Changing the abortion debate
In the coming days, I'll be sharing a four-part letter to my friends who are pro-life, white, and Christian. As background (or a PS), I hope this article I co-wrote with my Catholic colleague Patrick Carolan will be of help to you. It originally appeared in the National Catholic Register, and is available here.
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It's time to change the abortion debate in America
For the last 40 years, 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.
But the conventional debate has a dark side, a set of side effects and unintended consequences that we believe citizens of moral conscience need to know and pay attention to.
For example, each side, by providing us with a short-cut to a sense of moral superiority, also gives us a weapon with which to demonize and even dehumanize our counterparts. When we render our opponents the evil enemy, we risk becoming a house so divided that our nation becomes ungovernable. When one side frames ethically complex issues as simplistic moral absolutes, then negotiation, the heart of politics in a democracy, becomes moral compromise. And when the other side frames abortion as if it were a simple legal and medical matter with no moral dimension, adherents render themselves insensitive and incomprehensible to their counterparts.
We're left with polarization, paralysis and mutual vilification, right at a critical moment when so many other serious problems demand our unified attention: runaway climate change and economic inequality, unchecked gun violence, the need for immigration reform, and a resurgence of racism in its many ugly forms.
That's why more and more of us are waking up to this realization: The current framing of the debate is wounding our nation and may in fact become our undoing, dividing us so deeply that in seeking to win elections, we lose our nation's soul.
As religious leaders, one Catholic and one Protestant, we see the great harm the old abortion debate is doing, both to our national politics and to our religious communities. That's why we would like to invite politicians, religious leaders and citizens in general to turn away from the rhetoric of mutually-assured destruction and reframe the abortion debate in more productive terms for the future.
A "Next Generation Abortion Conversation" would have the following ground rules:
First, we would stop demonizing each other. We would acknowledge how seductive it is for each side to consider itself morally superior and reduce its opponent to the level of moral filth. We would face the harm that kind of pride can do, both politically and spiritually. In our combined 120-plus years of life experience, neither of us has ever met a single supporter of abortion rights who hates babies, supports infanticide, or who has a "the more the better" attitude toward abortion. Nor have we ever met an abortion opponent who hates women and wants to throw mothers in jail for seeking an abortion. No doubt, such extremists may exist, but we have yet to meet any, and we can no longer let the debate be framed and fought from the extremes.
Second, 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.
Third, we must shift the debate from making abortion illegal to making abortion less and less necessary. The truth is that we can both reduce abortions and protect vulnerable women from having politicians (who are mostly wealthy, white and male, by the way) interfere with one of their most personal moral decisions. Abortion reduction rather than criminalization is a goal that nearly all of us can agree to.
And there's great news in this regard. We're already succeeding at reducing abortion rates, and we already know what will reduce them even more. If we shift our energies in the direction of abortion reduction, focusing on the causes and conditions that lead to abortion, everyone will benefit.
For 40 years, our nation has been torn apart by one framing of the abortion debate. It's time for a new generation to address the issue in a new and wiser way.
[Patrick Carolan is the Catholic Outreach Director for Vote Common Good. He was executive director of the Franciscan Action Network since 2010 and is a co-founder of the Global Catholic Climate Movement. Brian McLaren is an author, speaker, activist and public theologian. A former college English teacher and evangelical minister, he co-leads the Common Good Messaging Team, part of Vote Common Good.]
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Why I’m Talking Politics So Much: It May Not Be What You Think
For some years of my life, I said I hated politics and wanted nothing to do with it.
I said this for an admirable reason and for an unworthy reason.
Admirably, I didn't want to be part of a process of dividing the electorate to gain advantage for one party, winning for "us" to make losers of "them," and throwing truth and decency under the bus for the prize of winning. I suspected then, as I feel even more strongly now, that this kind of winning by division wins elections while rendering the nation ungovernable. My faith taught me that was a deceitful goal, a false value, a pollution of both ends and means. In that sense, I could still say that I hate politics.
But there was also something terribly egocentric about my statement. I wanted to rise above the fray, to take some holier-than-both-sides posture of pristine superiority. Frankly, that was a power play: throw both sides under the bus to leave me alone standing. It was as dirty and despicable as what I was condemning in "politics," maybe more dirty and despicable, because it was careless about the suffering of others and obsessed with my own ego-brand. (Perhaps that's a main reason Trump bothers me so much: in him I see a reflection of my own inner egotistical narcissist.)
