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During the last century in the United States, many mainline Protestant leaders, committed to the eugenics movement, deemed it their business to determine which births were with the grain of God's plan for the evolving progress of human history and which births were a drag on the movement forward. Christians are called to more humility and more confidence than that—more humility about the grievous harm that has been done in the name of social progress, and more confidence in God's ability to turn even regrettable human choices to good.

Happily, many Christian churches are already offering a different "welcome to reality" than the one offered by Jenny McCarthy. These congregations, neighborhoods, and kinship networks name the girls in the poster shame-campaign to be children of promise, worthy recipients of hands-on care and communal sacrifice. They refuse the calculus of life that draws a distinction between accidental and providential babies, between the right sorts of people and those sorts of people with teenage mothers.

There are such congregations, but I believe that, in answer to God's call, there could be many more.

Such advocacy, born of holy double-speak, is a stretch for many in my cohort of Christianity. But it is not so much a stretch for many African American congregations and Latino Catholic communities. It is my prayer that more mainstream evangelicals, in both "red" America and "blue" America, will cross over into risky solidarity with a third color of Americans.

We could do so by advocating for and working within alternative high schools where pregnant girls may continue their education. We could work for maternity leave and flexible schedules at all levels of education and enterprise, especially at institutions overtly committed to Christian witness. To be a people committed to the incalculable gift of life may mean myriad commitments that interrupt our plans for our own families. It may mean that a young couple without children find themselves babysitting a child not their blood kin several evenings a week, rather than watching their favorite science fiction series on DVD. A single man may find himself fixing a young single mother's clogged sink on a lunch break or building her toddler a swing set during a holiday weekend. For many mothers and fathers, it may mean adapting their entire life and career to care daily for an unexpected grandchild. And by my own political reckoning, witnessing for the common good not only means hands-on local action, but also advocating for systematic acts of mercy through a matrix of services to offer single mothers a safety net of care.

After hearing me give a talk on abortion, eugenics, and teenage pregnancy, my oldest daughter, with whom I had not yet initiated a talk about birds and bees, looked up at me and said frankly, "Mom, if God gives me a baby before I am married, I won't worry. I know that you and Dad would take care of it so that I could stay in school."

After taking a deep breath and squeezing back tears of sheer parental terror, I agreed that she was right, that we would help her and her baby no matter what. I pray that the situation will not arise, but I also pray that should it arise, her father and I, as well as the congregation into which she has been baptized, will be worthy of her confidence, for to fail her would be contrary to who we hope to be. To fail her would be the true shame.

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September 2006, Vol. 50, No. 9