As with the Ayn Rand types, my question about misogynist Christians is just how Christian are they, really? I do not ask this facetiously. I am no church historian, but I do know that leading scholars are now in considerable agreement that women played very significant leadership roles as disciples, apostles, and teachers during Christianity’s radical early life. The Romans despised the Jesus movement in no small measure for precisely this: they did not properly subjugate their women! Then, as the Empire turned up the heat—sometimes literally—on the Jesus people, the movement began to accommodate itself to imperial values, eventually in the fourth century becoming the supreme defender and enforcer of patriarchy as the religion of empire and no longer a resistance movement against empire and its values.
As women leaders were re-subjugated within the Church, so were the memories of women’s leadership excised from the Church’s official record—from what eventually became the New Testament. No surprise there: in every imperial creed, official history must be made to support the current power reality. Some tantalizing subversive bits were left in, however, and from these fragments and from other texts that were excluded from the canon or entirely suppressed, biblical scholars were eventually able to reconstruct what the radical early movement looked like.
Here again is St. Paul (no great friend of women, himself, we should note) from the very early days when baptism was the great equalizer and also a great enemy of patriarchy:
For in Christ you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female: for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3: 26-28)
As before, the “one” language is striking, only this time not so much in terms of wealth and class as in terms of ethnicity, caste, and gender. But just as today’s Ayn Rand Christians conveniently dropped—or never heard—one part of the “one” message, so too have today’s misogynist Christian clerics, some of them still defenders of a long-vanished Empire, dropped or never heard the other part.
This all may seem arcane and boring, but I believe it has everything to do with the current travails facing progressive health care reform. I see two powerful but (to my mind) quite errant forms of Christianity, both running with their heads down against progressive health reform from different directions and both leaving big nasty bruises in the body of what remains.
Forgive the note of bitterness, but my word to American Christians who show more devotion to John Locke than to Jesus in respect to their “I’ve got mine” ideology: We’ll see you in Hell with your good buddy, Dives. And to the patriarchal types who told Speaker Pelosi late last week that they could not support any legislation giving them less than total victory on the abortion issue: Why not be man enough to just come out and say it? You have never liked women, you fear women, and now you would even sink the chance of providing coverage for 36 million currently uninsured persons—including many of the children and immigrants you claim to love—rather than accept a carefully-negotiated compromise on women’s reproductive health.
With Christians like these, who needs other enemies? And will anyone wonder why, with each new poll or census, more Americans will be marking “none” or “atheist” or “anything but Christian” on the religion section?
Tags: abortion, ayn rand, bart stupak, health care, healthcare, milton himmelbarb, pro choice, pro life, stupak
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"Why not be man enough to just come out and say it? You have never liked women, you fear women, and now you would even sink the chance of providing coverage for 36 million currently uninsured persons—including many of the children and immigrants you claim to love—rather than accept a carefully-negotiated compromise on women’s reproductive health."
This is such a ridiculous caricature, and this site seems to support it across the board. Compare this article (and any other recent one on abortion) to RD's mission statement, and note the many contradictions.
So Christians oppose abortion because they hate women? There is absolutely zero concern for protecting the unborn child's life against some people's choices (as we would do for any other human)?! Nice to see how you slander and distort your opponent's position. How eminently Christ-like!
In a two page article about abortion, how can you manage never to mention the unborn? Is this the radical concern for "the least of these" that you claim to possess? You make just as much a mockery of Jesus's words as those on the right. And since you just condemned them to hell, don't be surprised if Jesus judges you by your own standard, while your cries of "Lord, Lord!" fall on deaf ears.
Repent! Show concern for both the woman and the child! Glorify the name of Christ instead of dragging it through the mud!
Reuster, you're working too hard at missing the point. Your Christianity determines that life begins before birth. Not everyone's does, as you well know.
Laws that enforce one kind of faith are theocratic and violate other's beliefs and consciences. You expect the US government and the public to support and be governed by your religious views only, at the expense of others'.
That isn't how we're supposed to be doing it; no one faith should dictate law. Particularly when that ideology will greatly harm womans' privacy, health, conscience and rights.
I agree that no one faith should dictate law; however, the law is right to violate someone's belief when that belief i) infringes on the rights of another and ii) has insufficient evidence to support it.
For example, some people's beliefs used to dictate that the life of an African slave was not worth the life of a white person. Was it theocratic to abolish slavery and deny slave-owners the right to choose the fate of their slaves? Those who saw African Americans as humans with equal rights were acting just as much on belief as the slaveowners. In the end, the correct solution was not to say "let's agree to disagree and let everyone have their own beliefs". Rather, each belief had to submit to evaluation. There was no good argument for considering a Black person any different from a white person, and so slaveowners' beliefs were overruled.