I became more political in my last several years in the pastorate. My Christian friends will understand what I mean when I say that I felt "compelled by the Holy Spirit" to do so. In the 1990's, I was disgusted by Bill Clinton's personal decadence, and worried about the effect his bad personal example would have on the electorate. (I believed then, as I do now, that character counts.) Meanwhile, I was seeing, embodied in figures like Newt Gingrich, an increasingly obvious swing toward authoritarianism in the Republican Party. That swing culminated, not just in Donald Trump's election, but in the wholesale submission to the "dear leader" by every single Republican member of Congress (although one or two, like Mitt Romney or Justin Amash, have occasionally uttered a word or two of resistance, and deserve credit for doing so).
I was deeply involved in the first Obama campaign and tried to be involved in the second, although I felt the Democratic Party machinery seemed to have faltered by 2012. In 2016, I felt that faltering even more strongly with the Clinton campaign. But along with many of you, I tried as hard as I could to oppose Trump and all he stood for. And, of course, our side lost.
(Back in the Obama years, a friend in Congress, a Democrat, once told me that Republican machinery successfully unites people around lies, and Democratic machinery fails to unite people around truth. Although I was disappointed in the Democratic Party's ability to mobilize around a fresh, visionary message in 2012 and 2016, I think they're doing better in 2020. There's still a long way to go, especially because the electoral college could require Democrats to win the popular vote by something like 54%.)
In these twenty years of increasing political engagement, despite my frustration with Democratic Party machinery, I have to say that in every single engagement I've had with party activists, I have been impressed, even inspired. These are hard working and sincere people, dedicated to all the values I've preached about for so many years. (And to my pro-life friends, as I've written about at length elsewhere, I have never met a single Democrat who is pro-abortion, in the sense that they want more abortions to happen rather than less. But I have met many Republicans are pro-guns; they don't just want people to have the right to have guns, they want more guns for more people -- or at least, I suspect sometimes, for more white people.)
I feel I need to sharpen this point: In general, I have found more intense sincerity, sacrifice, moral earnestness, and commitment to justice and peace among social and political activists -- people working against racism, people working for environmental protection and regeneration, people working for the poor and vulnerable, people working against political corruption, people working for the common good -- than I have among church-goers. Among too many church-goers (thank God, not all!), what I have found is a desire to consume religious goods and services from their preferred vendor.
Of course, I remain committed to the Christian church in its many forms. But I've been attracted to where I see the most sincerity, sacrifice, moral earnestness, and commitment to justice, peace, and the common good. I see these qualities as the work of the Spirit, and where the Spirit is working (not just being talked and sung about, but working), that's where I want to be. (In case you're wondering, I sense those qualities of genuineness in every single conference call and Zoom meeting I'm on with the Biden campaign, and I've been on a lot lately. And I sense it among the new generation of churches that are rising from the rubble of Christianity's self-immolation in Trumpism.)
But I need to make something clear. I do not believe politics will save us. I think the Republican Party, as currently configured behind a racist authoritarian, will hasten our self-destruction, but I am under no illusion that any political party can save us.
The fact is, I do not see a lot of evidence that our current systems are salvageable. I would be happy to be surprised, but I think the global economy, the oligarchs that run it, and the systems that run them, are currently like a car with no breaks heading for the rim of the Grand Canyon.
So, you might wonder, why do I keep laboring if I don't have confidence that my team will save the day? Here's why: I have made a commitment. To quote one of my favorite songs from my childhood, I have decided to follow Jesus. I am not sustained by the hope of winning or positive signs of hope. I am sustained by my commitment to be the kind of person who lives by compassion and wisdom, love and truth, empathy and connectedness, no matter what, win or lose. I need no promise of a happy ending, short-term or long-term, because my commitment is to a way of life, not a political plan for victory.
That's on my good days. I have to admit, there are bad days when I really wish I had more hope, more optimism, less of a feeling of impending doom. (I hope you don't mind me being this honest.) But then I remember that hope is about expectation and expectations are just resentments and disappointments waiting to happen. (Which is why, all of my fellow Biden/Harris supporters, I think we need to spend some time preparing ourselves spiritually and emotionally for the worst, even as we work our hearts out for the best.)
This, I think, is what Jesus sorted out in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was going to do God's will no matter what, win or lose, succeed or fail, even if it meant shame, humiliation, torture, defeat, and death. You might say, "Yes, but didn't he know about the joy set before him? Didn't he know about resurrection?" Maybe. But maybe Matthew 27:46 (Why have you forsaken me?) tells us that even he wasn't given that confidence. Maybe Jesus's experience was more like that of Shadrach, Meshak, and Abednego in Daniel 3:16-18.
