Because, as tomndebb mentions, opposition to abortion in the Christian church far predates Roe v. Wade. There are documents from the second century AD unambiguously condemning abortion, as well as from Protestant leaders after the Reformation.
Because Jesus never mentioned abortion, or homosexuality for that matter. If one wants to use the Bible as a source of moral authority, then it makes sense to rely on the parts that mention a topic.
Regards,
Shodan
And I posted a rebuttal to tomndebb’s post, which means it’s a prebuttal to your post.
Yes but Waltke is probably an outlier. Plenty of evangelicals believe that a fetus has a soul and is a human life.
It wasn’t a very strong prebuttal, IMO. The opinion of one academic does not establish what US evangelicals thought - I would prefer a poll or something like that. And I don’t see how a Senator winning a close race based on his anti-abortion stance shows that American evangelicals viewed abortion with indifference.
Regards,
Shodan
If it wasn’t very strong, it should have been easy for you to demolish it.
You’re right - the official stance of the Southern Baptist Convention doesn’t have any relation to what US evangelicals think. Ditto what’s in Christianity Today. :rolleyes: :dubious: :rolleyes:
With respect to the latter, it isn’t so much that the content of CT = what evangelicals think, but rather that CT reliably stays within the bounds of what the evangelical community regards as acceptable discourse.
IOW, this has nothing to do with the *opinions *of the academics in question, but the facts they cite, and their connection to this discussion. I’d have thought that was pretty obvious.
That isn’t what it shows. Did you read? (SATSQ: No.)
DinoR, since you seem to have some knowledge on the evangelical PoV, could you present the more charitable version of it which you’d like to be more visible?
I have no difficulty admitting that one can be evangelical without subscribing to all/most of what I wrote in the OP yet it still leaves me curious about 1) what that better version of evangelicalism is 2) What might account the rest of the movement aside from common human failings
Christianity Today is not a party line magazine, it publishes different perspectives within the Christian community. It is not surprising that a college professor had a relatively more liberal take on abortion. That does not mean that the professor spoke for the evangelical movement. For instance, right after Roe v Wade, Christianity Today had a editorial that said apocalypticly “Christians should accustom themselves to the thought that the American state no longer supports, in any meaningful sense, the laws of God, and prepare themselves spiritually for the prospect that it may one day formally repudiate them and turn against those who seek to live by them.”
Francis Schaeffer’s book “How should we then live” is kind of the founding text for evangelicals as a political movement. It says abortion is against Christianity and Roe v Wade is symptomatic of the assault of truth and standards that would inevitably lead to infanticide and euthanasia if not stopped. He said Christians were morally obligated to organize and vote to have it overturned.
Both the Southern Baptists and the Intervarsity book took the position that abortion should be outlawed and only allowed in case of rape, incest, gross deformity, or the mother’s health. That is a pro-life position, it may be more moderate than most of us currently have, but that is totally different than the abortion on demand framework of Roe v Wade.
You posted a couple of citations indicating that the issue of abortion was not universally consistent among Evangelicals in the 1960s. However, I never claimed that it was a universal position. I only noted that it was held by more people than just Catholics and your “rebuttal” does nothing to disprove my statements. I do not claim that there was no shift in views–just as the issue of Creationism changed from the 1960s (when it was generally accepted, even among many Evangelicals), but the notion that the Evangelical community in its entirety suddenly reversed its views to adopt a papist position as a political one needs more support than that of one blogger.
I didn’t say it had no relation.
As an ELCA Lutheran, I am uncomfortably familiar with the phenomenon of the upper echelon of the church hierarchy believing and pushing social policies that are quite different from what the laity thinks as a whole.
AFAICT the facts being discussed are what US evangelicals thought about abortion circa Roe v. Wade, and that they were indifferent hasn’t been factually established.
Regards,
Shodan
Religion is not a democracy. Of course the laity are likely to want to the church to be closer to the secular world. The fact that so many mainstream churches are giving in is why so many true believers are seeking guidance elsewhere. And I can’t blame them, even as an atheist. What is the purpose of a religion if it just reflects society’s morals?
