Christianity Today, March (Web-only), 2007
From Protesting Abortion Clinics to Protesting the War:
Evangelical Christian couple who founded Believers Against the War have a son in Iraq.
Julie Sullivan, Religion News Service
Suzanne
Brownlow shivers on the Oregon highway overpass as a cutting wind whips
her sign: "Honk to End the War." Her weekly demonstration is the latest
turn in a fractious journey that has taken the evangelical Christian
mother from protesting abortion clinics to protesting the war in Iraq.
"I
feel like at least we are doing something," Suzanne Brownlow says,
waving with her husband, Dave, and two youngest children just outside
Portland.
No polling data conclusively demonstrate
that opinion has shifted among conservative evangelicals. But some
prominent national evangelical leaders say that debate about — and, in
some cases, outright opposition to — the war is breaking out among
Christian conservatives.
For those evangelicals,
they say, frustration with Republicans' failure to overturn abortion
rights has fueled their skepticism. Others decry the war's human toll
and financial cost, and they're concerned about any use of torture.
"This
war has challenged their confidence in the party," says Tony Campolo,
an evangelical Baptist minister who lectures across the country on
social issues.
"Add to that that they feel the
Republicans have betrayed them on the abortion issue," says the author
and frequent talk-show guest, "and you are beginning to see signs of a
rebellion."
The National Association of Evangelicals, which says it represents 45,000 evangelical churches, recently endorsed an anti-torture statement
saying the United States has crossed "boundaries of what is legally and
morally permissible" in its treatment of detainees and war prisoners in
the fight against terror.
The Brownlows voted for
Bush in 2000 because of his more conservative views. But a month before
the 2003 invasion, the Damascus, Ore., couple began campaigning against
his Iraq policies. Dave Brownlow ran for Congress
three times, twice on an anti-war ticket for the Constitution Party.
Since November, the couple have lobbied lawmakers to bring the troops
home.
Last month, they founded Believers Against the War to influence other evangelical Christians.
On
a recent Saturday, a motorcyclist, sleek in black leather, spotted the
Brownlows' banners, raised his gloved fist and flipped an obscene
gesture. The Brownlows smiled, because many others were honking their
support. Then a woman driver slowed and screamed, "Get over it."
Suzanne Brownlow's serenity finally broke.
"How can I get over it?" she said. "My son is in Iraq."
To
be sure, many mainline Christian churches and several dozen prominent
evangelicals opposed the war from the beginning. Others were ambivalent.
But
since 2003, polls have shown that a higher rate of conservative
Christians than other Americans favored military action. The National
Association of Evangelicals, the same group that condemned torture
tactics, even linked evangelical "prayer warriors" to the successful killing of Saddam Hussein's sons.
Daniel
Heimbach, professor of Christian ethics at Southeastern Baptist
Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., supported the war and Bush's
recent troop surge. Heimbach said that while pacifists believe war is
never moral, and crusaders believe it is the ultimate means to bring
about God's kingdom on Earth, the dominant view among some Christians
for centuries has been that war can be justified under certain
conditions.
Now the debate has shifted to whether
the United States should stay. Heimbach says he is not convinced the
situation is hopeless or that the cost of remaining is too high.
Daniel
R. Lockwood, president of Multnomah Bible College and Biblical Seminary
in Portland, Ore., says he has seen a "sea change" among his students,
who are looking beyond traditional conservative issues such as abortion
and homosexuality to the environment, children with HIV/AIDS and the
poor.
"More and more, students are very interested
in social justice and issues often associated with the middle and the
left," Lockwood says, "and the war is a piece of that."
Before the war in Iraq, the Brownlows shared the concerns of the religious right.
Suzanne
and Dave Brownlow met at a church singles group in Houston 26 years
ago. As born-again Christians, they vowed their marriage, like their
faith, would be politically active. He picketed Planned Parenthood
clinics; she organized for the Concerned Women for America, eventually becoming the director of the organization's state chapter.
They
had Jared, now 20; Desi, 19; Jace, 15; and Sierra, 12, and moved to
Oregon in 1990 for Dave's job. They home-schooled their children, were
foster parents for three medically fragile youths for Heal the Children
and housed eight foreign-exchange students. They say those experiences
"made the world smaller for them."
They campaigned
on behalf of Republican candidates. In 2001, Suzanne Brownlow won the
Concerned Women for America's National "Diligence" award.
But
by 2002, troubled by the lack of progress on the anti-abortion front
and the legality of the president's war powers, they joined the Constitution Party. Soon after the invasion, Dave Brownlow began writing articles opposing the war.
Meanwhile, Jared Brownlow — long fascinated by military histories, movies and photos of his grandfather, a World War II tail gunner — joined the Army.
The Brownlows say their eldest son has not objected to their anti-war efforts. He's serving in the Army near Baghdad.
