129 Sermon Illustrations on Politics

The late Tip O'Neill, longtime Speaker of the House of Representatives, passed on some of the lessons he learned over his political career, in his autobiography MAN OF THE HOUSE.

His first campaign as a very young man was for a place on the Cambridge (Massachusetts) city council. He was not elected, and one of the reasons he lost was that he took his own neighborhood for granted. He worked hard speaking and meeting folks elsewhere, but neglected his own backyard. Out of that came an adage that has long been associated with O'Neill: His father told him, “Son, all politics is local. Don't forget the people back home.”

The night before that election, he ran into Mrs. O'Brien, his former elocution and drama teacher in high school, who lived across the street. “Tom,” she said, “I'm going to vote for you tomorrow, even though you didn't ask me.” “Mrs. O'Brien,” he came back, “I've lived across the street from you for 18 years. I cut your grass in the summer and shoveled your walk in the winter. I didn't think I had to ask you for your vote! “She responded, “Tom, let me tell you something -- people like to be asked.”

So, over the years ahead across a long career in Congress, Tip and his wife Millie would always go to the polls together on Election Day. Before leaving the house he would always say to her, “Honey, I'd like to ask you for your vote.” And she would always reply, “Tom, I'll give you every consideration.”

The Southern Baptist conservative resurgence has been driven foremost by a deep concern for faithfulness to scriptural teaching and is not a reaction to increasingly secularized culture, writers in the spring issue of The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology assert.

The issue, a publication of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, focuses on “Theology, Culture, and the SBC,” and interacts with Barry Hankins' recent book, “Uneasy in Babylon.”

Thomas R. Schreiner, professor of New Testament interpretation at Southern Seminary, contends that many of the issues addressed by Southern Baptist conservatives have cultural ramifications, but are fundamentally theological.

“[Hankins] rightly points out that many of the theological issues that took center stage also have cultural ramifications,” Schreiner writes. “But this is scarcely surprising. Faithfulness to the teaching of Scripture demands that we declare in public the teaching of Scripture that is contravened in our age and time.”

Schreiner, though, argues that a merely cultural explanation of the conservative resurgence does not fully explain why conservatives have raised certain issues.

“We emphasize inerrancy and the necessity of personal faith in Christ to be saved because many in the theological community deny these truths,” he writes.

Schreiner is one of four Southern Seminary faculty members who interact with “Uneasy in Babylon.” The others are seminary president R. Albert Mohler Jr., and professors Gregory A. Wills and Russell D. Moore.

Hankins, associate professor of history and church-state relations at Baylor University, offers a response to the Southern faculty.

The writers contend that the Southern Baptist conflict centered on the issue of biblical authority. Moore, assistant professor of Christian theology, says that Hankins miscalculates the extent to which cultural phenomena drove the conservative resurgence.

“Contrary to Hankins' thesis, conservatives did not rally Southern Baptists around inerrancy in order to fight a battle against abortion, the sexual revolution, feminism or any other cultural phenomenon,” Moore writes.

“Instead these issues crystallized the debate over larger theological and missiological questions of biblical authority, the Great Commission, and the prophetic role of the church in protecting those the culture deems not worthy of life.”

Conservatives are most concerned with the advance of the Word of God, Moore argues.

“Baptist conservatives know they will not find Jerusalem in an idyllic southern culture or in a Republican White House or in a less profane Hollywood,” he writes. “They must seek to hold back the cultural darkness, but they know they will find a New Jerusalem only in the Kingdom of Christ -- a Kingdom that is seen even now in the advance of the Gospel around the world.”

Wills, associate professor of church history, says that theological conviction has driven conservatives to confront liberalism in the seminaries for decades. The resurgence of the 1980s was grounded in conservative activity from decades earlier.

“Conservatives believed that the denomination was drifting from orthodoxy,” Wills writes. “Although they raised some accusations against other denominational agencies, the seminaries were the main targets. Many aspects of the post-1979 campaign to expunge liberalism from the seminaries arose from the denominational experiences in the 1950s and 1960s.”

Echoing Moore in his critique of Hankins, Wills contends that conservatives “were not seeking a platform for countercultural political endeavors but an orthodox foundation for advancing the faithfulness of Southern Baptists in fulfilling the divinely ordained mission of the church.” But Hankins argues that Moore and Wills misunderstand the thesis of “Uneasy in Babylon.”

“Rather than attempting to show that theology is subservient to culture war, I intended to argue that the two are so closely related that a failure to understand one is a failure to understand the other,” Hankins writes. “What Moore and Wills have done is set in opposition the two parts of my interpretation of Southern Baptist conservatives. I do not see these two as oppositional.”

Parties from both sides of the dispute, according to Hankins, tend toward reductionism in labeling the causes of the conservative resurgence. While conservatives often credit the movement wholly to theology, moderates tend to discount theological causes altogether.

“While abortion and the other issues I have covered in 'Uneasy in Babylon' are theological in one sense, the public and cultural impact of these issues heightened the perceived need to shore up the theology of the denomination, and the cultural component also helped convince rank-and-file Southern Baptists that something needed to be done.”

However, Mohler argues that the Southern Baptist controversy has fundamentally theological roots extending back to the fundamentalist- modernist controversy of the 1920s. Over the past 80 years, theological trends have polarized Southern Baptists into two distinct parties, Mohler writes.

The “'Truth Party' insists that Baptist doctrine and polity are inescapably attached to a prior affirmation of biblical truth, to a clear understanding of biblical authority, and an affirmation of revealed truth as demanding our belief in certain doctrinal essentials,” Mohler writes.

The “Liberty Party,” on the other hand, “is established upon an aggressive assertion of individual rights to interpretation, theological formulation, and experience.”

Mohler concludes, “The defining issues are now before us. The Southern Baptist crisis now comes down to the urgent issue of conviction, confession, and cooperation. The question now presented to the Southern Baptist Convention demands an answer: Will we stand upon the absolute truthfulness and full authority of Holy Scripture?”

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[Original illustration at this number was added to HolwickID #386]

Over the last few years, there's been increasing political and cultural pressure to keep Christian influence out of public affairs. We've seen it in restrictions on prayer at public events, on posting of the Ten Commandments and the recent Supreme Court case. We see it when politicians or the media describe evangelical Christians as “bigots.”

One of my greatest worries is that the Church will oblige the secularists by retreating into our safe sanctuaries. I've had religious leaders tell me that all we need to do is lead people to Christ and keep them in our churches, and that's the end of our biblical responsibility. Nonsense.

This is a profoundly dangerous point of view because it would undermine the balance between church and state that is vital for the protection and the rights of all citizens.

We live in a democracy, remember, where the will of the majority is enacted into law. Most people believe that this is the best way to guarantee freedom and to promote the common welfare. And democracy has been hugely successful in the American experiment.

But our founders recognized that unrestrained democracy can lead to a tyranny of the majority. Let's say that the majority believes that it's fine to kill people who are designated by doctors as within their last six months of life. What's to stop them?

The Constitution? We've seen how judges reinterpret the Constitution, and how the so-called “right to die” is increasingly being recognized in public policy. It's a short step from a “right to die” to an obligation to die.

The point, you see, is that there must be restraints on democracy. That's why our founders described the American founding as an experiment in “ordered liberty.” That is, order must be maintained for freedom to be enjoyed by everyone. That's why our founders relied on a prevailing consensus that there was an absolute moral law. Some people thought it came from the Enlightenment, but most recognized it as our biblical heritage.

You may have heard the Church described as the conscience of society. It is the only institution that can provide a moral restraint against the excesses of a tyrannical regime. Therefore, it is essential to preserving human freedom. Our government, whenever it passes laws, makes moral judgments. But it is in no position to enforce a moral code in today's highly pluralistic environment.

That's why a strong, vibrant Church is required — not necessary just so you and I can exercise our religious freedom, but so that we can be an influence for the common good in society. In a way, this is God's gift for the freedom and welfare of all people.

William Wilberforce, the man for whom our Wilberforce Forum is named, wrote that God had laid before him two great objectives: the abolition of the slave trade and the reformation of manners. He knew that both were needed. And our founders, men and women of the same era, understood this as well. The events of July 4, 1776, that we celebrate today began the experiment to see if this balance could be preserved.

This is why the Church today must take its stand: be the Church, with all that means. We ought to be explaining, as well, to our secular neighbors that they don't have anything to fear from the much-maligned “Religious Right.” Rather they should welcome Christian influence for the common good of all and the preservation of freedom.

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Copyright (c) 2005 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #5556]

My Source:

THE SALT SERVER

“Death By Compromise”

Guest Editorial, by Mr. Rod Martin

November 8, 1998

… … … … … …

Author: Rod Martin

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NOTE ABOUT AUTHOR: Mr. Martin is a graduate of Baylor Law School, a Fellow of the Kuyper Institute for Political Studies, and former Director of Policy Planning and Research for Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. He currently serves as Executive Director of the Arkansas Federation of Young Republicans and as an Associate Editor of USA Journal Online.

Last year, after “moderate” Republicans were whipped like dogs in off-year elections, I warned that if Republicans acted like Democrats, Americans would vote for real ones. This week they proved it.

The question is whether the GOP will figure it out in time.

Republicans still suffer from the belief that they are an ideological minority; yet the exact opposite is true. Americans generally, and Republicans specifically, have been moving dramatically right for two decades. Like Jesus, they want candidates who are either hot or cold: the lukewarm get spewed out of their mouths. While reporters wring their hands about the polarization of politics, the greatest complaint we hear from the masses continues to be that there isn’t enough difference between the two parties, that they are sick of voting for “Republicrats.” And when Republicans move left, supposedly to gain the center, they actually abandon the majority they created.

A short history lesson makes this clear. In the elections of 1980, 1984, 1988 and 1994, Republicans gave America a dramatic choice — a true vision — and were rewarded for doing so with unprecedented power. By contrast, in 1976, when Gerald Ford actually polled four points to the left of Jimmy Carter on election day; in 1990, when George Bush agreed to raise taxes; in 1992, when Bush purged the Reagan hold-overs from his inner circle and ran hard to the “center”; in 1996, when Bob Dole did his best to imitate George Bush; and now in 1998, when Republicans had no discernible message at all; in all of these races, Republicans were thrashed within an inch of their lives.

The 1998 numbers are especially instructive when examined in this light. Conservatives actually gained more seats than either the Republicans or Democrats, with fifteen pick-ups in the House (twelve Republican and three Democrat) plus Peter Fitzgerald in the Senate. Same-sex “marriage” initiatives lost in both Alaska and Hawaii by comfortable margins. Supposedly-moderate Republican Governors who won big actually had impressive records of state-level conservatism in every case, from Tommy Thompson’s school vouchers to George W. Bush’s mandated explicit, systematic phonics instruction to Mike Huckabee’s welfare reform successes and background as president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention.

In the loss column were such men as Al D’Amato, a smarmy non-ideological pol; Arkansas’ Phil Wyrick, who managed to lose to one of the ten most vulnerable Congressmen in America by mindlessly attacking without any positive vision of his own; Dan Lungren, who by wading to the center managed to lose the California governorship for the first time in sixteen years; South Carolina Governor David Beasley, who issued an executive order instituting the Brady Act; and virtually every Republican in a competitive race whom Christie Whitman endorsed. What more can be said?

Election 1998 represents the culmination of a slow rot within GOP ranks best exemplified by this year’s near-revolt by James Dobson. True believers feel abandoned: they would rather stay home than vote for those they feel have betrayed them. It is the height of irony that the media — and the Republican leadership — so unanimously believed Monica Lewinsky could produce by herself a GOP tidal wave and a depressed Democrat base. Almost half of the Republican base is comprised of Christian conservatives; and they are increasingly unwilling to accept what they consider merely “the lesser of two evils.” On Tuesday, enough of them stayed home to seriously threaten the Republican majority, thus disproving the “moderate” mantra that “the Right has nowhere to go.”

If the Republican base had turned out, the GOP would have won five Senate seats and twenty-five House seats. Period. Yet we continue to hear the drumbeat of “moderation,” as if further alienating our own voters will help.

