Thanks to Richard for his post on the article (online here) by Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life of America (DFLA). Richard makes some important points, but I believe there is a fallacy in his post that means his argument against Kristen's piece is largely misdirected. (Full disclosure: I am on the advisory board of the Minnesota state chapter of Democrats for Life, and I know and have consulted with Kristen Day, although not on the article in question.)
Richard's main claim is that Kristen (and DFLA generally?) improperly "confus[es] not killing babies with helping them and their mothers [through various safety-net measures]." He then equates this with a confusion between (a) preventing killing and (b) merely saving lives or minimizing overall deaths (including deaths from natural causes) -- the latter of which, he argues, cannot be the foundation of the pro-life movement because it logically would entail the permissibility of taking one life in order to save several (he cites the castaways-in-the-boat scenario).
But this argument is misdirected as against Kristen's article, for most of it (and most of DFLA's work) aim not just at saving lives or minimizing deaths in general, but at stopping or reducing abortions or other forms of killing/violence. In the online PDF copy of the article linked to above, out of about 10 pages dealing with specific issues, more than 2 pages deal with the group's 95-10 proposal for reducing abortions through safety-net and other measures; about 2 pages deal with embryonic stem-cell research, almost 2 with euthanasia, almost 2 with the death penalty, and 1 with the justice of war -- all of them issues involving killing rather than the mere fact of death, to use Richard's distinction. With respect to the content of her textual arguments, these too mostly concern preventing killing; see, e.g., pp. 3-4 (calling for legislation "providing women with the options they need to bring their pregnancy to term"); p. 11 (calling for stem-cell research " that does not harm or destroy human life"); p. 15 (pointing to the number of Iraqis and Americans "killed as a result of the [Iraq] war"); p. 12 (quoting the Catholic bishops' call, with respect to the death penalty, "'to abandon the illusion that we can protect life by taking life'"). Notice how the last quote runs precisely opposite to Richard's claim that Kristen's/DFLA's logic entails that one life could be taken to save several; such a consequentialist argument is more prevalent among death-penalty supporters than among pro-life Democrats.
Admittedly, many of Kristen's and DFLA's proposals emphasize the importance of reducing abortion through a strengthened safety net -- attacking the economic pressures and vulnerabilities that make abortion seem necessary to many women -- rather than only through criminalization (though DFLA has worked to pass regulations against abortion, including in its 95-10 initiative, and has supported abortion bans like this one). But trying to stop abortion through the safety net is still (no less than criminalization) trying to stop killing. It's not the same as just trying to help people, or to minimize overall deaths in some purely consequentialist fashion.
Now, of course one can argue that we must respond to killing with criminal sanctions before all else, or that strengthening the safety net is misguided because it will encourage undesirable behavior, etc. But Richard doesn't raise either of those challenges -- and if one accepts that a strengthened safety net would be effective in reducing abortions (as European experiences suggest), then one can rightly be quite concerned about the relative willingness of Republicans to cut the safety net, and conclude that this is one significant factor weighing in favor of Democratic policies. (That's to say nothing of the pragmatic argument that the safety-net emphasis, as an incrementalist strategy, may be more effective than prompt criminalization in moving Americans ultimately toward an attitude of striving against abortion.)
It's also true that Kristen's article calls at various points for "a true culture of life that extends beyond abortion." But that refers largely -- not exclusively, but largely -- to the other issues of killing that I listed above. Of course, one can argue that the death penalty and war, although forms of killing, are not as fundamental in terms of life issues as is abortion because of the distinction between targeting innocent and non-innocent persons. But again, since Richard does not make that criticism, for these purposes we are assuming that the death penalty and war are fundamental life issues -- and one can certainly conclude that there are significant differences between Republicans and Democrats on both of them.
Admittedly, at various points in her article Kristen's call for a "broader culture of life" extends beyond preventing killing/violence to preventing deaths in general: she mentions, for example, deaths from poverty and AIDS. I would reemphasize that these arguments accompany the numerous arguments in Kristen's piece for preventing or reducing various forms of violence and killing -- and I would submit that in this overall context, it is not only perfectly understandable, but also morally imperative, to include a strong call for preventing such "non-killing" deaths. It is morally right because deaths from epidemic or desperate poverty or severe environmental degradation, even if not morally the same as deaths from violence, reflect tremendous human suffering, stunting, and lost hopes and opportunities -- and moreover, the kind of suffering that is usually so pervasive and hopeless as not to be spiritually rewarding in any way. We are certainly called, by explicit scripture and by moral reason, to try to minimize such things (which themselves are often a proximate consequence of civil wars, gang conflicts, or other violence). We are also called, by God-given common sense, to recognize how various policy positions ultimately, even if indirectly, affect the extent to which such horrors occur.