Suzanne
Brownlow says she had no choice. Increasingly overcome with worry, she
has trouble eating and dreams of helicopters landing in her yard. Her
husband starts every day clicking onto casualty Web sites. The couple
keep two clocks in their living room, one for Oregon and one for Iraq.
Although
many churchgoers are active against the war, the Brownlows say they
still feel self-conscious sharing their views with their Christian
friends, or even praying at their church for their son's platoon.
People have told them that freedom isn't free or that they must support
the troops.
"As if to say that by allowing our sons
and daughters to languish in a vast Iraqi shooting gallery," Dave
Brownlow says, "we are somehow supporting them."
"We
really don't fit anywhere," Suzanne Brownlow says. "All our friends are
pro-war and think we are heretics for talking against the president."
Feminists for Life College Outreach Program Inspires Legislation
Washington, D.C., March 19, 2007 __ Senators Elizabeth Dole, R-North Carolina, and Ben Nelson, D-Nebraska, introduced the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Pregnant and Parenting Student Services Act of 2007 today to help pregnant and parenting college students continue their education.
The bill is named for the famous suffragist, mother of the women’s movement and advocate for women’s education, and is modeled on a program Feminists for Life initiated on college campuses in 1997.
“This legislation supports women who wish to be both students and mothers,” said Sen. Nelson. “By fostering a parent-friendly environment in our nation’s universities, we can help these students who have made the decision to balance parenthood and education.”
“Pregnancy and child rearing can be overwhelming, particularly when coupled with the pressures of being a student,” said Sen. Dole. “Whether they are married or single, mothers or fathers, we need to do our part to support these students and provide them with options that allow them to be a parent and still graduate from college.”
The bipartisan Senate bill, if passed into law, would establish a pilot program to provide up to $50 million in grants to encourage institutions of higher education to establish and operate a pregnant and parenting student services office. The on-campus office would serve parenting students, prospective student parents who are pregnant or imminently anticipating an adoption, and students who are placing or have placed a child for adoption.
Legislation with the same name was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Representatives Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, and Sue Myrick, R-North Carolina, in February.
Again, thanks Lisa for an enriching conference. The following account of Dr. Kittay's talk is taken from what I heard and remember. Since both my hearing (and listening) and memory are notably fallible, it is possible that I have misunderstood or mischaracterized Dr. Kittay's positions and statements. If so, I look forward to correction. In her presentation, Dr. Eva Feder Kittay criticized Susan Stabile and Marie Failinger for suggesting that Christian feminism provided a richer account of woman than its secular counterpart. She thought this statement divisive and suggested that sisters in a common cause should look to what unites, not what divides. Substantively, Dr. Kittay argued that all dependent human beings (at least all born human beings - she didn't address abortion) were due care under a reciprocity theory of justice because all human beings are dependent at some point in their lives, particularly when they are young and old. During the question and answer period, I asked Dr. Kittay upon what foundation was she building her argument that human beings have a dignity worthy of respect by others. Specifically, I asked on what grounds is a perpetually dependent human being (a severely retarded individual, for example) due care as a matter of justice. She answered by saying that the standard philosophical foundation for concluding that human beings are owed justice is the capacity to reason. As I understood her, she rejects this as too narrow, concluding that it is our dependency (not our rationality) that binds us and creates certain obligations. The perpetually dependent human is owed care because even though he or she may not be able to reciprocate, he or she is part of a great cycle of reciprocal care giving and care receiving by human beings generation after generation.
Four comments. First, I agree with Dr. Kittay that when we are working toward a specific goal (working for family leave legislation for instance), we should build as broad a coalition as possible, setting aside our differences. Second, except for the narrow case just described, a much richer pluralism is born, IMHO, of each participant in the discussion bringing their whole self into the discussion. Third, it seems to me that the anthropological question (and our responses to it) is vital to the conversation. A key question is why? Why is slavery wrong? Why is abortion wrong? Why was Hitler's project wrong?Why is it wrong to discard the perpetually dependent? Some anthropoligical foundations from which these questions can be answered are sturdier than others. Finally, it seems to me that Marie and Susan's Christian anthropology (I look forward to Marie and Susan teasing out the differences between a Lutheran and a Catholic anthropology) provides a richer and sturdier foundation for feminism than Dr. Kittay's secular dependency care theory. No matter how reasonable it might seem, Dr. Kittay is building her dependency care feminist project from her own preference for how the world ought to be ordered. She is not making a Truth claim about human persons and the world in which they live. There is no grand "sez who" to use Leff's words, judging that her view of the perpetually dependent individuals is Right and that a position that perpetually dependent individuals, by reason of their lack of reasoning capacity, are not subjects of justice (see Ackerman, Social Justice in a Liberal State) is Wrong. Susan and Marie, on the other hand, are making Truth claims about the human person. These claims, which can be known to some extent through reason without the mediation of revelation, may or may not be true. But, if they are true, they do, it seems to me, provide a richer account of dependency care theory. In the end, I don't think it is a question of whether Susan and Marie have a richer account but whether they have a true account. Because if it is true, then it is richer, isn't it?