This is especially idiotic in light of the continuing trend toward low voter turnout. With only a third of Americans interested enough to vote, the certainty in any election is that the candidate who most energizes his base wins. Going to the “center” — usually shorthand for abandoning convictions — is utterly self-defeating: a compelling visionary will always beat a cautious “moderate,” for the simple reason that the wimp vote isn’t very big. Meanwhile, the people, sick of compromise, disgusted with politics-as-usual, will turn out for someone in whom they truly believe. But only if such a person exists.

They voted for a vision in 1994, but by 1998 that vision was completely obscured. Republicans dumped the tax cut without so much as a fight. They held no vote on national right-to-work legislation. They went along with Clinton’s “100,000 new teachers” budget-buster, designed entirely to pay off the Democratic teachers unions. They didn’t even try to close the Departments of Energy and Education or the National Endowment for the Arts, much less roll back oppressive gun control laws, repeal the tax code, or privatize the Social Security Ponzi scheme. There was no vision, and until there is some vision, the Republicans are going to perish.

You’d think people would learn. With only 729 days until the 2000 election, they better learn fast.

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DRL NOTE: It will be very infrequent that I will be posting matters of politics, but this alternative to the news media’s explanation of the recent elections was too tempting. THANKS for your forbearance in the matter.

The founder of a national WEB devotional site asked the candidates in the 2000 election to send in their testimonies. Here is the testimony of George W. Bush, including the political coloring.

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[initial portion missing?]

Actually, the seeds of my decision had been planted the year before, by the Reverend Billy Graham. He visited my family for a summer weekend in Maine. I saw him preach at the small summer church, St. Ann's by the Sea. We all had lunch on the patio overlooking the ocean. One evening my dad asked Billy to answer questions from a big group of family gathered for the weekend. He sat by the fire and talked. And what he said sparked a change in my heart. I don't remember the exact words. It was more the power of his example. The Lord was so clearly reflected in his gentle and loving demeanor.

The next day we walked and talked at Walker's Point, and I knew I was in the presence of a great man. He was like a magnet; I felt drawn to seek something different. He didn't lecture or admonish; he shared warmth and concern. Billy Graham didn't make you feel guilty; he made you feel loved. Over the course of that weekend, Reverend Graham planted a mustard seed in my soul, a seed that grew over the next year. He led me to the path, and I began walking. It was the beginning of a change in my life. I had a always been a "religious" person, had regularly attended church, even taught Sunday School and served as an altar boy. But that weekend my faith took on a new meaning. It was the beginning of a new walk where I would commit my heart to Jesus Christ.

I was humbled to learn that God sent His Son to die for a sinner like me. I was comforted to know that through the Son, I could find God's amazing grace, a grace that crosses every border, every barrier and is open to everyone. Through the love of Christ's life, I could understand the life-changing powers of faith. When I returned to Midland, I began reading the Bible regularly. Don Evans talked me into joining him and another friend, Don Jones, at a men's Community Bible study. The group had first assembled the year before, in Spring of 1984, at the beginning of the downturn in the energy industry. Midland was hurting. A lot of people were looking for comfort and strength and direction. A couple of men started the Bible study as a support group, and it grew. By the time I began attending, in the fall of 1985, almost 120 men would gather. We met in small discussion groups of ten or twelve, then joined the larger group for full meetings. Don Jones picked me up every week for the meetings. I remember looking forward to them. My interest in reading the Bible grew stronger and stronger, and the words became clearer and more meaningful. We studied Acts, the story of the Apostles building the Christian Church, and next year, the Gospel of Luke. The preparation for each meeting took several hours, reading the Scripture passages and thinking through responses to discussion questions. I took it seriously, with my usual touch of humor.

Laura and I were active members of the First Methodist Church of Midland, and we participated in many family programs, including James Dobson's Focus on the Family series on raising children. As I studied and learned, Scripture took on greater meaning, and gained confidence and understanding in my faith. I read the Bible regularly. Don Evans gave me the "one-year" Bible, a Bible divided into 365 daily readings, each one including a section from the New Testament, the Old Testament, Psalms, and Proverbs. I read through that Bible every other year. During the years in between, I pick different chapters to study at different times.

I have also learned the power of prayer. I pray for guidance. I do not pray for earthly things, but for heavenly things, for wisdom and patience and understanding. My faith gives me focus and perspective. It teaches humility. But I also recognize that faith can be misinterpreted in the political process. Faith is an important part of my life. I believe it is important to live my faith, not flaunt it. America is a great country because of our religious freedoms.

It is important for any leader to respect the faith of others. That point was driven home when Laura and I visited Israel in 1998. We had traveled to Rome to spend Thanksgiving with our daughter, who was attending a school program there, and spent three days in Israel on the way home. It was an incredible experience. I remember waking up at the Jerusalem Hilton and opening the curtains and seeing the Old City before us, the Jerusalem stone glowing gold. We visited the Western Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. And we went to the Sea of Galilee and stood atop the hill where Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount. It was an overwhelming feeling to stand in the spot where the most famous speech in the history of the world was delivered, the spot where Jesus outlined the character and conduct of a believer and gave his disciples and the world the beatitudes, the golden rule, and the Lord's Prayer.

Our delegation included four gentile governors-one Methodist, two Catholics, and a Mormon, and several Jewish-American friends.Someone suggested we read Scripture. I chose to read "Amazing Grace," my favorite hymn. Later that night we all gathered at a restaurant in Tel Aviv for dinner before we boarded our middle-of-night flight back to America. We talked about the wonderful experiences and thanked the guides and government officials who had introduced us to their country. And toward the end of the meal, one of our friends rose to share a story, to tell us how he, a gentile, and his friend, a Jew, had (unbeknownst to the rest of us) walked down to the Sea of Galilee, joined hands underwater, and prayed together, on bended knee. Then out of his mouth came a hymn he had known as a child, a hymn he hadn't thought about in years. He got every word right: Now is the time approaching, by prophets long foretold, when all shall dwell together, One Shepherd and one fold. Now Jew and gentile, meeting, from many a distant shore, around an altar kneeling, one common Lord.

Faith changes lives. I know, because faith has changed mine. I could not be governor if I did not believe in a divine plan that supersedes all human plans. Politics is a fickle business. Polls change. Today's friend is tomorrow's adversary. People lavish praise and attention. Many times it is genuine; sometimes it is not. Yet I build my life on a foundation that will not shift. My faith frees me. Frees me to put the problem of the moment in proper perspective. Frees me to make decisions that others might not like. Frees me to try to do the right thing, even though it may not poll well... The death penalty is a difficult issue for supporters as well as its opponents. I have a reverence for life; my faith teaches that life is a gift from our Creator. In a perfect world, life is given by God and only taken by God. I hope someday our society will respect life, the full spectrum of life, from the unborn to the elderly. I hope someday unborn children will be protected by law and welcomed in life. I support the death penalty because I believe, if administered swiftly and justly, capital punishment is a deterrent against future violence and will save other innocent lives. Some advocates of life will challenge why I oppose abortion yet support the death penalty. To me, it's the difference between innocence and guilt.

Today, two weeks after Jeb's inauguration, in my church in downtown Austin, Pastor Mark Craig, was telling me that my re-election was the first Governor to win back-to-back, four-year terms in the history of the State of Texas. It was a beginning, not an end.... People are starved for faithfulness. He talked of the need for honesty in government. He warned that leaders who cheat on their wives will cheat their country, will cheat their colleagues, will cheat themselves. Pastor Craig said that America is starved for honest leaders. He told the story of Moses, asked by God to lead his people to a land of milk and honey. Moses had a lot of reasons to shirk the task. As the Pastor told it, Moses' basic reaction was, "Sorry, God, I'm busy. I've got a family. I've got sheep to tend. I've got a life. "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt? The people won't believe me, he protested. I'm not a very good speaker. Oh, my Lord, send, I pray, some other person," Moses pleaded. But God did not, and Moses ultimately did His bidding, leading his people through forty years of wilderness and wandering, relying on God for strength and direction and inspiration." People are starved for leadership, "Pastor Craig said, "starved for leaders who have ethical and moral courage." "It is not enough to have an ethical compass to know right from wrong," he argued. "America needs leaders who have the moral courage to do what is right for the right reason. It's not always easy or convenient for leaders to step forward," he acknowledged. "Remember, even Moses had doubts."

"He was talking to you," my mother later said. The pastor was, of course, talking to all of us, challenging each one of us to make the most of our lives, to assume the mantle of leadership and responsibility wherever we find it. He was calling on us to use whatever power we have, in business, in politics, in our communities, and in our families, to do good for the right reason. And his sermon spoke directly to my heart and my life.

There was no magic moment of decision. After talking with my family during the Christmas holidays, then hearing this rousing sermon, to make most of every moment, during my inaugural church service, I gradually felt more comfortable with the prospect of a presidential campaign. My family would love me, my faith would sustain me, no matter what.

During the more than half century of my life, we have seen an unprecedented decay in our American culture, a decay that has eroded the foundations of our collective values and moral standards of conduct. Our sense of personal responsibility has declined dramatically, just as the role and responsibility of the federal government have increased. The changing culture blurred the sharp contrast between right and wrong and created a new standard of conduct: "If it feels good, do it." And "if you've got a problem, blame somebody else." "Individuals are not responsible for their actions," the new culture has said. "We are all victims of forces beyond our control." We have gone from a culture of sacrifice and saving to a culture obsessed with grabbing all the gusto. We went from accepting responsibility to assigning blame. As government did more and more, individuals were required to do less and less. The new culture said: "If people were poor, the government should feed them. If someone had no house, the government should provide one. If criminals are not responsible for their acts, then the answers are not prisons, but social programs.... "

For our culture to change, it must change one heart, one soul, and one conscience at a time. Government can spend money, but it cannot put hope in our hearts or a sense of purpose in our lives. But government should welcome the active involvement of people who are following a religious imperative to love their neighbors through after-school programs, child care, drug treatment, maternity group homes, and a range of other services. Supporting these men and women - the soldiers in the armies of compassion is the next bold step of welfare reform, because I know that changing hearts will change our entire society.

During the opening months of my presidential campaign, I have traveled our country and my heart has been warmed. My experiences have reinvigorated my faith in the greatness of Americans. They have reminded me that societies are renewed from the bottom up, not the top down. Everywhere I go, I see people of love and faith, taking time to help a neighbor in need... These people and thousands like them are the heart and soul and greatness of America. And I want to do my part. I am running for President because I believe America must seize this moment, America must lead. We must give our prosperity a greater purpose, a purpose of peace and freedom and hope. We are a great nation of good and loving people. And together, we have a charge to keep."

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Is it time to give up on our battle to stop the legalized murder of unborn children? After all, ROE V. WADE will have been the "law of the land" for three decades this coming January. Americans are used to it. Isn't it time to move on? No.

When we get discouraged, it's time to remember the lessons of history -- specifically, the lessons of eighteenth-century England.

It was in 1787 that William Wilberforce, a member of Parliament and a Christian, decided he would take on one of the most entrenched moral evils of the day: the British slave trade.

Wilberforce knew from the start that this would be no easy task. The British empire depended heavily on the slave trade. Wilberforce knew that in order to succeed, he would have to go about the matter in the right way.

First he educated himself thoroughly, learning all about slavery and conditions on slave ships. Then he began working with a small but influential group of friends who were equally committed to abolition, known as the Clapham sect. They supervised government inquiries into the horrors of the slave trade and exposed it. Wilberforce and his allies then began educating the public about these horrors.

The first victory was a small one, but it proved that the slave industry was vulnerable. It was a vote in 1788 that restricted the number of slaves that a ship could be allowed to carry based on the ship's tonnage.

For the next nineteen years, Wilberforce introduced bills banning the slave trade. And year after year, his opponents found ways to defeat them, often playing dirty. As Kevin Belmonte writes in his great new book, HERO FOR HUMANITY, Wilberforce faced "a constant stream of false accusations and vitriol, death threats, [and] a challenge to a duel."