It is the same with abortion: there is no good argument for considering an unborn child to be off the spectrum of personhood (this spectrum includes infants, mentally handicapped individuals, etc.). Arguments against considering a fetus to be a person are addressed on this website. Thus, the beliefs of those who state that fetuses are not people should be overruled.
Notice that the belief that life begins before birth has nothing to do with the Bible or my Christianity per se. I don't want my religious views codified in law simply because I believe them; I recognize that such a theocracy would be disastrous for everyone. But if anyone's belief is based on evidence and the opposing view is not, and if the issue has potentially serious consequences, then I want the law to reflect the right belief, regardless of majority opinion. Such a policy is not theocracy, but the constitutionally-mandated protection of the weak against the tyranny of the majority.
If you want to change my mind, don't just tell me that other people believe differently than me. Prove to me that their beliefs are valid. Show me a good argument for why we should allow someone to terminate a fetus but not an adult with brain damage. By the way, the burden of proof should lie on the one wishing to exclude certain entities from their definition of humanity. I recognize that women have the rights you listed, but if an unborn child is truly a person (and no one has convincingly argued otherwise), then their right to life should trump all lesser rights... just as a slave's right to liberty trumped the slave-owner's right to pursue happiness through owning property.
In the United States we operate according to law. Legally, a person is someone who has been born.
Using theological speculation on the status of the unborn will try to get us somewhere, but ultimately cannot.
First, I highly recommend this other Religion Dispatches article by Gordon D. Newby: "House Health Care Bill Discriminates Against Religious Freedom" (link name too long to paste).
Second, there is an easy and good argument to deny fetuses "personhood": they cannot survive outside the womb (or an incubator). They do not have the ability to draw breath. They do not have provable consciousness. Yes, the link you provided tries to obfuscate this point, but it's not rational. A clump of cells (the site's words) are not a human the way a fully developed infant is.
Let me be clear - this is not a reason to support abortion. But your question has to do with personhood. We simply cannot give a dependent being in utero the same rights as a being capable of existence outside the womb. It's indefensible and a legal nightmare. Giving a fetus the same rights as the woman bearing it is not rational. It simply is not. In states where personhood amendments are being considered, even anti-abortion advocates are against them because the wording and definitions are so vague (again, cannot post link).
Abortion is a difficult choice that should never have to be made. But it does, regardless of whether it is legal or illegal, covered or uncovered (by insurance). Keeping it safe and legal does save lives - lives of women. That ought to be part of the consideration.
I encourage all persons who want to prevent abortions to focus their energies on responsible sex education and providing means of birth control. These are the most effective solutions to unwanted pregnancies.
linked text for Religion Dispatches article
linked text for article regarding a proposed personhood amendment in Nevada
"they cannot survive outside the womb (or an incubator)."
The ability to survive "on one's own" is not a good criterion for personhood. Certain chronically ill adults cannot survive outside of a hospital. They are people. My grandmother (when she was alive), could not survive without being hooked to a dialysis machine several times a day. She was still a person. What level of self-sufficiency is required to be a person? Some mentally challenged individuals could not survive more than a few days without direct care and supervision from loved ones. Is their personhood diminished for it? Such arguments are insulting and dangerous and should be completely disregarded by the law.
"They do not have the ability to draw breath."
Some adults are dependent on an artificial respirator to breathe. The idea that personhood should be based on the ability to breathe unaided is simply laughable.
"They do not have provable consciousness."
Define "provable consciousness". Are you talking about stimulus response? Self-awareness? Intelligence? Using any of these criteria, how would you distinguish between a fetus, an infant, a developmentally challenged child, and a mentally handicapped adult? Presumably, you would grant personhood to all but the first (if not, then there's no point talking to you), but there seems to be no evidence for drawing the line there.
"Giving a fetus the same rights as the woman bearing it is not rational. It simply is not."
You have failed to give any evidence whatsoever for why a fetus and a mother should not both be recognized as people; all you have done is emphatically state your unproven conviction. In order to consistently apply your criteria, we would have to legally revoke the personhood of the most helpless members of society, or at least set up a graded scale of personhood based on self-sufficiency and cognitive ability. Are you comfortable with that? Are you comfortable with allowing people to exclude others from the human race by right of their "religious freedom"? Such logic fits right in with the antebellum South.
"I encourage all persons who want to prevent abortions to focus their energies on responsible sex education and providing means of birth control. These are the most effective solutions to unwanted pregnancies."
At least we agree on something, but that does not excuse us from extending consistent legal protection to all members of the human race.
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