anyone who disagrees with him, but who also never had any real interest in religion, should make people like Jerry Falwell Jr recoil in horror.

How could a demagogue like Trump receive the public blessing of a preacher like Robertson or the family of Billy Graham? Seemingly because he meets the only two criteria that they seek in a candidate for the office of president: that you claim to be pro-life and that you are the official nominee of the Republican Party. So what if you label Mexicans rapists and joke about groping women – as long as you say you are anti-abortion and in favour of traditional family values, then all is well and good.

Some US Catholic Church clergy have been no better than their Christian right counterparts. One Catholic parish in San Diego included an article in its Sunday bulletin saying Catholics were going to hell if they voted for Hillary Clinton and claiming Clinton was influenced by Satan. Another priest posted a pro-Trump video with a picture of a naked fetus on an altar. Some culture warrior bishops have contorted themselves in an effort to try to sound neutral while at the same time emphasising the singular importance of the sanctity of life.

Of course, the church is pro-life and must always stress its importance, but does anyone seriously believe that Trump is a pro-life enthusiast? That he would be able or willing to do what previous Republican presidents going back 40 years were unable to do?

And being pro-life is more than being anti-abortion. To be pro-life means to cherish all life from womb to tomb. It means opposing the death penalty, supporting families who are struggling to make ends meet, ensuring a fairer tax system and access to health care. To be pro-life means showing solidarity with refugees forced to flee their homes and homelands. It means rejecting racism, sexism and bigotry wherever they are to be found. A pro-life Christian is a unifier who espouses a consistent ethic of life, a person who is capable of empathy and conciliation, one who believes in building bridges not walls. Donald Trump is not such a person. His language and actions are the opposite of pro-life.

Of course, Hillary Clinton has many faults too. Her record is not unblemished and she is clearly pro-abortion rights, but she is not a narcissist or political extremist who uses inflammatory language to stir up dangerous nativist passions. She may not make a great president but she is far, far better than the alternative.

I won’t be alive to see a woman pope, but I hope that in a few hours I will see the first female president of the United States. I hope it will also mark the end of the unfortunate and unholy alliance between the Republican Party and the Christian right.