But after nearly two decades of hard work, it became clear that the logjam was breaking. The public would no longer tolerate commerce in human misery. This change in attitude, writes Belmonte, grew directly from "the sustained campaign to convince the public of the slave trade's immorality."

Finally in 1807 -- twenty years after Wilberforce began his battle -- the House of Commons voted by an overwhelming majority to abolish the slave trade.

What is the lesson of Wilberforce's life? Despite repeated losses, he kept working. By God's grace, his cause made incremental gains. He didn't demand all or nothing but eventually carried the day. He then continued his labors, and eventually slavery was outlawed three days before he died in 1833.

This is what we have to remember when we become discouraged over abortion: We're making progress. More college students now say they're pro-life than pro-abortion. Ultrasound machines in crisis pregnancy centers are leading more mothers to bear their babies instead of aborting them. Congress recently passed the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, and we've come close to passing a ban on partial-birth abortion.

Wilberforce understood that while people may ignore the truth, they still recognize it when they see it. So he looked for ways to remind people of what they already knew in their hearts.

You and I need to do the same. Gradually, slowly, we're winning the hearts and minds of the next generation.

Give up on the abortion fight? Not a chance.

FURTHER READING & INFORMATION

Kevin Belmonte, HERO FOR HUMANITY: A BIOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM WILBERFORCE (NavPress, 2002).

William Wilberforce, A PRACTICAL VIEW OF CHRISTIANITY (Hendrickson, 1996).

Kevin Belmonte, "William Wilberforce," Wilberforce Forum Website. http://www.wilberforce.org/WilberforceForum/ChannelRoot/Welcome/WilliamWilberforce/William+Wilberforce.htm

BreakPoint commentary no. 021015, "Whose Choice Is 'Pro-Choice'?" http://www.breakpoint.org/Breakpoint/ChannelRoot/FeaturesGroup/BreakPointCommentaries/Whose+Choice+Is+ProChoice.htm

Janet Gilmore, "Youths more conservative than their elders on issues involving religion and abortion, new UC Berkeley survey reveals," University of California-Berkeley press release, September 24, 2002. http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2002/09/24_youth.html

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Copyright © 2002 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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Had William Wilberforce lived in our day, the start to his political career would have probably become fodder for political attack ads. Wilberforce was born into the privileged class, and in 1780, at the age of twenty-one, he won a seat in the British House of Commons by outspending his opponents. His political career spanned the next five decades, and to the day of his death Wilberforce never lost an election.(1)

William Wilberforce did not begin his political life with a sense of purpose. (He had squandered his time at Cambridge, enjoyed moving in elite social circles, and entered politics almost on an impulse.) But that changed in the summer of 1785 when Wilberforce experienced a profound conversion. When he accepted Christ as his savior, Wilberforce also wholeheartedly committed his income, his time, and his public career to the service of God. He strongly considered becoming a minister and discussed this possibility with John Newton. Newton urged him instead to retain his place in the political world to work actively to bring about good.

Wilberforce's commitment to acting upon his convictions led him to seek to ban the British slave trade. In doing so, he placed himself in opposition to some of the most powerful business interests in England; John Pollock writes, “[U]prooting the vile practice threatened the annual trade of hundreds of ships, thousands of sailors, and hundreds of millions of pounds sterling.”(2) Nevertheless, he began what he knew would be a slow, hard fight. He met with strong, personal opposition and was physically attacked on two occasions. Many would have given up as year after year Parliament resisted his proposals, but Wilberforce maintained his winsomeness, his good humor, and his persevering spirit. After twenty long years of public campaigning against slavery, the tide of public opinion turned.

By February of 1807, he had finally mustered enough support in the House to pass a ban on the slave trade. Prior to the vote, the attorney general gave a speech in praise of Wilberforce's single-mindedness to preserve the lives of millions. His speech was interrupted as the entire House of Parliament rose to its feet and erupted in cheers. Wilberforce sat with his head in his hands as tears streamed down his face.(3) On February 24, 1807, the bill passed in the wee hours of the morning with a vote of 283 to 16, and the slave trade was abolished in the British Empire. It would take nearly thirty more years to achieve total emancipation, but Wilberforce continued the fight and lived to see this too, dying just three days after slavery itself was outlawed.

In the midst of these political battles, William Wilberforce received a letter, written by Charles Wesley on his deathbed. Wesley wrote, “Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be for you who can be against you?”(4) After the ban finally passed, Wilberforce attributed its success to the work of divine Providence. To those who had watched Wilberforce spend himself on this cause for twenty years, this idea might have seemed laughable. Surely, the ban's success should be attributed to Wilberforce's efforts! Yet William Wilberforce serves as an excellent example to us that a deep belief in the Providence of God should not prevent us from taking action, but should instead propel us to take action. He understood that God has chosen to work through his people to change hearts and bring about his will on earth. One life can change the course of an entire country. May God raise up many to follow in his steps!

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1. Piper, John, “Peculiar Doctrines, Public Morals, and the Political Welfare,” presented February 5, 2002. Available at www.desiringgod.org.

2. Pollock, John, ”A Man Who Changed His Times” Character Counts, ed. by Os Guinness (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1999), p. 81.

3. Ibid. p. 84.

4. Ibid. p. 81.

________

Copyright © 2004 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #1491]

I've been talking in recent days about good news: the emergence of a new breed of keen Christian thinkers who are beginning on campuses across the country a counter-attack against the entrenched forces of secularism. One bright star is Princeton professor Robert George. You don't just hear about Dr. George on BreakPoint; stories by and about him are almost as commonplace in some of the nation's leading periodicals.

Few Christians in our culture live out their worldview as consistently or effectively as does this brilliant young man, and we would do well to learn from his example.

Robert George holds the most prestigious endowed academic chair at that hallowed Ivy League university, as Cyrus McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence. Woodrow Wilson was the first to hold this chair, and Professor George is only the fifth. And he's earned it: He's a prolific writer with a prodigious academic reputation.

But in many respects, Robert George is a fish out of water. Like many other top schools, Princeton is dominated by a secular elite. Lest we forget, Princeton's other most notable academic figure is the so-called ethicist Peter Singer, who openly defends the indefensible: infanticide, euthanasia, and bestiality, among other things.

But Dr. George is a stalwart Christian. And while his Christian worldview touches every sphere of life, in his field -- of politics -- that can be controversial.

But that didn't deter him from opening his class on The Declaration of Independence with a moment of silent prayer in recognition of the rights of freedom granted by that hallowed document. The other faculty sat with their mouths hanging open and startled expressions. But hundreds of students prayed with him ... at Princeton!

Nor did controversy stop him from challenging this country's leading exponent of postmodernism, Stanley Fish. It was in a debate before the American Society of Political Scientists, and it was on the issue of abortion. It was a debate George won hands down as Fish readily conceded before 200 wide-eyed and startled political scientists.

George's uncompromising position on abortion, euthanasia, genetic engineering, and other life issues have made him conspicuous, and highly respected, on the Princeton faculty.

But respect for Dr. George isn't limited to his academic peers. His courses are so popular that students actually fight to sign up for them. And once they're in, their often unexamined cultural assumptions are confronted with the full weight of the Christian intellectual tradition.

But as the pages of The Washington Post recently revealed, Robert George doesn't limit his cultural engagement to the classroom. He is also engaged in national politics; he's a frequent guest and witness on Capitol Hill and part of an informal advisory group at the White House. He played a similar role in advising the late Governor Bob Casey of Pennsylvania. ...

Men and women like Robert George are serving notice on the entrenched, politically-correct, secularist establishment -- which has had a lock on America's campuses for a generation. The best in Christian minds are mobilizing and are on the move. And that's very good news indeed!

_____________________

Copyright (c) 1999 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

Two politicians are holding a debate when one suddenly shouts, 'You're lying.' The other responds, 'I know, but hear me out'." --GOP Rep. Anne Northup, dubbed the funniest woman on the Hill

After President Bush met with Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski in the White House this month, Bush invited his guest into his private study. There, the two men knelt side by side in silent prayer.

White House aides didn't mention that devotional interlude when they described Trajkovski's visit May 2 to reporters, and they were displeased to learn that the private moment was about to become public.

Religion infuses the president's daily life. Bush, 54, starts every day on his knees, praying. He reads the Bible each morning and studies a daily Bible lesson. He often asks a Cabinet secretary to lead a prayer at the beginning of Cabinet meetings. He says he frequently prays in the Oval Office. He sometimes prays on the phone with a minister friend who lives in Houston.

Bush's family, friends and longtime aides say faith helped him quit drinking, find his vocation in politics and check his fiery temper. He says it has made him more humble and tolerant.

"I find great comfort in my faith," he told Fox News last month. "It helps me realize that I am a person that as a lot of responsibility, but I am just a person -- nothing more than a human being who seeks redemption, solace, and strength through something greater than me."

Overt expressions of faith by elected leaders can make some Americans uncomfortable. Some employees at the Justice Department say the daily prayer sessions there, led by Attorney General John Ashcroft, make them feel they might be expected to participate. Bush's appeals to the religious right during his campaign made some people wary of his links to groups such as the Christian Coalition and their socially conservative agenda.

"Americans want a president to have a private, individual faith," says Philip Goff, director of the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis. "What most Americans are uncomfortable with is the institutions of church and state overlapping."

Religion has been central to Bush's life since 1985, when he had a pivotal conversation with Rev. Billy Graham. At the time, Bush was in his late 30s, hard-partying and unfocused. He did not take his religion seriously. Graham questioned him about his commitment to his faith, Bush wrote in his autobiography, "A Charge to Keep", and "God planted the seed of faith in my heart. It was the beginning of a new walk where I would recommit my heart to Jesus Christ."

He was raised an Episcopalian but became a Methodist when he got married and joined the church of his wife, Laura. He spoke of his beliefs often during the campaign and said at his inauguration, "We are guided by a power larger than ourselves who creates us equal in his image."

Bush isn't reluctant to describe his active faith. "I pray all the time, "he said in the Fox News interview. "When I am alone in the Oval Office (and) something might be on my mind ... I will pray. I don't think that I could be sitting here as comfortable as I am and as peaceful as I am had it not been for my religion."

Bush's prayers in the Oval Office are usually solitary. But Trajkovski, like Bush, is a Methodist. The Macedonian president is also a lay minister. Before the visit, Trajkovski's staff suggested to White House aides that he would welcome a chance to pray with Bush. When Trajkovski entered the Oval Office for the formal meeting, Bush recognized a pin on his lapel. It was the emblem of the United Methodist Church, a cross and a flame signifying the Holy Spirit. After their official conversation, Bush invited Trajkovski to join him in prayer.

Bush's frequent references to God and his faith make Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, cringe. "When a president wears his religion on his sleeve as visibly as this one does ... he isn't simply using the bully pulpit to speak his mind,"Lynn says. "He's trying to impose his religious views on other people."

Some critics thought Bush exploited religion during the primary-election campaign. To build support among traditional Republican voters before a hard-fought South Carolina primary, he visited Bob Jones University, an evangelical school in Greenville that banned interracial dating and whose founder called Catholicism a cult. Another time, in a debate, he was asked what political philosopher or thinker he most identified with. He answered simply, "Christ, because he changed my heart."

Since taking office, Bush has met often with clerics, including Catholic bishops and African-American ministers, at the White House and while traveling. When U.S. military personnel were being detained in China last month, he asked American officials to be sure they had Bibles if they wanted them. He has proposed that religious groups operate some federal programs for the needy.

"Jesus says, 'Keep your piety in private,' " says Martin Marty, a religious historian. "People like the notion that piety shapes a president's morality ... but they know that policies backed by religion have to be scrutinized more than others."

Kirbyjon Caldwell is senior pastor at Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston and a Bush friend who sometimes prays with the president over the phone. Caldwell says Bush's faith is such a significant part of his life that he can't help but talk about it.

"The president's faith is extraordinarily important to him, not just for spiritual reasons but for professional, emotional, social and family reasons," Caldwell says. "The president allows his faith to permeate his entire being. He does not keep his faith in a box and open it when he's in trouble."