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to present a defense to you in this matter. If our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire and out of your hand, O king, let him deliver us. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods and we will not worship the golden statue that you have set up.
In other words, whatever happens, succeed or fail, we are not bowing our knees to the stupid idol of an egotistical and violent tyrant. We are who we are. We are people shaped by compassion and wisdom, by truth and love, by empathy and connectedness. We can't just go along with this idiocy, even if it's gold-plated.
That's why I'm involved in politics. It's not simply for the love of politics, although I have come to love much about politics. It's for the love of life, the love of truth, the love of neighbor, the love of this precious earth, and in and through them, the love of God.
So, if you're annoyed with me, that's OK. I can imagine times when younger versions of me would have been annoyed with me too. But I hope you'll at least understand why I'm doing what I'm doing. Living by compassion and wisdom, truth and love, empathy and connectedness will be, in the end, our only good option, whatever our party, religion, race, nation, or generation. It's not just who we vote for, as important as that is: it's who we become.
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The Five Electorates in 2020
You may think, as many people do, that there are only two kinds of voters in American politics, Republican and Democrat or Conservative and Liberal. You may even add a third category, Independents.
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Five Things Faith Leaders Can Do to Show Moral Leadership Now
Let's start easy and move toward more challenging.
- Pray. In private and in public - pray for people to put the common good over personal and partisan interest. Pray for justice and peace. Pray for healing of our country. Pray for Christians who have been corrupted by political alliances. Pray for healing of our nation, our communities, our environment, our world. And pray for just, wise, and good leaders who are committed to the truth, who lead with the strength that comes from wisdom and kindness, and who fight against our original sins of racism and greed.
- Give your people a theology of voting and set a goal for 100% voter turnout of your members. Lay it out in one or more sermons, or present it in messages delivered by email or mail. If you need help, check out this guide: https://interfaith-power-light.myshopify.com/products/democracy-values-the-2020-election. If your job is to prepare people to live their faith in daily life, and if this the most important election in their lives so far, why would you fail to prepare them? That leads to number three.
- Promise your people through a pastoral letter that you will set an example by voting - and share with them the top concerns you have in this election because of your faith, values, and spiritual formation. For example, mine would be 1. Honest, trustworthy, exemplary, unselfish leadership (because without that, nothing will work), 2. Dedication to racial justice because of our nation's unacknowledged history and present practice of racism, 3. Commitment to the poor and vulnerable, especially because they are being hit so hard by COVID-19, 4. Commitment to the environment and to fight climate change - along with our opportunity to create a new economy that is cleaner both environmentally and morally, and 5. Commitment to the well-being of children - through better health care and pay for their parents, through better public education, and through the previous four commitments.
- Invite your board to pass the kind of resolution offered here -- https://www.votecommongood.com/resources-for-pastors/ -- so you and your board have clear freedom to speak more directly as an individual citizen using your own time, your own social media, your own equipment etc. In this way, you will become more transparent in setting an example for people in your congregation and in the community at large, fully in accordance with government regulations related to 501(c)3 status.
- Publicly endorse and support candidates, federal, state, and local, whom you believe will best fulfill the vision presented above. After all, if you believe people of faith should express their faith in public life, why wouldn't you set an example? Make these endorsements as an individual and not a representative of your organization, carefully following the law. To make these endorsements intelligently, bring together groups of your fellow faith leaders to have face-to-face meetings with local candidates (digitally, these days) so you can ask them questions, let them ask you questions, and build relationships. Remember: you are leaders in the community they would like to serve, so they should know you and you should know them. If you're interested in what I've done in this regard, here are two examples: for Barack Obama and for Joe Biden.
If you need help in doing this work, there are many excellent organizations who can help you, including Vote Common Good, Faith in Public Life, Pope Francis Voters, and many more.
If you are planning to play it safe and do nothing in the next 60 days, or if you're planning to take Step 1 and stop there ... I encourage you to prayerfully read this document.
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More on Why I Support Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in 2020 (and a suggestion if you can’t)
As I explained in an earlier post, I am an enthusiastic supporter of Joe Biden because I believe we need an honest leader with a good heart and proven competence to lead our nation at this dangerous time.