Lest I be misunderstood, let me make a few things clear: I know that Richard is committed to the full range of important moral issues, and I respect him both for that and for his emphasis on the foundational status of preventing violence and killing. I also concede that one can reasonably disagree with DFLA's particular emphases, or with its judgment that pro-life goals can be pursued within the Democratic Party (although I think that they can and that it's important for some people to do so). I do claim that (1) DFLA's position makes sense and (2) the argument that Kristen Day and DFLA are embracing a principle of simply "helping people" is fallacious.
The faculty at the Georgetown University Law Center have started a blog. It doesn't look like it will be devoted to "Catholic Legal Theory" (or even to "Legal Theory in the Catholic Tradition"!), but it promises to be a must-read in any event. Check it out.
The new volume of the Journal of Catholic Legal Studies (formerly The Catholic Lawyer) is available on-line, and is chock-full of good stuff: Michael Perry on capital punishment and human rights, Mark Sargent on law-and-economics, Michael Scaperlanda and others on education, etc. Check it out.
Here's an interesting Beliefnet interview with religion professor Stephen Webb, author of a new book called Good Eating, who "describes himself as an 'evangelical theologian' whose vegetarian lifestyle is biblically based." He explains:
I started reading the Bible again from a perspective of compassion for animals, and I felt like I was reading it for the first time. I discovered a whole world of passages about animals.
The trick is to see the Bible framed in terms of God's love for all of creation and the shared destiny of humans and animals. Animals are a crucial part of God's creation. They're there when animals are shown in heaven in the great visions of the prophets.
From this he concludes that [v]egetarianism is the diet of hope, an eschatological diet":
It's a diet of witnessing to your hope that, in the end, God will restore the entire world to God's original intentions. That God will redeem humans and animals alike.
Redeem animals from what? Not their own sins? You have to rethink heaven. It's not just for people who sin--it's for any creature who has suffered, whose life has been incomplete, who's been a victim. Heaven is about the restoration of all things to their original goodness.
I wouldn't want to go around judging everyone who eats meat, but I do think vegetarianism is an act that witnesses to our faith.
Among the interesting exegetical elements: the point that Adam and Eve still ate fruit and nuts after God gave them dominion over the earth (and only ate meat after the fall), and the claim that God gave the Israelites a sickening oversupply of quail as punishment for their being dissatisfied with manna.
It's also interesting that, among other things, this is the same Stephen Webb whose previous book American Providence, according to the publisher's synopsis,
argues for a robust doctrine of providence--a doctrine that he contends has been frequently neglected by American theologians due to their reluctance to claim any special status for the United States. He defends the idea that American foreign policy should be seen as a vehicle of God's design for history.
I wonder if, given our current cultural-political alignments, Professor Webb is the only person in the world who believes in both vegetarianism and the providential role of the United States.
At a deeper level, though, the two positions may be consistent. In Webb's outlook, both vegetarianism and American providentialism appear to be efforts to bring God's ultimate intentions for the world into the here and now.
It does seem to me, though, that a Christian idea of American providentialism, to be consistent with the kind of "vegetarianism of Christian hope" that Webb defends, has to have two qualifying features: (a) I should have a preference against using military force -- otherwise you're dismissing any Christian eschatological hope that the ultimate norm of peacemaking can be brought into the world's affairs, the very kind of eschatological hope that Webb advocates with respect to diet and treatment of animals. (Not having read the first book, I don't know what he says about the use of military force.) (b) It should have an appreciation of how a providential nation can be arrogant and get things wrong. (And the two books may be consistent on this score; according to this review by Jean Elshtain, what Webb's earlier book defends is "a position of chastened providentialism within which providence is felt as a burden that checks triumphalism.")
Kristen Day, the head of Democrats for Life of America, has recently published an interesting piece entitled “Politics and the Culture of Life: Why I Am Still a Democrat” (in the Notre Dame Journal of Law Ethics and Public Policy). Since I also would like to think of myself as a Democrat, I took a look at essay. It has some great ideas for helping empower women to choose life, but it also seems to me to contain a quite common mistake, reflecting a deep ambiguity in the term "pro-life" itself. By conflating non-violence with helping (e.g. confusing not killing babies with helping them and their mothers), she seems to imply that the Democratic Party is as pro-life as (or even more pro-life than) the Republican Party—even on the abortion issue alone.