However, he doesn't impose it on anybody, his aides say. They see his expressions of faith as one key to his character. "I find it very welcoming," says press secretary Ari Fleischer, who is Jewish. "It's a reminder for everyone about the importance of faith in our lives, and the president practices his so powerfully and so privately that it serves as a simple reminder of the American tradition of having a strong faith."

Bush often attends church on Sundays, including services in the chapel at Camp David, Md., the presidential retreat, but he has not joined a church in Washington.

Other presidents have had deep religious convictions. During his presidency, Jimmy Carter, a Baptist, taught Sunday school. Richard Nixon, a Quaker, invited evangelists to the White House. Abraham Lincoln never joined a church but rarely gave a speech without references to God. Bill Cllinton, a Baptist, recited lengthy Bible passages from memory. John Adams, a Unitarian, studied for the ministry before becoming a lawyer.

Bush has said he doesn't think of himself as an advocate for his religion, but he doesn't intend to hide his faith. "I am ... a lowly sinner who sought redemption and found it," he told USA TODAY in January. "That doesn't make me better than anybody, it just adds perspective, I hope. I think people are going to find that in tough times ... they're going to see a steady hand because the rock on which I stand is something other than the moment, the emotion of the day. Faith can be a steadying influence."

George W. Bush rises ahead of the dawn most days, when the loudest sound outside the White House is the dull, distant roar of F-16s patrolling the skies. Even before he brings his wife, Laura, a morning cup of coffee, he goes off to a quiet place to read alone.

His text isn’t news summaries or the overnight intelligence dispatches. Those are for later, downstairs, in the Oval Office. It’s not recreational reading (recently, a biography of Sandy Koufax). Instead, he’s told friends, it’s a book of evangelical mini-sermons, “My Utmost for His Highest.” The author is Oswald Chambers, and, under the circumstances, the historical echoes are loud. A Scotsman and itinerant Baptist preacher, Chambers died in November 1917 as he was bringing the Gospel to Australian and New Zealand soldiers massed in Egypt. By Christmas they had helped to wrest Palestine from the Turks, and captured Jerusalem for the British Empire at the end of World War I.

Now there is talk of a new war in the Near East, this time in a land once called Babylon. One morning last month, as the United Nations argued and Washingtonians raced to hardware stores for duct tape amid a new Orange alert, the daily homily in “My Utmost” was about Isaiah’s reminder that God is the author of all life and history. “Lift up your eyes on high,” the prophet of the Old Testament said, “and behold who hath created these things.” Chambers’s explication: “When you are up against difficulties, you have no power, you can only endure in darkness” unless you “go right out of yourself, and deliberately turn your imagination to God.”

Later that day, the president did so. At Opryland in Nashville — the old “Buckle of the Bible Belt” — Bush told religious broadcasters that “the terrorists hate the fact that ... we can worship Almighty God the way we see fit,” and that the United States was called to bring God’s gift of liberty to “every human being in the world.” In his view, the chances of success were better than good. (After all, at the National Prayer Breakfast a few days before, he’d declared that “behind all of life and all history there is a dedication and purpose, set by the hand of a just and faithful God.” If that’s so, America couldn’t fail.)

After his speech in Nashville, Bush met privately with pastoral social workers and bore witness to his own faith in Jesus Christ. “I would not be president today,” he said, “if I hadn’t stopped drinking 17 years ago. And I could only do that with the grace of God.” The prospect of war with Iraq was “weighing heavy” on him, he admitted. He knew that many people — including some at the table — saw the conflict as pre-emptive and unjust. (“I couldn’t imagine Jesus delivering a message of war to a cheering crowd, as I just heard the president do,” one participant, Charles Strobel, said later.) But, the president said, America had to see that it is “encountering evil” in the form of Saddam Hussein. The country had no choice but to confront it, by war if necessary. “If anyone can be at peace,” Bush said, “I am at peace about this.”

Every president invokes God and asks his blessing. Every president promises, though not always in so many words, to lead according to moral principles rooted in Biblical tradition. The English writer G. K. Chesterton called America a “nation with the soul of a church,” and every president, at times, is the pastor in the bully pulpit. But it has taken a war, and the prospect of more, to highlight a central fact: this president — this presidency — is the most resolutely “faith-based” in modern times, an enterprise founded, supported and guided by trust in the temporal and spiritual power of God. Money matters, as does military might. But the Bush administration is dedicated to the idea that there is an answer to societal problems here and to terrorism abroad: give everyone, everywhere, the freedom to find God, too.

Bush believes in God’s will — and in winning elections with the backing of those who agree with him. As a subaltern in his father’s 1988 campaign, George Bush the Younger assembled his career through contacts with ministers of the then emerging evangelical movement in political life. Now they form the core of the Republican Party, which controls all of the capital for the first time in a half century. Bible-believing Christians are Bush’s strongest backers, and turning them out next year in even greater numbers is the top priority of the president’s political adviser Karl Rove. He is busy tending to the base with pro-life judicial appointments, a proposed ban on human cloning (approved by the House last week) and a $15 billion plan to fight AIDS in Africa, a favorite project of Christian missionaries who want the chance to save souls there as well as beleaguered lives. The base is returning the favor. They are, by far, the strongest supporters of a war — unilateral if need be — to remove Saddam.

Now comes the time of testing. The war is controversial, more so every day, and the nuclear crisis in North Korea intensifies. The president hasn’t played his diplomatic hand well, and is tied down by the likes of Hans Blix, the Philippine military and the Turkish Parliament, which late last week denied American troops transport rights through the country. Bush advisers know that many Americans — and much of the world — see him as a man blinded by his beliefs (and those of his most active supporters) to the complexities of the world as it is. He makes a point of praising Islam as “a religion of peace.” But to many Muslims, especially Arabs, he looks sinister: a new Crusader, bent on retaking the East for Christendom.

Aides say the president’s quiet but fervent Christian faith gives him strength but does not dictate policy. He’s only seemed like preacher in chief, they say, because of what one called “a confluence of events”: the horrors of 9-11, the terror alerts and the Columbia shuttle explosion. Still, belief gives him something more than confidence, says his closest friend, Commerce Secretary Don Evans: “It gives him a desire to serve others and a very clear sense of what is good and what is evil.”

How did he get that way? Consider this a “faith portrait” of the president, the story of the power of belief to save a life and a family — and to shape a political career and a national government.

GROWING UP — ‘God’s Frozen People’

The story begins in Connecticut. Protestants there long ago were a fiery breed, with Jonathan Edwards’s (Yale ’21 — as in 1721) warning sinners to avoid the wrath of an “angry God.” But by 1946, when George W. Bush was born there, the old-line Episcopalians — Bushes among them — spoke in quieter voices. His dad was a “duty, honor, country” guy, a World War II hero and a punctilious churchgoer. But he was uncomfortable with public testimonies of faith, especially his own. The hoary joke among Episcopalians seemed apt: we’re “God’s Frozen People.”

The Bible belt was another story, but not for the Bushes. Moving in 1948 to the oil patch of west Texas, they joined other Ivy League immigrants from back East at the Presbyterian church in Midland. (Barbara Bush had been reared in the denomination.) It was staid compared with other churches there, more madras than denim. Dad raised money for the building fund, and taught in Sunday school. “Georgie” was a dutiful son and churchgoer. Years later, in an excess of spin, his mother claimed that he’d always shown an interest in reading the Bible. George smilingly said he was unable to remember such a fact. Sent back East to prep at Andover, he became a school “deacon.” But that role had long since lost any true religious significance; Bush used it to engineer pranks, not minister to the student flock.

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RELIGIOUSLY-TINGED STATEMENTS BY BUSH:

“An angel still rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm.”

Context: The whirlwind symbolizes a medium for the voice of God in the Books of Job and Ezekiel.

“Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.”

“We are in a conflict between good and evil, and America will call evil by its name.”

Context: Bush's references to “good” and “evil,” on the upswing since 9-11, imply the Biblical clash between Christ and Satan.

“And the light shines in the darkness. And the darkness will not overcome it.”

Context: A reference from the Book of John (appropriated from the Hebrew Scriptures) to the coming of Christ.

“The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity.”

Context: This statement is not found in Scripture, but harks back to the writings of French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville. It raised a red flag for supporters of separation of church and state.

“The crew of the shuttle Columbia did not return safely to Earth; yet we can pray that all are safely home.”

Context: The words “safely home” are commonly used in homilies delivered at Christian funerals to mean that those who've died are now with Jesus.

“There's power, wonder-working power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people.”

Context: “Power, wonder-working power” is a direct quote from one of the oldest evangelical gospel songs.

Karen Yourish

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Come-to-Jesus stories are more dramatic if the sinner is a pro. Bush was a semipro, a hardy partyer — his Triumph convertible was famous in Houston — until he married Laura in 1977. They joined her Methodist church. In most respects, he became what his father was, a respected member of the congregation. But he was a drinker, and a serious one. Only after work and at night, he told himself. But sometimes the nights were long. He could be famously obnoxious at parties, and, worse, a bore to his patient wife. The birth of his twin daughters in 1982 brought him joy. But, friends say, Laura grew increasingly fed up with his drinking. By 1985, as he approached 40, he needed to fix his relationship with the women in his life. “Nothing was broken,” Evans said. “But he wanted it to be better.” Mostly, he had to leave alcohol behind.

In campaign biographies, ghostwriters highlight the role that Billy Graham played in launching Bush on what he and Evans call his “Walk.” The truth is more prosaic, and explains far more about Bush’s evolving views, not only of faith but of government. Evans, married to a Bush elementary-school chum, was the key. He had been the golden boy of Midland, a handsome straight arrow, a “Cowboy” at the University of Texas (the Skull and Bones of Austin). He had gone home to climb the ladder of Tom Brown Oil Co., a booming concern in a booming economy. But in 1984 the oil business caved in. “It was the worst industrial collapse in the history of the American economy,” says Evans, who was left with the task of plowing through piles of corporate debt. Personal life was hard, too. By that time, he’d learned that a daughter, born severely handicapped, would need lifetime care.

As a west Texan, Evans did what came naturally in a storm: he joined a nondenominational Bible-study group. He coaxed his friend George to come along. The program was called Community Bible Study — started, ironically, in the Washington, D.C., area in 1975 by a group of suburban women. By the time it got to Midland, it was a scriptural boot camp: an intensive, yearlong study of a single book of the New Testament, each week a new chapter, with detailed read-ing and discussion in a group of 10 men. For two years Bush and Evans and their partners read the clear writings of the Gentile physician Luke — Acts and then his Gospel. Two themes stood out, one spiritual, one more political: Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, and the founding of the church. Bush, who cares little for the abstract and a great deal for people, responded to the conversion story. He liked the idea of knowing Jesus as a friend.

The CBS program was a turning point for the future president in several ways. It gave him, for the first time, an intellectual focus. Here was the product of elite secular education — Andover, Yale and Harvard — who, for the first time, was reading a book line by line with rapt attention. And it was ... the Bible. In that sense, Bush is a more unalloyed product of the Bible belt than his friends, who may have deeply studied something else in earlier days. A jogger and marathoner for years, Bush found in Bible study an equivalent mental and spiritual discipline, which he would soon need to steel himself for his main challenge in life to that point: to quit drinking.

Bush says he never considered himself to be an alcoholic, and never attended an AA meeting. But it turned out he didn’t have to. CBS was something akin to the same thing, part of what has since come to be called the “small group” faith movement. It’s a baby-boomerish mix of self-help, self-discipline, group therapy (without using what, for Bush, is a dreaded word) and worship. Whatever, it worked. As the world knows, Bush did quit drinking in the summer of 1986, after his and Evans’s 40th birthday. “It was ‘goodbye Jack Daniels, hello Jesus’,” said one friend from those days.