The Church always has been a mirror, after the initial proselytizing. The RC Church generally trims it’s political views to whichever is presently dominant. Amongst the oligarchs, an oligarch; amongst the Kings, a supporter of the throne; amongst the moderns, Democracy all the way, Baby !
Not applicable to the ‘Brights’, the *Strong Atheist *regimes like North Korea — naturalich.
However, Church hierarchies are more likely to urge reconcilement to the New and Shiny than are their staid old parishioners. They went to college too.
Interesting short article: http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/09/14/25415400/white-evangelicals-believe-in-nothing
TLDR: In 2011, 30% of white evangelicals thought private immoral conduct did not prevent officials from fulfilling their public duties. In 2016, it was 72%. The overall tendency among white evangelicals is to tribally support whatever the GOP leader says or does, everything they say about principles and morality is a squid squirting ink.
As I said, this is an overall tendency, if any evangelicals who aren’t like that would like to step in and talk about the better side of US white evangelicalism or go on about the other 5/6, it would be nice to hear about it.
Except they’re the ones who might actually not judge lest ye be judged and don’t throw stones and are aware of the beam in their eye.
There is a difference between cultural evangelicals and actual evangelicals.Cultural evangelicals are people whose families go to church and actual evangelicals actually go to church. The cultural conservatives are more likely to be Trump supporters and to be more interested in economic issues and immigration than social issues.
So, we hardly ever hear from the better part of US white evangelicalism because they’re just too nice and humble? If so, they better accept that their branch of religion will become associated with the worse part of it. Otherwise,
TESTIFY!
I’ve heard the Roman Catholic Church described as a continuation of the Roman empire through soft power. Could white Evangelical Christianity (hereby, “WEC”) be a continuation of the CSA? It would explain the nasty, xenophobic, domineering, tribal, pre-modern aspects of it.
I’m not sure about the term “pre-modern”. When we hear some WEC leader talk about tornados being divine punishment for homosexuality, we find it ridiculous but that’s little different than medieval peasants thinking the plague was divine punishment, farmers in antiquity making offerings at the temple to get a good harvest or hunter-gatherers ritually sacrificing an animal to ensure a bountiful hunt. The god they talk about must be understood as a tribal god too, a protector of WASPs in the same way that YHVH was a protector of the Jews; born again general Boykin is a good example:
“the article revealed Boykin giving a speech about hunting down Osman Atto in Mogadishu: “He went on CNN and he laughed at us, and he said, ‘They’ll never get me because Allah will protect me. Allah will protect me.’ Well, you know what? I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.””
Religious fundamentalism is correlated with authoritarianism. Authoritarianism is the real problem, and religious fundamentalism tends to be the spiritual belief of authoritarians.
Authoritarians in the middle east become Islamic jihadists. In the US they become right wing christians.
But christianity itself isn’t the problem. Jimmy Carter is a christian. So was Mr. Rogers. The problem is right wing authoritarianism.
That’s nice. Why did they pick the ugliest?
Only in a hyper simplistic manner. The “god” most people who use The Secret pray to isn’t the Judeo Christian god by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s very hard for Americans to hear “god” and think of anything else. It’s a lot more similar to the Deist god, or even a pantheistic “the universe” as god. And really, when you get down to it, what it’s really saying is that you should focus your mind on your goal, making it a reverberating priority that manifests in all of your thought patterns. The easiest way to do that is to hijack the worship circuitry and overhaul it for your purposes.
The prosperity gospel is almost the exact opposite. Where The Secret says that your desire and willpower is ultimately what determines where you end up, which is extremely individualistic and empowering, the Prosperity Gospel says obey, sacrifice unto god, or suffer. It’s a far cry of a difference, and speaks to the problems inherent with a lot of evangelical interpretations of biblical teachings (almost all of the difference between them and other protestant branches are that they ignore the potentially self empowering interpretations and amp up the “obey or burn” side up to fantastical extremes).