We need someone with decades of experience to challenge and undo the catastrophic damage done to our nation, its people, and its institutions by the current administration.
Joe is a man from working class roots who has suffered heartbreak and loss, and his suffering has made him more genuine, generous, and kind than so many politicians.
He is tested. He has made and admitted mistakes, and learned and grown from them.
As a committed Christian who grew up in Fundamentalist, Evangelical, and Charismatic circles, and who then served for twenty-four years as a church planter and pastor in a non-denominational congregation, I respect Joe as a man of faith and moral integrity. Joe is a Vatican-II, Pope-Francis Roman Catholic, and his immersion in Catholic Social Teaching prepares him to seek the common good of all Americans - Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Buddhist, of any faith or no explicit faith.
His faith doesn't narrow his moral vision to one or two wedge issues. Instead, it gives him a broad and deep moral vision. He affirms the dignity of all people, no exceptions, with a special concern for the "least of these." He knows that we must become good and regenerative stewards of this beautiful, fragile earth. And he has the character and empathy to unite our nation that has been driving drunk for four years, intoxicated by lies and the manipulation of a malignant narcissist, its judgment clouded by racial and class divisiveness and misled by Trump and the toxic media who support him.
I had the honor of visiting Joe Biden's home as part of a large group of faith and justice leaders when he was Vice President. As he spoke to us, I felt both his sincerity and his intelligence.
It's no secret, Joe was not my first choice during the primaries. But I am enthusiastically on board in supporting him now, especially since he chose Kamala Harris as his running mate. A vote for Joe and Kamala is a vote for honesty, decency, fairness, compassion, and the Constitution. It's a vote against racism, corruption, nepotism, and deception.
It's a vote for democracy over authoritarianism.
It's a vote for a better future for my adult kids and their kids.
I hope you'll consider joining me in supporting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in 2020.
If you are one of those Republicans who can't bring yourself to vote for a Democrat, no matter how good and decent and qualified, I understand that party loyalty and political identity run very deep for a lot of people. I invite you to reconsider, but at the very least, I urge you not to cast your vote for Donald Trump.
Here's why.
I was in Charlottesville August 11-12, 2017, part of a multi-faith clergy witness for justice and peace for all people. I saw hundreds of young white men (and a few women, along with some older white guys my age) marching with Nazi and Confederate flags that weekend, chanting Nazi slogans and carrying baseball bats, and promising to "take back" America for white supremacy. I was there in the crowd after a young woman was killed (and many others injured) by a white supremacist using his car as his murder weapon. In the days after, I was given access to screenshots of the secret communications among the white supremacist neo-Nazis who organized the event. I may have thought I was "woke" before, but that experience woke me up in a whole new way.
Then I heard Donald Trump refuse to unequivocally condemn them.
Before that, I knew that our president lacked honesty and basic human kindness. He had built a reputation for decades of being sleazy and self-seeking. Before the Access Hollywood tape, I heard about him bragging to Howard Stern or someone similar about how many women he had bedded, etc. I had known that he was happy to use racist dog whistles as soon as he started his birther hoax. (Is it any surprise he likes to accuse others of what he routinely does?)
But since Charlottesville, I knew in my bones that he is more than just dangerous. He poses a threat to our hard-won democracy.
Like so many authoritarians in history, he has a con artist's ability to get inside of certain people's heads, to make them believe any lie he says, to make them defend him at all costs. He has won over large sectors of white Evangelical, Mainline Protestant, and Catholic Christianity, remaking them in his own tawdry image. Many bow the knee to him overtly; others support him by their complicit silence, perfectly following the script condemned by Dr. King in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail.
So of course I will publicly do all I can to oppose Donald Trump. And of course I will publicly support all candidates who provide a better alternative, starting with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
But again, if you can't bring yourself to vote for Biden/Harris for whatever reason, I urge you to consider voting for Mark Charles. Mark is a personal friend, a gifted teacher, a good man, a member of the Navajo nation and a committed Christian who is running a campaign you should know about. I have learned so much from him and I respect him for running in 2020. Although I'm an enthusiastic supporter of Biden/Harris, I hope Mark's candidacy influences our entire nation to learn our history and to build common memory in a quest for lasting truth and conciliation.
Note: I offer this endorsement as an individual American citizen, and not as a representative of any organization. I am using my time and my equipment on my property to make this endorsement. If you are a religious leader or non-profit employee, and wonder what is permissible for you to do in an election season, I encourage you to check out this helpful resource.
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