THE POLITICS — Making New Friends

Bush turned to the bible to save his marriage and his family. But was he also thinking of smoothing his path to elective office? We’ll never know for sure. But he knew the political landscape of his near-native Texas. He knew that, by 1985, the South had risen to take control of the GOP, and that evangelical activism and clout was rising with it — indeed had been instrumental in making it possible. He also knew that his father’s way — Episcopalian reserve, moderation on cultural issues, close ties to back East — was a tough sell, to say the least. Bush the Younger had experienced it firsthand, in 1978, when he impetuously ran for Congress in Midland. He was a proud alumnus of Sam Houston Elementary and San Jacinto Junior High. But he had been clobbered as an Ivy League interloper nonetheless.

When Bush moved to Washington in 1987 to help run his father’s campaign, he seized the main chance: to take over the job of being the “liaison” to the religious right. He quickly saw that he could talk the talk as well as walk the walk. “His father wasn’t comfortable dealing with religious types,” recalled Doug Wead, who worked with him on evangelical outreach. “George knew exactly what to say, what to do.” He and Wead bombarded campaign higher-ups with novel ways to reach out. Wead slipped Biblical phrases — signals to the base — into the Old Man’s speeches. Dubya, typically, favored a direct approach. He wanted to feature Billy Graham in a campaign video. Dad nixed the idea.

Bush and Rove built their joint careers on that new base. Faith and ambition became one, with Bush doing the talking and Rove doing the thinking on policy and spin. In 1993 — the year before he ran for governor — Bush caused a small tempest by telling an Austin reporter (who happened to be Jewish) that only believers in Jesus go to heaven. It was a theologically unremarkable statement, at least in Texas. But the fact that he had been brazen enough to say it produced a stir. While the editorial writers huffed, Rove quietly expressed satisfaction. The story would help establish his client’s Bible-belt bona fides in rural (and, until then, primarily Democratic) Texas. As a candidate, Bush sought, and got, advice from pastors, especially leaders of new, nondenominational “megachurches” in the suburbs. His ideas for governing were congenial to his faith, and dreamed up in his faith circles. The ideas were designed to draw evangelicals to the polls without sounding too church-made. “Compassionate conservatism” — mentoring, tough love on crime, faith-based welfare — was in many ways just a CBS Bible study writ large. The discipline of faith can save lives — Bush knew it from personal experience — and undercut the stale answers of the left.

The presidential campaign was Texas on a grander scale. As he prepared to run, in 1999, Bush assembled leading pastors at the governor’s mansion for a “laying-on of hands,” and told them he’d been “called” to seek higher office. In the GOP primaries, he outmaneuvered the field by practicing what one rival, Gary Bauer, called “identity politics.” Others tried to woo evangelicals by pledging strict allegiance on issues such as abortion and gay rights. “Bush talked about his faith,” said Bauer, “and people just believed him — and believed in him.” There was genius in this. The son of Bush One was widely, logically, believed by secular voters to be a closet moderate. Suddenly, the father’s burden was a gift: Bush Two could reach the base without threatening the rest. “He was and is ‘one of us’,” said Charles Colson, who sold the then-Governor Bush on a faith-based prison program.

For his public speeches, he hired Michael Gerson, a gifted writer recommended to him by Colson, among others. A graduate of Wheaton College in Illinois (“the Evangelical Harvard”), Gerson understood Bush’s compassionate conservatism. More important, he had a gift for expressing it in stately, lilting language that could appeal, simultaneously, to born-agains and to secular boomers searching for a lost sense of uplift in public life.

The Bush campaign conducted its more-controversial outreach below radar, via letters and e-mail. Only once was it forced to reach out in a raw public way. After John McCain won the New Hampshire primary, Bush made his infamous visit to South Carolina’s Bob Jones University, the ultrafundamentalist and officially anti-Roman Catholic school. Strategists were opaque in public, unapologetic behind the scenes. “We had to send a message — fast — and sending him there was the only way to do it,” said one top Bush operative at the time. “It was a risk we had to take.” Bush won.

THE RECKONING — Forged in the Fire

Faith didn’t make Bush a decisive person. He’s always been one. His birthright as a Bush gives him a sense of obligation to serve, and a sense of an entitlement to lead. West Texas, where dust storms and the gyrating economy buffeted the locals, left him with a love of straight shooters and a come-what-may view of life. A frat man at Yale in an increasingly radical time — the late 1960s — he came to loathe intellectual avatars of complexity and doubt — especially when they disparaged his dad. He is a Pierce, too: a quick-to-judge son of a quick-to-judge mother.

Still, faith helps Bush pick a course and not look back. He talks regularly to pastors, and loves to hear that people are praying for him. As he describes it, his faith is not complex. In recent weeks he has added a new note to his theme of the personal uses of faith, drawn from CBS. Now there is a sense of destiny that approaches the Calvinistic. “There is a fatalistic element,” said David Frum, the author and former Bush speechwriter. “You do your best and accept that everything is in God’s hands.” The result is unflappability. “If you are confident that there is a God that rules the world,” said Frum, “you do your best, and things will work out.” But what some see as solidity, others view as a flammable mix of stubbornness and arrogance. “No one’s allowed to second-guess, even when you should,” said another former staffer.

The atmosphere inside the White House, insiders say, is suffused with an aura of prayerfulness. There have always been Bible-study groups there; even the Clintonites had one. But the groups are everywhere now. Lead players set the tone. There is Gerson, whose office keeps being moved closer to the Oval. Chief of staff Andrew Card’s wife is a Methodist minister. National-security adviser Condi Rice’s father was a preacher in Alabama.

The president is known to welcome questions about faith that staffers sometimes have the nerve to share with him. But he’s not the kind to initiate granular debates about theology. Would Iraq be a “just war” in Christian terms, as laid out by Augustine in the fourth century and amplified by Aquinas, Luther and others? Bush has satisfied himself that it would be — indeed, it seems he did so many months ago. But he didn’t do it by combing through texts or presiding over a disputation. He decided that Saddam was evil, and everything flowed from that.

The language of good and evil — central to the war on terrorism — came about naturally, said Frum. From the first, he said, the president used the term “evildoers” to describe the terrorists because some commentators were wondering aloud whether the United States in some way deserved the attack visited upon it on September 11, 2001. “He wanted to cut that off right away,” said Frum, “and make it clear that he saw absolutely no moral equivalence. So he reached right into the Psalms for that word.” He continued to stress the idea. Osama bin Laden and his cohorts were “evil.” In November 2001, in an interview with NEWSWEEK, he first declared — blurted out, actually — that Saddam Hussein in Iraq was “evil,” too.

The world, and the Bush administration, are focused on Iraq. But as a matter of politics and principle, the president knows that he needs to deliver on his faith-based domestic agenda, especially since his party controls Congress. The wish list compiled by Rove is a long one. It includes conservative, pro-life judicial nominations; new HUD regulations that allow federal grants for construction of “social service” facilities at religious institutions; a ban on human cloning and “partial birth” abortion; a sweeping program to allow churches, synagogues and mosques to use federal funds to administer social-welfare programs; strengthened limits on stem-cell research; increased funding to teach sexual abstinence in schools, rather than safer sex and pregnancy prevention; foreign-aid policies that stress right-to-life themes, and federal money for prison programs (like the one in Texas) that use Christian tough love in an effort to lower recidivism rates among convicts.

While Rove and Hill leaders work the domestic side, Bush is dwelling on faith-based foreign policy of the most explosive kind: a potential war in the name of civil freedom — including religious freedom — in the ancient heart of Arab Islam. In the just-war debate, he has strong support from his base. Leading advocates for the moral virtue of his position include Richard Land, the key leader of the Southern Baptist Convention’s political arm. Another supporter is Michael Novak, the conservative Catholic theologian. Novak recently journeyed to Rome to make his case at the invitation of the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, Jim Nicholson, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee. All politics is local.

But the president is facing a mighty force of religious leaders on the other side. They include the pope (Bush will meet with a papal envoy this week, NEWSWEEK has learned), the Council of Bishops, the National Council of Churches, many Jewish groups and most Muslim leaders. “People appreciate his devotion to faith, but, in the context of war, there is a fine line, and he is starting to make people nervous,” says Steve Waldman, the editor and CEO of Beliefnet, a popular and authoritative Web site on religion and society. “They appreciate his moral clarity and decisiveness. But they wonder if he is ignoring nuances in what sounds like a messianic mission.”

Muslims are especially wary. Bush has gone to great lengths to reassure them that he admires their religion. He has hosted Ramadan dinners, and periodically criticized evangelicals, including Franklin Graham, who denounce Islam as a corrupt, violent faith. Still, evangelical missionaries don’t hide their desire to convert Muslims to Christianity, even — if not especially — in Baghdad. If one of the goals of ousting Saddam Hussein is to bring freedom of worship to an oppressed people, how can the president object?

For Bush, that’s a nettlesome question for another time. If he’s worried about it or other such weighty matters, it wasn’t obvious at dinner upstairs in the private quarters of the White House the other week. He and Laura had invited close friends and allies such as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Bush, as usual, was a genial, joshing host. Also, as usual, he didn’t want the evening to last too long. “He tends to rush through cocktail hour,” says a friend. “One quick Coke and he wants to eat.” The president asked Rumsfeld to say grace. (“Can you help us out here, Mr. Secretary?”) As 10:30 p.m. approached, the commander in chief seemed eager to turn in. Knowledgeable guests understood that he wanted to catch at least a few minutes of his beloved “SportsCenter” on ESPN. But he also needed to get up early, very early. He had some reading to do.

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With Tamara Lipper, Martha Brant, Suzanne Smalley and Richard Wolffe

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RELIGIOUSLY-TINGED STATEMENTS BY BUSH:

Delivering the 'Good News'

While past presidents have invoked the name of God in public remarks, President Bush has done so, arguably, more than others-and has increasingly moved beyond broad statements on faith to include overt Christian references. An overview:

Inaugural Address, Jan. 21, 2001

“An angel still rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm.”

Context: The whirlwind symbolizes a medium for the voice of God in the Books of Job and Ezekiel.

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Speech to Congress, Sept. 20, 2001

“Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.”

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West Point Commencement, June 1, 2002

“We are in a conflict between good and evil , and America will call evil by its name.”

Context: Bush's references to “good” and “evil,” on the upswing since 9-11, imply the Biblical clash between Christ and Satan.

______________________________________

9-11 Remembrance,Sept. 11, 2002

“And the light shines in the darkness. And the darkness will not overcome it.”

Context: A reference from the Book of John (appropriated from the Hebrew Scriptures) to the coming of Christ.

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State of The Union, Jan. 29, 2003

“The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity.”

Context: This statement is not found in Scripture, but harks back to the writings of French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville. It raised a red flag for supporters of separation of church and state.

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Hours After Shuttle Tragedy, Feb. 1, 2003

“The crew of the shuttle Columbia did not return safely to Earth; yet we can pray that all are safely home.”

Context: The words “safely home” are commonly used in homilies delivered at Christian funerals to mean that those who've died are now with Jesus.

______________________________________

State of The Union, Jan. 29, 2003

“There's power, wonder-working power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people.”

Context: “Power, wonder-working power” is a direct quote from one of the oldest evangelical gospel songs.

______________________________________

Karen Youris

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© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.

*

All citizens, regardless of their religious beliefs, must be free to voice any opinion about anything or anyone to their governmental representatives. Moreover, they should even be able to voice any concern about the representatives themselves in public without fear of retribution by the government.

James Madison understood this fact of political science when he penned Federalist Ten. Fearing that certain “factions” (or special interests) might seek to restrict free speech from those who held opposite opinions, he saw freedom of speech as the antidote for the “mortal diseases” which had destroyed other countries.

The one indispensable ingredient for this to work: liberty.

Madison was no political novice. He realized that elections were often “carried along” by the “vicious arts” of “unworthy candidates.” To combat such people from being elected to office, he believed that “the suffrages [rights] of the people being more free, will be more likely to centre in men who possess the most attractive merit and the most diffusive and established characters.” Unless, of course, the representatives themselves grew to fear the scrutiny of the people so much so that they passed laws to protect themselves from the close watch of the electorate.