This is a strategic mistake, because it encourages the Democrats to think they don’t have to change, to think that all they have to do is to put a new spin on their message. Far better for Democrats for Life of America to tell the Party that it has to unhitch itself from Roe if it wants to survive. DFLA may be missing an especially teachable moment in national politics.
But it is also a deep ethical-political error in her essay. Only on the basis of non-violence can humanitarian sentiments not become diabolical. We saw this in Russia under the Soviets, but here’s a more concrete example I use for my students: Recall that (real) case of three shipwrecked sailors and one cabin boy who were all four starving to death in a lifeboat. One is to take it as a known fact that if the three sailors did not kill and eat the cabin boy all four would die. Now, if the purpose of the rule against killing is to preserve life, they arguably should feast away, because that way they would at least save three lives rather than having all four die. (Indeed, if one of the sailors had tried to prevent the other two from killing and eating the boy, that sailor could not be considered pro-life, because he would be causing extra deaths.) Note how the good sentiment of wishing to save lives becomes a reason to kill the innocent.
We are led to this strange conclusion because we have wrongly imagined that the sole purpose of the rule against killing is to save lives. I maintain that saving lives is not its primary purpose, either legally or morally. Rather, its main purpose is to prevent violence. The utilitarian reason for a rule not to kill our neighbor is not so much to make her live longer as to make sure that as long as she lives she can trust us, can turn her back to us without fearing a knife in her back. In the lifeboat context, the rule against all killing is what keeps the four men working together for survival rather than each watching for the chance to bite before being bitten. From a religio-moral point of view, the idea behind the rule is an inclusive foundation for community, an insistence on inherent human inviolability rather than on length of life.
Killing is our main enemy, much more than death. It is far better for four deaths to occur than for one murder to occur. Death is not inherently evil, nor can it be avoided. We’re all going to die; I hope none of us will be murdered. For these reasons, I think the phrase "Respect Life" far better than "Pro-Life" to get at the core issue at stake. (I elaborate on this theme, at a much more abstract level, in “The Priority of Respect”, 44 International Philosophical Quarterly 165-84(2004).
The late pope used to make a similar point when he wrote that all other rights are meaningless if there is no right not to be killed. And I think this may also be what the Catholic bishops were getting at when they revised their “seamless garment” image a few years ago, substituting (as I recall) the “House of Life” image. The rules against direct and intentional killing our neighbor form the necessary foundation for the house. Once the foundation is solid, then walls (i.e. the myriad ways of preserving and enhancing life) must be added, but you have to start with the foundation.
What I would say to the Democrats is this: “You have a tremendous opportunity before you. Right now you cannot be considered to respect life because you support intentional killing on a massive scale. But if you were to reverse yourself here, you would not just pull even with the Republicans, but would instantly come out way ahead of them for pro-life voters like myself--because you would be ready to build not only the foundation of the House of Life (as are the Republicans) but the walls as well (as the Republicans seem not to be).”
Professor Friedman (Religion Clause blog) reports:
USIP Urges US Support of "Islamic Renewal"
Yesterday's Morocco Times covered a special report by Abdeslam Maghraoui issued recently by the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) in Washington. The report argues that the only way for the U.S. to effectively counter Islamic extremism is to back "Islamic Renewal", a growing social, political, and intellectual movement whose goal is a deep reform of Muslim societies and policies. The USIP is an independent, nonpartisan institution established and funded by Congress. Here is the USIP's summary of the report and a link to the full text of the document titled American Foreign Policy and Islamic Renewal.
I wonder . . . how does -- or how should -- the Constitution constrain the United States in its efforts to support "a growing social, political, and intellectual movement whose goal is deep reform of Muslim societies and policies"? For example, is the purpose to promote, endorse, or instigate changes in Islam or in Muslims' beliefs and practices a "secular purpose"? Are there limits on the ability of officials to promote what they regard as the true version of a particular religion, as opposed to a version that, it is claimed, has "highjacked" that religion?
