Foolish Things
We're Not Finished
Ever since C. Everett Koop and Francis Schaeffer pricked our consciences, abortion has been on the front burner for socially minded evangelicals. Thirty-five years since Roe v. Wade, it's time to ask whether it should remain the sine qua non of Christian social engagement.
Claiming to represent the new center, an increasingly self-confident wing of sincere evangelicals thinks not. "The evangelical social agenda is now much broader and deeper," asserts Jim Wallis in his new book, The Great Awakening, "engaging issues such as poverty and economic justice, global warming, hiv/aids, sex trafficking, genocide in Darfur, and the ethics of the war in Iraq."
In The Scandal of Evangelical Politics, Ron Sider, echoing a common complaint that pro-lifers believe that "life begins at conception and ends at birth," says starvation and second-hand smoke are also "sanctity of life" issues.
In other words, these and other voices seem to be saying that fighting legalized abortion—the deliberate, state- sanctioned taking of 50 million unborn human lives from their mothers' wombs since 1973 (and the accompanying national guilt)—should simply be one item among many on an ever-expanding evangelical to-do list. I agree that we have multiple responsibilities as Christians, and different callings. But if everything is a priority, then nothing is. While no one is saying that defending unborn human life is optional, the way we sometimes talk about our broader agenda appears to minimize the importance of abortion.
Imagine an adviser telling Martin Luther King Jr. that he won't be participating in the march from Selma to Montgomery because there is a broader social agenda. Rightly might King retort, "But we're not finished!"
Despite all our ...
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Foolish Things
Stan Guthrie
Stan Guthrie is an editor at large for Christianity Today and author of Missions in the Third Millennium and All That Jesus Asks. His column, "Foolish Things," ran from 2006 to 2007.
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sjd
Well said, Stan. Amen and amen.
Dave
Picture this. A man is hit by a car and lies injured, bleeding from an artery. Two people run up to help. One is a liberal evangelical who says to the man: “You’re bleeding but we have to deal with more than a single issue here, blah blah.” The other person says “go call 911 quick!” and proceeds to staunch the bleeding, waiting for EMS. The injured man no doubt has multiple concerns in his life but sometimes you have to deal with single life-and-death issues first. The United States is bleeding from an artery. Maybe the bleeding is slowing. Maybe we are getting low on blood.
ugh.
"Tim: Which is more important? Alleviation of poverty or life?" Are you serious? There are women watching their children die of starvation and disease. There are women giving birth to children knowing that all that awaits them is a life as an indentured servant or a prostitute. You can't say that one is more important than the other; they go hand in hand. To insinuate that "life" is more important than alleviating poverty is to demonstrate your ignorance that poverty takes more life on this planet than abortion. Step outside your North American suburban cauldesac and take a look at this world we're living in. Abortion is the last thing we should be worrying about.