This is precisely the issue at hand over 200 years later in the very same republic Madison helped form.

Tucked away in the Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(3) is an amendment introduced by then-Sen. Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1954. Under penalty of prosecution and the forfeiture of a tax-exempt status, the statute requires churches and some religious organizations to “abstain from participating or intervening, directly or indirectly, in any political campaign on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office.” “Issue discussions” divorced from political candidates are permitted so long as specific issues are not linked to particular candidates who hold certain positions.

Regardless of the senator's intentions, the regulation fails to take into account that ideas alone do not make policy. People make policy. To dictate to the church the boundaries of what can and cannot be said from the pulpit places the state over the church in matters of religion. This is expressly forbidden by the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion.”

HR 235, a bill currently working its way through Congress, seeks to lift the ban, unshackle pastors and church leaders, and restrict government to its rightful and constitutional position.

Precisely because the pulpit possesses great power to influence large numbers of people, political operatives have targeted its content for censure. To forbid churches from forthrightly declaring that a certain candidate does not support the teaching of the church is to forbid the church, in many ways, to have a voice at all in the public square.

There are, to be sure, inherent dangers for any church to voice public support of any man for anything -- political or otherwise (Psalm 118:8,9). The best of men are men at best, and orthodox Christian teaching warns against trusting in man because of what is “in man” (Jeremiah 17:9; John 2:25). The Gospel of Jesus Christ is owned by no nation or politician - conservative or liberal. Yet, should not, at least in some way, a church's theology and moral teachings gravitate toward those in public life who support those values?

During last year's hearings for the bill, the Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy testified: “We do not want to see houses of worship identified more by the political parties they support than by the theology or the moral values that they proclaim.” Taken to its logical conclusion, Gaddy's proposition is untenable. Behind every public policy lies non-neutral ideas which seek to rule and dominate the political landscape for a certain and defined end. He fails to admit the truth: Public policy is, in many ways, practical theology.

Forcing the church into silence through legal means is but the first step toward the same procedure used by tyrannical governments to advance their agenda unopposed. In muzzling the church's prophetic voice, the state acts as though it fears that the power of national government is limited by another Sovereign who rules with absolute authority and power.

Though history teaches that the church can thrive without the benefit of a democratic republic and tax exemption, the question is and remains: Can the republic thrive without the influence of the church?

_____________

Douglas Baker is a writer who lives and works in Washington, D.C.

*

"In America, anyone can become president. That's one of the risks you take."

-- Adlai Stevenson, Wit & Wisdom, 9/16/03

"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs."

-- P. J. O'Rourke, Wit & Wisdom, 9/16/03

Only 42 percent of American adults can name their own country's three branches of government, but 73 percent can name the Three Stooges, a poll has found.

-- This Is True internet newsletter, 9/24/06

Government, according to the Scripture, is a divinely ordained institution. Its importance in society is secondary to the primary institution, which is the home. By the same token, government parallels the church. Whereas in the divine economy the church is primarily to order and discipline the affairs of born-gain believers, in society as a whole the government exists as a method of resisting evil on the one hand and promoting good on the other.

“Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.” (1 Peter 2:13-17)

Christians, too, are to be in subjection to these authorities as Jesus Himself made clear when He said, “render unto Caesar what is Caesar's” (Matthew 22:21). The subjection to the powers that exist in government, even governments that are evil, is a matter of Christian example. As a result of this general deportment, it is not uncommon even for unsympathetic rulers to admit that Christians generally are the best of citizens creating the most peaceful conditions in any society. However, there are those rare occasions when Christians find themselves in a position where they must demure from that which a government demands, choosing to follow the authority of Christ when it is in direct contradiction to the authority of government.

It is here that the Christian must tread with great care. In light of the Holocaust, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's example of being a part of a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler certainly appears to have been not only an acceptable decision, but a commendable one. Based on Romans 13, governments clearly have the right to bear the sword; this seems to be biblical ratification of the right of a nation to defend itself against aggressors and also the right of a society to exact judgment in the form of capital punishment.

But the question here is a different one. Does the Christian himself have the right, as in Bonhoeffer's case, to become involved in a violent protest against one's own government? It seems to me that this is where the Christian is obligated to move with the greatest care of all.

The principal of Acts 5:29 that “we ought to obey God rather than men” does make allowance in rare situations for the Christian to indulge even in violent protest. Surely this was the conclusion of the American colonists at the time of the Declaration of Independence and the war for independence in this country. Once again though, American colonists faced a question not so much of Christian protest against an existing government. Instead theirs was a question of whether to seek independence from a repressive regime. The fact that some and perhaps many colonists were Christians means that individually they had to assess these matters for themselves.

No particular form of government is prescribed in Scripture. However, the basis upon which a democracy proceeds is that a free and responsible people will always be the most productive people. Such freedom, as is provided in a genuine democracy, will inevitably produce those circumstances that make it possible for citizens to realize their full capacity to know, experience, and imitate God.

Indeed, the principle of democracy seems to me to be embodied in the local church through the doctrine of the priesthood of believers. If the Holy Spirit of God genuinely indwells each believer, then each individual believer should be entrusted with the ability to make the right kinds of decisions to enhance his or her own life, the life of their family, and, indeed, of the world.

Years ago, as a young preacher, I took the view that politics was one domain, and religion was an entirely different one. My responsibility as a pastor was to lead people to faith in Christ, teach them about Christ, and grow the church as a witness within a degenerate world. In that persuasion, I have not changed across the years. I am still convinced that the most valuable thing any Christian can do is to be involved in leading people to Christ and building up the church of God.

Nevertheless, culture wars, politics, and government are areas to which we simply may not turn a deaf ear or blind eye. Eddy McAteer of the then well-known Religious Roundtable was influential in my life in taking me to Washington, D.C. for a briefing in which incontrovertible evidence of the devastation of pornography upon our society was set forth. When I viewed young women being kidnapped, raped and then literally murdered on screen in films prepared in South America for distribution through the underworld in this country, I realized that it was no longer enough for me to avoid the culture wars, politics, and government. Around 1978, I became involved in these culture wars and have not ceased my involvement since.

The fact is that Christians must be salt and light. They cannot live in the world and fail to be both salt and light except at the expense of dishonoring the Lord. Nevertheless, it remains true that the most monumental change in the social order is always wrought in the heart of individual men and women when they are led to repent of their sins and place their faith in Christ. That has to remain the major emphasis of the church.

*

[Original illustration here was a duplicate in HolwickID 25837-26027]

We are living in troubled times. The scandal over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners seems to grow worse every day. A friend of mine at the Pentagon who has seen all of the photos said they were “demonic.” He felt a cold chill of evil, which is not surprising — Satan would like nothing better than to poison our policies in the Middle East. And then this past Monday here at home, gay “marriage” became legal.

Now, it may seem odd to link these two stories, but it's not if you realize that, ultimately, both of them remind us of our need for God and the peril of rejecting Him.

In Massachusetts four judges saw fit to overturn the entirety of recorded human history and tradition. That history and tradition, most perfectly revealed in the pages of Scripture, tell us what happens when we know the truth and willfully disregard it. God turns us over to our own shameful lusts. What we are seeing is Romans 1 being played out in 2004.

And note which comes first. It begins with the rejection of the truth, and then comes the moral deterioration that threatens our culture's well being.

This rejection came to mind while reading a column by Nicholas Kristof of the NEW YORK TIMES. Writing from Iran, he described the oppressive environment created by the theocratic rule of the ayatollahs.

In describing how imposing Islam had backfired on the ayatollahs, his column was a “must-read” for its insights. But he didn't stop there and, thus, the column became a “must-read” for an entirely different reason.

He wrote that “there's a useful lesson here for George Bush's America as well as for the ayatollahs' Iran: When a religion is imposed on people, when a government tries too ostentatiously to put itself 'under God,' the effect is often not to prop up religious faith but to undermine it. Nothing is more lethal to religious faith than having self-righteous, intolerant politicians ... drag God into politics.”

What an outrageous slander of President Bush and conservative Christians — comparing us to the ayatollahs.

But let me tell you what bothers me most about this comment: It probably honestly reflects the attitude of the elite in America. They're neither neutral nor even opposed to religion — they're aggressively hostile. In their worldview, the more secular a polity, the better the culture. Religion, especially the biblical kind, can only oppress and divide people. This is why they see ayatollahs where others see ministers and lay people.

If the effects of this worldview were limited to a few zip codes on both coasts, it would be an irritant. But the effects are felt everywhere. And, just as God warned us, moral chaos follows in its wake.

Fortunately, there are still things we can do, starting with praying for God's mercy, for peace in the Middle East, and for morality at home. Like Nehemiah's men, we can also stand guard over the walls that have safeguarded our society, the moral traditions inherited from Christianity. That means becoming more adept at making the case for Christian faith and the worldview it produces — because it's only these that can see us through these troubled times, times we have brought on ourselves by rejecting what we know is true.

FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

• Nicholas D. Kristof, “Overdosing on Islam,” New York Times, 12 May 2004. Free registration required.

• David Brooks, “In Iraq, America's Shakeout Moment,” New York Times, 18 May 2004. Free registration required.

• John O'Sullivan, “Left Eye's View,” National Review Online, 18 May 2004.

• Michael Novak, “A Pope and a President,” National Review Online, 18 May 2004.

• Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, The Problem of Evil (Tyndale, 1999).

• Robert George, The Clash of Orthodoxies (ISI Books, 2001).

• Register today for the Wilberforce Forum's worldview certificate program.

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 030707, “How Quickly They Forget: Christians in (and out of) the News.”

• Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know (Spence, 2003).

• Leon Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom (Free Press, 2003).

• Vincent Carroll and David Shiflett, Christianity on Trial (Encounter, 2001).

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Copyright (c) 2004 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate in KeruxID 25837-26027]

This election year, Christians can expect to be criticized for injecting moral values into American public life — of being MORALISTS. This derisive term often puts Christians on the defensive and causes them to be apologetic for their convictions.

I have a better idea: Instead of being defensive, we ought to say, “You're doggone right I'm a moralist.” And our fellow citizens ought to be glad that we are. That moralistic streak is why people all over the world look to America for leadership. It's why America is different.

The impact of this moralistic streak, and the morally based public life it produces, can be seen in events all around the world. This attempt right now to bring democracy and freedom to the Middle East isn't only about national security. It stems from the moral conviction that tyranny and despotism are bad and democracy is good.

The only reason we care about the freedom of people thousands of miles away is our moralism and commitment to universal moral principles. Our concern for human rights is a product of America's Christian heritage. We refuse to sit idly by while the human rights of others are trampled.

Our moralism is why America, spurred on by its Christian citizens, works to combat the AIDS epidemic in Africa. It's why we are trying to eliminate scourges such as the international sex trade. Neither of these directly affect most Americans, but our moralism won't let us ignore the problem.

Human rights isn't the only area where morality plays an important part. The importance of moralism is seen clearly in the economic sphere. The success of the U.S. economy displays the effect of our moralism. We insist on openness in business transactions. We demand that contracts spell out the parties' obligations. We insist that books be opened to auditors and that fraud be prosecuted. And since the Bible teaches us that no man can serve two masters, we have laws requiring parties to reveal conflicts of interest.

Then there's the rule of law. Our moralism insists that people be held accountable for their agreements, and we prosecute people who break the rules.

In contrast, Russia, a resource-rich nation, has few of these moral safeguards. The lack of openness and accountability has hampered Russia's attempts to build a thriving free economy. Corruption and a lack of accountability have allowed former communist officials and the Russian mafia to steal billions behind closed doors. This has left millions of ordinary Russians without any real stake in their country's financial well being.

While Russia and other countries have made bad policy choices, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the lack of morality has undermined the economic development of these countries, just as crony capitalism has in the third world.

So, the next time you hear Christians accused of moralism, smile and reply like I do, “You're right! And it's a good thing, too.” Point out to your neighbors the real root of the world economic crisis. They need to know that doing the right thing isn't only good for our souls; it also makes the world a better place to live.

FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

• At the “Christians in the Marketplace” BreakPoint worldview conference, speakers discussed the role of Christian worldview in today's business sector and marketplace, how businesses should apply ethical standards to their practices, and how our work should be viewed as a calling — an opportunity to serve God in our business. A CD set is available.

• Elisabeth Bumiller, “Evangelicals Sway White House on Human Rights Issues Abroad,” New York Times, 26 October 2003.

• George Neumayr, “Midland Ministers to the World,” American Spectator, 8 December 2003.

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Copyright (c) 2004 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. “BreakPoint with Chuck Colson” is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

Recently pro-abortion Roman Catholic politicians have been challenged by their Church. Some bishops have excluded them from communion; others are threatening to do so. And so forty-eight pro-choice Catholic members of the House wrote to Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick defending themselves and their records.

George Weigel, director of the Catholic Studies program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center here in Washington, D.C., decided it was time to clarify some issues for the members and the public with an article titled “Catholic Confusions in the Congress.”

One of the congressmen's confusions is their repeated references to abortion as a matter of “personal morality.” Weigel writes, “Abortion, as the bishops have consistently taught, is a matter of the fifth commandment, not the sixth.” It's not breaking “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” but “Thou shalt not kill.”* He explains, “abortion involves taking the life of an indisputably human creature, endowed with an inalienable right to life. That is a serious public matter, not a private choice, because protecting innocent life is one of the first requirements of justice in any decent society.”

Another point of confusion is the common belief that Supreme Court decisions are irreversible. Just as the Court was wrong when it decided in the 1857 Dred Scott case that African-Americans were legal non-persons, so the Roe V. Wade and Casey V. Planned Parenthood decisions were also mistaken. Weigel writes, “legislators have an obligation to state publicly that the Court got it wrong. In their letter, the Members justified pro-choice voting records on the grounds that ‘the Supreme Court has declared that our Constitution provides women with a right to an abortion.’ Anyone truly opposed to abortion would immediately continue, ‘But the Court, sadly, was wrong. Tragically and lethally wrong.'“

Next, Weigel scolds his fellow churchmen for failing to limit the damage caused by bad Supreme Court decisions. He laments that “within the Democratic Party ... unabashed support for ... abortion ... is the litmus test for national office and the litmus test for weighing judicial nominees.” He insists that morally serious legislators must work “to reverse the Court's wrongheaded abortion decisions.”

In a previous statement, Weigel also rebutted the claim that the Church's pro-life teaching is “a sectarian position which cannot be imposed on a pluralistic society.” He illustrated his point by saying no church would try to force everyone in the United States to abstain from hot dogs on Fridays during Lent. That's a private matter between a clergyman and a parishioner.

By contrast, “The Church's pro-life teaching is something that can be engaged seriously by anyone. You don't have to believe that there are seven sacraments to deal with this, you don't have to believe in the primacy of the bishop of Rome to engage this position. You don't even have to believe in God to engage this [pro-life] position because it's a position rooted in basic embryology and in basic logic, and anybody can engage that.”

The 1973 Supreme Court could plead ignorance. It didn't have three-dimensional ultrasound images that clearly revealed babies inside the womb. In 2004, none of us — in or out of Congress, religious or atheistic, Catholic or Protestant — can honestly plead that same confusion. And beware of politicians who do.

*Some Protestants may number these commandments sixth and seventh, respectively.

FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

• George Weigel, “Catholic confusions in the Congress,” Ethics and Public Policy Center, 23 June 2004.

• “The Body Politic and the Body of Christ: Candidates, Communion and the Catholic Church,” transcript of event hosted by The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, 23 June 2004.

• Michael Novak, “In and Out of Communion,” National Review Online, 15 June 2004.

• Phil Brennan, “Pope's Biographer: Kerry Distorting Catholic Doctrine,” Newsmax.com, 16 April 2004.

• Jim VandeHei, “Kerry Keeps His Faith in Reserve,” Washington Post, 16 July 2004, A01.

• Steve Waldman, “Pilgrim's Progress?: John Kerry's dubious approach to religion,” Slate, 29 June 2004.

• Father Frank A. Pavone, “A Matter of Belief or a Matter of Fact?“ Priests for Life.

• Archbishop Charles Chaput, “It's a matter of honesty: to receive Communion, we need to be in communion,” Denver Catholic Register, 26 May 2004.

• Jane Lampman, “No communion for contrary Catholics: a good idea?“ Christian Science Monitor, 28 May 2004.

• The BreakPoint Role of Government packet (suggested donation $10) includes a booklet titled “God and Caesar: Does Religion Belong in Public Life?”

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Copyright (c) 2004 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

If Christians confuse their citizenship in the kingdom of God with their citizenship in the United States, they are in danger of twisting and perverting the Gospel, Russell D. Moore recently told an audience at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Moore, dean of the seminary's school of theology and senior vice president for academic administration, said that Christians in America must think theologically when deciding how to vote and where to stand on important issues in the upcoming presidential election.

American Christians are in the unique position that is the equivalent of “Caesar” in the Bible, Moore said. Pointing to Jesus' and Paul's discussion of Caesar, Moore said that in a constitutional republic, Caesar is the people. Moore's comments were made at the seminary during a September address on political engagement.

“You and I are not in the same position as the first-century Christians, gathering together in catacombs, wondering what Caesar is going to do,” Moore said. “Instead, you and I are in both situations. We're the church trying to live out the mandate of the Gospel and we are at the same time those Romans 13 authorities.

“The authority in the United States of America is constitutionally invested, not in the White House, not in the Congress, not in the Supreme Court, but ultimately in the people through their elected representatives. So responsibility for using the sword wisely, for fair taxation, for all of these things, ultimately rests with us. When we are reading passages [that refer to Caesar], we read it through two lenses: It is addressed to us as the church and it is also addressed to us as Caesar.”

Believers confuse their citizenship in the two kingdoms when they mistakenly view America as the fulfillment of Old Testament Israel and desire for the government to function accordingly, Moore said. Instead, Moore said that Old Testament Israel is fulfilled in the church.

Because of this, spiritual disobedience must be dealt with through church discipline and not through the coercive activity of the state, he said. Believers must think theologically, not only about specific issues such as same-sex “marriage” and abortion, but also about political engagement in general, he said.

“When we read New Testament texts in which we see Jesus or Paul talking about Caesar, we read them through two lenses,” Moore said. “They are addressed to us as the church and also as Caesar. Political decisions are important for the sake of the church, for the sake of the Gospel, and for our accountability to God as the ultimate governing authorities in a constitutional republic.”

So, must an evangelical Christian vote Republican or Democrat? Moore said that ideally both parties would have conservative evangelicals working within them. However, most evangelicals gravitate toward the GOP because of a profound shift that has occurred within the Democratic Party over the past three decades, Moore said.

The Democratic Party, once home to many Southern Baptists and other evangelicals, now prefers the influence of groups such as abortion rights groups and homosexual activists -- lobbies with a worldview not consonant with evangelical convictions, Moore said. The loss of orthodox believers in the party has meant the loss of a unity based on transcendent causes of justice, such as the civil rights movement, Moore said. Now, party activists are more likely to be energized by conspiracy theories such as those found in Michael Moore's film “Fahrenheit 9/11,” he said.

Christians must not identify themselves first and foremost by affiliation with a particular political party, Moore said. A party is merely a mechanism one uses to advance objectives informed by a Christian worldview, he said.

“What is best for America would not necessarily be to have a Republican Party full of evangelicals and a secular Democratic Party,” Moore said. “Ideally, it would be wonderful if we had two parties that had evangelicals working and active within them.

“The problem is that you have interest groups within the contemporary Democratic Party that simply will not tolerate evangelicals who hold to some essentials of an evangelical worldview. That's the sad reality.”

Believers need not only to think theologically about issues such as abortion and same-sex “marriage,” but they must also bring a biblical worldview to other issues such as foreign policy and terrorism, Moore said.

“What I'm concerned about in terms of foreign policy is that some of the arguments that are being used completely erode any foundation of justice at all,” Moore said. “Should a nation that has been attacked feel a sense of justice toward the capture of Osama bin Laden? Is that simply vengeful human beings who want blood or is that something that resonates with the way God has made the world?

“If we establish a society that no longer understands justice, we can no longer understand the Gospel. The Gospel is not just asking Jesus into your heart so that you will be happy all the day. The Gospel is 'while we were sinners, yet Christ died for us.’ There is a just condemnation against us, a sense in which God, in order to be just, the apostle Paul says, must punish evil and He has done so in Jesus Christ. If you don't understand justice, you can't understand justification.”

*

What will probably be this year's biggest book-publishing event took place a few weeks ago. It wasn't the latest thriller by John Grisham or the sixth Harry Potter book; it was GLORIOUS APPEARING, the final installment in the LEFT BEHIND series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins.

The mainstream media, which usually ignores happenings in the Christian publishing world, took notice this time. But, as usual, they got matters of Christian faith and practice wrong.

Writer Joan Didion, as Wheaton literature professor Alan Jacobs noted, regards LEFT BEHIND as “the key to unlocking the hidden agenda of the Bush administration ... “ — reasoning, if that's the word, that since the president's “preferred constituency” has made LEFT BEHIND a best-seller, they must be trying to turn what's in the book into reality. Bush's Christian faith only deepened Didion's suspicions — talk about conspiracy theories.

It doesn't take much to see the flaws in Didion's logic. But as Jacobs points out, it's possible to read and even enjoy a book without subscribing to its tenets. What's more, apart from the fact that Christ will return and that “every knee shall bow and every tongue confess,” orthodox Christian beliefs about the Second Coming are all over the lot. The uniformity that Didion sees is the stereotype conjured up by her overheated imagination.

Amy Johnson Frykholm, a cultural studies professor at Colorado Mountain College, draws a similar conclusion in her new book, RAPTURE CULTURE. She credits the LEFT BEHIND series with fomenting a “new engagement with the world” among American Christians.

This is nonsense. The civil-rights movement, the pro-life movement, the pro-family movement, and other forms of engagement predate these books by years. As reviewer Stephen Prothero put it, it's not as though Christians “had their heads buried in the sand before LaHaye and Jenkins joined forces.”

Mistakes like Didion's and Frykholm's are possible because of abysmal ignorance of religious truth among many reporters. If these folks were familiar with their subject, they'd realize that, ironically, the beliefs reflected in the LEFT BEHIND novels are more likely to produce cultural withdrawal than cultural engagement.

That's because, as Jacobs wrote in the BOSTON GLOBE, this viewpoint takes the position that cultural and social trajectories only travel in a downward direction. Societies will continue to deteriorate until the “only option for redemption is the Second Coming.” If that's true, then attempting to renew culture is, at best, futile and, at worst, opposed to God's sovereign purposes.

In fact, taken to its logical extreme, bad news for the culture becomes good news for the Christian, since it's seen as hastening Christ's return. That's one of the problems with this eschatology, because it can often lead to Christian indifference.

Thankfully, most Christians don't think that way. They understand that Christian hope and love of neighbor, the basis for our engagement, are not in tension with one another. They are manifestations of the same truth: that in God's good timing, this world will be remade into what God intends it to be.

None of this is hard to figure out — that is, of course, if your goal is to report fairly. Most journalists, however, when it comes to the Christian faith, sadly prefer unfair characterizations.

FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

• Alan Jacobs, “Apocalyptic president?“ Boston Globe, 4 April 2004.

• Joan Didion, “Mr. Bush & the Divine,” New York Review of Books, 6 November 2003. (Available only to subscribers, or purchase for $4.00).

• John Wilson, “The Horror!: Joan Didion encounters evangelical Christianity,” Books & Culture, 13 November 2000.

• Stephen Prothero, “Marketing the Messiah,” Washington Post, 18 April 2004, BW09. (Review of Rapture Culture and Shaking the World for Jesus.)

• Charles Colson and Ellen Vaughn, Being the Body (W Publishing, 2003).

• Register today for the Wilberforce Forum's Certificate in Christian Worldview Studies.

• Alan Jacobs, A Visit to Vanity Fair (Brazos Press, 2001).