I have suggested elsewhere that -- for better or worse -- the content of religious doctrine and the trajectory of its developments are matters to which even secular, liberal, and democratic governments will almost certainly attend; and that it is not the case that governments like ours are, or can be, "neutral" with respect to religion's claims and content. Religion shapes what people think -- it shapes their values, commitments, loyalties, priorities, etc. -- and so a government that depends (as many think ours does) on the formation of citizens with certain dispositions and capacities will care what religions teach. Are they allowed, though, to try to change what religions teach? If not, why not?
After returning from a week away, I have enjoyed catching up with the recent blog postings. In this post, I want to address Steve Shiffrin's post from a few days ago.
In that post, Steve says: "I am also opposed to government trying to express what it considers to be the religious sentiments of majorities. 'In God We Trust' is a good example of the latter. In expressing the sentiments of the majority, it suggests that Buddhists, Hindus, atheists, and agnostics are not part of the “We” in our political community. Is it part of Christianity not to respect other citizens because of beliefs with which we disagree? And just what has been gained for religion?"
I respectfully disagree with Steve. To my mind, the motto, the "under God" language in the Pledge, and the display of the Ten Commandments are not merely attempts by the government to express what it considers the religious sentiments of the majority. Instead, these symbols reinforce the fact that "our institutions constitutionally presuppose a Supreme Being." (from July 4 posting by Steve). These public symbols are especially important at this time when the presupposition itself is under attack. By saying that we are a nation under God, the majority is in a sense paying its deepest respect to the Buddhist, Hindu, atheist, and agnostic, by recognizing (as the Christian must) that these minorities are created in God's image and likeness, and, therefore, worthy of being treated with dignity despite their minority status.
Harvard theologian Harvey Cox heralds the resurrection of a "progressive" wing of American evangelicalism, evidenced in the evangelical leaders who have called for campaigns against global warming and poverty, criticized the Iraq war, and so forth. "This does not mean they will all vote for Democrats, with whom they still disagree on several matters, but that they are concerned about a much wider range of issues." Then Cox has something to say about "family values" and the gospel:
One reason the future may belong to these new evangelicals is that they take the life and teaching of Jesus more seriously than the religious right, which bases its positions not on the gospels, but on what they call "traditional values" and "family values." But Jesus himself had little to say about family values; rather, he emphasized love of neighbor, and even of the enemy.
A quick, non-sytematic reaction to this paragraph: One can agree with Cox that the current Religious Right fails to emphasize some central Biblical themes in its public-policy prescriptions -- I do think this with respect to poverty, the environment, and peacemaking -- and at the same time think that that "family values" are important for a few reasons: (1) Jesus did say things about family, e.g. condemning divorce or at least its easy availability. (2) Ideals and commands concerning family appear prominently elsewhere in the scriptures. (3) The principle of the importance of family is defensible without appealing to the authority of Jesus or scripture and thus is the kind of argument particularly appropriate for a religiously pluralistic society (as progressives often emphasize in other contexts). (4) Some aspects of "family values" are important to other themes that Jesus did emphasize, e.g. the care of the vulnerable including children (for whom stable, supportive families are important). (5) An emphasis on the family may therefore be a valuable means of translating elements of Jesus's teaching into today's circumstances, when the nuclear-family household has largely replaced ties such as extended family, village, or clan that would have been central in Jesus' time.
I think we could all agree that what these arguments provide support for is a wholistic focus on family health and stability, not a focus solely on an issue like opposing same-sex marriage (even if the latter is properly part of the wholistic agenda).
A new organization has been founded to seek "ownership and citizenship in the people's Church envisioned at Vatican II, attended by accountable, listening servant-bishops." (A rousing discussion of the campaign can be found over at the Commonweal blog.) What drew my interest is the inaugural "Take Back Our Church" newsletter, in which the organizers embrace a new model for the Church founded on the "U.S. Constitution which sets up an enculturated American system of governance that makes absolute rule absolutely impossible."
I'm certainly amenable to reform movements, as I believe that ongoing reform is an essential part of the Christian vocation -- personal as well as institutional. But I'm not enthusiastic about looking to our nation's constitutional framework as a model for a religious organization. One key objective of the constitution, as I understand it, is to create space where divergent claims of ultimate truth can coexist in peace; this requires a certain degree of state agnosticism on those claims. The whole point of religion is to proclaim these truths, an endeavor for which absolute rule (in the form of revealed truth) may be appropriate. If the Church is pushed to replicate the liberal order, what's the point of the Church?