I hope Dr. Kittay will respond. And, to all of you, readers and contributors, am I correct that the exploration of the anthropological foundations here (as in other areas) is vitally important, especially in this time when our public anthropology is unstable and much contested?
As immigration raids rise, human toll decried
Arrests across US break up families
By Yvonne Abraham, Globe Staff | March 20, 2007
When Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided a meatpacking plant in Marshalltown, Iowa, on Dec. 16, arresting 99 workers who could not prove they were in the country legally, then-governor Tom Vilsack was livid.
Immigration officials "chose to pursue a solitary path that limited the operation's effectiveness, created undue hardship for many not at fault, and led to resentment and further mistrust of government," Vilsack wrote in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.
The ICE raid was part of the agency's largest-ever enforcement operation, hitting Swift & Co. slaughterhouses in six states and resulting in the arrests of 1,297 workers. As of March 1, 649 of those workers had been deported.
Like the March 6 raid on the Michael Bianco Inc. leather goods factory in New Bedford, in which more than 300 workers were arrested, the Swift operation left some children stranded for hours, and many others in the care of friends and relatives. ICE flew many detainees to an out-of-state federal detention facility before immigrants' advocates had a chance to speak with them about their children. Some detainees were not initially honest with ICE investigators about whether they had children, fearing they, too, would be taken into custody even though some of those children were US citizens.
And like the New Bedford raid, the Swift raids drew harsh criticism from the governor, who criticized ICE's limited cooperation with state officials, including its refusal to release information in a timely fashion on who was detained and where.
Immigration raids nationwide have increased in recent months. Scenes similar to those in New Bedford and Marshalltown have played out in cities like Worthington, Minn., and Stillmore, Ga., where a poultry plant was raided last Labor Day. In Santa Fe, 30 undocumented workers were arrested in a raid in February, and Mayor David Coss said he was outraged that "families are being torn apart, literally."
For the rest of the article. Lisa, the conference was great! Thank you!
Monday, March 19, 2007
Last week I noted the controversy over the Muslim cashiers at Target who refused to handle customers' pork purchases. (They have since been reassigned by the company.) I asserted that "it would be hard to discern an institutional mission that rises or falls on the requirement that cashiers handle all products."
Antonio Manetti responds:
It's actually not that hard. The act of refusing to touch pork products thus forcing the customer to scan the item herself or call another clerk to do so can be taken by the customer as annoying at best and offensive at worst implication being that contact with 'unclean' food makes one unclean). I wonder how a customer might feel when the checkout clerk effectively proclaims that repugnance to everyone within earshot.
Also, when I go to the store, I don't expect to be subjected to gratuitous moral judgments from checkout clerks. In my opinion, the desire to avoid needlessly annoying or offending customers is a legitimate part of the stores' 'institutional mission'.
I agree that a store could reasonably conclude that customer sentiment weighs in favor of not permitting the objecting Muslims to remain as cashiers. But in my view, something more than that is required if we're serious about honoring conscience. (Let's assume for the moment that there aren't other available positions in the company, so the choice is between accommodating the cashiers as cashiers or terminating them.) When I argue that employers should be empowered to maintain their own moral identities, I contemplate particular moral claims being made by the employer. I do not mean that an employer should be able to overcome the employee's own moral claims by constructing a moral identity defined only by the negation of the employee's claims. In other words, if Target wants to define itself as the anti-vegetarianism store (just as some pharmacies have defined themselves in pro-life terms), then talking about institutional mission -- in the way I mean it -- seems appropriate when dealing with these objecting cashiers. But if the employer's institutional identity consists only of a requirement that cashiers handle all products, that seems akin to identity-by-negation, rather than one grounded in any affirmative claim of moral truth. There is, of course, a moral dimension to the claim "we value our customer's ability to make their own purchase decisions," but it is so sweeping as to preclude any product-related request for accommodation by the cashier. I want a person's conscience to be taken seriously in the marketplace; I just want to make sure that institutions still have the ability to function as venues for the common articulation and pursuit of conscience. I am skeptical that customer autonomy should be sufficient to serve as a categorical trump of contrary moral claims.
Nothing that I've said suggests that employers are helpless to take action if the number of cashiers objecting to certain products becomes so high that accommodation would cause an undue hardship to the employer. Target is dealing with a relatively small number of objecting cashiers, a single product, and a large pool of non-objecting cashiers who could scan the product without significant disruption to the business. If this becomes a bigger problem, the analysis could change.
I'm still thinking my way through all this, so I welcome other perspectives on these questions.
