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A few years ago, a U.S. church exercised church discipline and excommunicated a member. In turn, that former member sued the church. Does the fact that the lawsuit didn't just get laughed out of court say something about the way that the church's differentiated responsibility has been compromised?

Oh, yes. That's even more the case in Canada than in the United States, which is surprising because Canada has always had the reputation of being a more conservative country. There's a conception that religious freedom belongs to individuals. If a community gets in the way, then presumably the individual is within his or her rights to take the matter to the court. If somebody is put under discipline for having embraced a lifestyle that falls outside of biblical understanding, then the assumption under the liberal framework is that the community is violating the individual's right to freedom of religion.

But of course, a religion, in and of itself, is communal. So liberalism is trivializing religion. It becomes simply a matter of personal choice. The prochoice philosophy, which undergirds one whole side of the abortion controversy, has come to be extended into all sorts of areas. Any kind of communal obligations that are not reducible to personal choice come to be seen as oppressive.

In the abortion controversy, both sides talk about rights: the right to life of the unborn baby versus the woman's right to choose. Isn't this the thought framework of classical liberalism? To be true to a Christian worldview, should prolife advocates be using a different kind of rhetoric?

Yes. The whole of political discourse has been reduced to rights talk. And if you can somehow take refuge behinds rights, then that presumably trumps all other considerations. Rights talk has only served to polarize further the two sides on the abortion issue.

If at least one side were to adopt a different kind of language, it might lessen the distance. For example, you could talk more about the common good. Is it in the common good for society to countenance the large scale ending of life in the womb?

If you would start asking that question, people might look at it in a different way because they would come to realize that there are all sorts of other considerations: There are economic considerations—though we must never reduce life issues to economics. There are also considerations about the way that the vulnerable, in general, the old, the infirm, are treated. In Scripture, there are all sorts of commands about protecting the vulnerable. And there's a real sense, not so much that the rights of the vulnerable are being violated, but that by abusing of the vulnerable, we abuse God himself.

That makes for a society that's cheapened human life, a me-centered society, a society where people are concerned only with getting what they can. And in that kind of society, the powerful are always going to end up winning.

Especially in the Old Testament, there's a concern to ensure that the society develops in a balanced way and that those who are on the bottom rung of society will be able to defend themselves. That involves rights, but it can't simply be reduced to rights.

The "common good" approach also includes public health questions.

Yes, when you follow the abortion controversy, it certainly looks as though there's an attempt by one side to cover up a lot of the negative side effects.

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June (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47