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Copyright (c) 2004 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

In the ongoing culture war in American life, the Religious Left is jockeying for a voice in the debate.

This loose-knit cluster of organizations is predominantly composed of mainline Protestants, liberal Jews, reformist Catholics, and progressive Muslims. Their mission is to provide politically active “people of faith” with an alternative to the conservative values of most evangelicals and traditional Catholics.

These folks are not that new to political action. In fact, this coalition has always been around, though it has normally operated outside the purview of many cultural commentators.

Not everything advocated by the Religious Left is patently wrong. For example, they make a strong statement about the need to battle poverty. The merits of a welfare system are debatable, but most evangelicals probably would agree about the obligation we have to address the needs of the poor. Many conservatives are committed to seeking to alleviate the plight of those in poverty while also preaching a gospel that clearly discriminates between the Good News of Christ and American middle-class consumerism.

The Religious Left also is an advocate for racial equality. Again, while many conservatives would differ with the methods of liberals regarding racial justice, most religious conservatives would agree that racism is still a problem in many places in America.

Peace, with a special emphasis on the Middle East, is a key theme with the Religious Left. Conservative believers desire peace as well; we simply disagree with liberals concerning the appropriate process for securing peace.

Still, while the Religious Left may have some noble goals, they suffer from a fundamental problem that prevents them from having the prophetic voice in American culture that they so desperately desire. Simply put, religious liberals deny the sufficiency of Scripture. (A note: at this point I am referring primarily to mainline Protestants, leftist evangelicals, and liberal Catholics, though the principle also applies to Jews and Muslims who devalue their sacred writings).

Most religious conservatives (and some religious progressives) affirm the inerrancy of Scripture, meaning that when the Bible speaks, it speaks truthfully. It only follows that if the Bible is inerrant, then it is sufficient to guide the decisions believers make, be they spiritual, familial, or political.

The Religious Left displays a basic disbelief in the sufficiency of Scripture when it endorses secularism, radical feminism and the homosexual agenda.

Religious liberals often champion “homosexual marriage,” arguing that they “personally” disagree with homosexuality, but that it is wrong to deny homosexuals the benefits of marriage. This is outright rejection of the scriptural model of marriage, which is a lifelong union between one man and one woman.

Theological liberals also rebuff scriptural teachings about the value of human life, supporting the killing of human embryos for stem cell research in direct opposition to biblical instruction about the preciousness of each of God's creations. Even more troubling is the excuses these same liberals use to defend their support of abortion. Recently, John Kerry, Democratic candidate for president and a liberal Catholic, claimed that he disagrees with abortion “because of his religion,” but would not allow his religion to dictate his politics. Indeed.

That's ultimately the problem with the Religious Left. Though many of them claim to be more or less orthodox in their beliefs, there is a distinct disconnect between their purported religious beliefs and their actions. Moreover, most of them claim to be defenders of the First Amendment, yet argue for exclusion of religion from the public square -- a perverse interpretation of religious liberty that rejects the sufficiency of Scripture to guide every aspect of human existence.

In essence, the Religious Left, in the name of tolerance and pluralism, attempts to disallow the Bible any influence over contemporary culture, proving that, at least in the political arena, they are much more left than they are religious.

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Retro, Metro. Retro, Metro.

If those words seem familiar, you may have seen an ad campaign talking about a “great divide” in America.

The themes of the campaign are echoed in a new book titled THE GREAT DIVIDE: RETRO VERSUS METRO AMERICA. It is written by entrepreneur John Sperling. Sperling argues that America has effectively become two nations. One nation that he labels Retro is traditional, religious, Southern and rural, opposed to abortion, taxes, and welfare. By contrast, Metros tend to be urban, tolerant, and secular, committed to excellence in the arts and sciences. According to Sperling, Metro-Americans produce the majority of the country's tax revenue. He laments, “some $200 billion a year in taxes flow from Metro states to Retro states.” If America is ever to be a true United States, he asserts, “it must embrace these Metro values of inclusion and respect.”

The Retro/Metro campaign exposes a great role reversal from the last fifty years of liberalism. Traditional liberalism said the wealthy should share their money with the poor. But the new liberal, represented by Sperling, resents poor, blue-collar Americans. And they resent the fact that so-called Retro states with their smaller populations enjoy the same number of senators as Metro states. And they resent their electoral votes.

In fact the Retro/Metro campaign appears to be a thinly veiled assault on the Electoral College. The danger of this trend is exposed by NEWSWEEK columnist George Will. Will points to a proposal on the ballot in Colorado to change the current winner-take-all system of allocating electoral votes. Instead, the state's electoral votes would be divided “according to each candidate's percentage of the popular vote.”

This is a bad idea, Will says, not only because of its partisan aims, but because it ignores how the electoral vote system “nurtures crucial political virtues.”

As Will explains, America's constitutional system “aims not merely for majority rule but for rule by certain kinds of majorities. It aims for majorities suited to moderate, consensual governance of a heterogeneous ... nation with myriad regional and other diversities. All 537 persons elected to national office” — the president, senators, and representatives — “are chosen by majorities that reflect the nation's federal nature. They are elected by majorities within states or within states' congressional districts.”

As political scientist Judith Best notes, the electoral-vote system, in combination with the winner-take-all allocation used by nearly every state, creates a “distribution condition.” Without it, politicians could win national office simply by obtaining the votes of Metro citizens — people in states like New York and California. Citizens in smaller states would lose any chance of real representation.

While the liberal Retro/Metro campaign thinks this is a great idea, our founders did not. They wanted to prevent various factions from being able to unite their votes across state lines to create a tyranny of the majority. The Retro/Metro campaign is, in effect, a power grab, an effort to disenfranchise the poor and those of faith. We need to warn our neighbors and explain why abandoning the Electoral College is a dangerous idea — one we should reject.

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Copyright (c) 2004 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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Sermon on politics. 1 Peter 2:13-17

HOW WOULD JESUS VOTE?

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I. A pastor's dilemma.

II. Jesus and Osama bin Laden.

III. The politics of Jesus.

A. The political context of ancient Palestine.

B. Where Jesus stood.

IV. Is Jesus the last word?

A. Being as radical as Jesus would turn our society upside-down.

B. Political insight from the rest of the Bible.

C. Values that are upheld in the Bible from first to last.

1) Value each and every life.

2) Help the poor.

3) Work hard and with honesty.

4) Uphold law and order.

5) Beware of power.

6) Honor God.

V. There are some things government cannot do.

A. It cannot make you happy.

B. It cannot save you.

White House scribe Michael Gerson's telephone rang with a vengeance after the 2003 State of the Union address and its claim that there is “power, wonder-working power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people.”

In the age of Google, it was easy to connect this with the gospel hymn “Power in the Blood,” which says there is “power, wonder-working power, in the precious blood of the Lamb.” Soon, journalists were calling Gerson's West Wing office asking him to underline all the evangelical “code words” hidden in major speeches.

“They're not code words. They're our culture. ... They are literary allusions understood by millions of Americans,” Gerson told 24 journalists at a recent Ethics and Public Policy Center seminar in Key West, Fla. “It's not a strategy. It's just the way that I write and the president likes it.”

George W. Bush is not speaking in an unknown tongue.

Anyone who studies what presidents -- from George Washington to Bill Clinton -- have said in times of triumph and tragedy knows that faith language is normal. If anything, Gerson said, today's imagery has become more nuanced. It's hard to imagine Bush delivering anything resembling Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1942 address warning that the Nazis yearned to spread their “pagan religion” worldwide, replacing the “Holy Bible and the Cross of Mercy” with the “swastika and the naked sword.”

The historical patterns are easy to find. In addition to literary allusions, Gerson said, presidents have consistently used religious language when:

-- offering words of comfort. Presidents cannot face the nation after shocking tragedies and say that “death is the end, life is meaningless and the universe is a vast, empty, echoing void,” Gerson said. Instead, they use words similar to Bush's remarks after the space shuttle disaster: “The same Creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today. The crew of the shuttle Columbia did not return safely to Earth; yet we can pray that all are safely home.”

-- praising the influence of faith on efforts to promote justice. Thus, in a 2003 speech on Goree Island, Senegal, Bush bluntly described America's sinful history of slavery. But he added: “In America, enslaved Africans learned the story of the exodus from Egypt and set their own hearts on a promised land of freedom. Enslaved Africans discovered a suffering Savior and found he was more like themselves than their masters.”

-- asking citizens to help their neighbors. For Bush, this “faith-based rhetoric” has been closely connected with “compassionate conservatism” and his efforts to allow religious groups to find niches within wider government programs to help the needy.

-- alluding to divine providence in national life. Here, the rhetorical bar has been set especially high by Abraham Lincoln, who insisted that Americans can hope to be on God's side but cannot claim that God is fighting on their side.

Presidents use religious language in wartime, Gerson said. Nevertheless, critics of the war in Iraq have attacked Bush's consistent use of these words: “Freedom is not America's gift to the world. It is almighty God's gift to all humanity.”

The president wrote those words, Gerson noted. Working together, they have tried to emphasize that Bush rejects what scholars call “American exceptionalism” -- the belief that America is uniquely God's instrument in history. The president's stance is best expressed in the 2003 State of the Union address, Gerson said.

“We Americans have faith in ourselves, but not in ourselves alone,” Bush said. “We do not claim to know all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life, and all of history.”

Those anxious to criticize how the Bush White House has used religious language should dig into the speeches of Woodrow Wilson, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and many other American leaders, Gerson said. Would critics prefer Republicans to limit themselves to the libertarian logic of big business?

“As a writer, I think this attitude would flatten political rhetoric and make it less moving and interesting,” Gerson said. “But even more, I think the reality here is that scrubbing public discourse of religious ideas would remove one of the main sources of social justice in our history.”

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Terry Mattingly (www.tmatt.net) teaches at Palm Beach Atlantic University and is senior fellow for journalism with the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities. He writes this weekly column for the Scripps Howard News Service. Used by permission.

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I find it fascinating that certain groups on the Right want pastors to “speak up.” What they mean by this, of course, is to more overtly endorse their preferred candidates and/or moral issues. But what they don’t understand is that pastors are speaking up. It’s just that what pastors are speaking up about may not be the talking points of the current season. And the Bible cuts against both parties, against all political persuasions. Yes, there is much in the Scripture affirming the prolife (Psalm 139; Genesis 2-3) and traditional marriage (Mark 19:5) positions. You can also make a good argument that the Bible affirms the idea of limited government (1 Timothy 2:2; Mark 12:17) and some of the root ideas of capitalism. So some would say the Bible is very conservative.

And yet that would be incomplete, because you will also find in Scripture many texts on justice, the plight of the poor, treatment of the immigrant. And who were Jesus’ chief antagonists in the gospels? The Pharisees, the “Religious Right” of their day.

Should pastors speak in the pulpit about contemporary issues? Yes, but only when the texts of Scripture clearly articulate it. They shouldn’t bow to any party’s talking points. They shouldn’t slant their sermons to fit a political profile. They shouldn’t become wannabe pundits in the pulpit. They should preach the Word and let it do its work in the hearts of the people, who will then influence their communities.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #13176]

In the aftermath of the November 2004 election, at least some pro-abortion crusaders are beginning to toy with the idea of softening their abortion-on-demand policies. Even Hillary Clinton has suggested as much.

In a recent article, syndicated columnist Ellen Goodman concedes that abortions should be “rare.” That concession tacitly admits that abortion is not a good to be celebrated but, at best, a regrettable option. She calls on pro-life citizens to meet pro-abortion proponents on “common ground.”

I welcome that overture and the opportunity. Here are some proposals for meeting on common ground.

1) Let's agree on the separation of abortion and state. Our taxes should not fund any abortions — period. Eliminate all government funding for Planned Parenthood, which performs a third of all U.S. abortions.

2) Support parental notification and consent requirements for minors. A minor can't get an aspirin without parental approval. It's abominable that teens can be spirited away by strangers and subjected to major invasive surgery.

3) End the savage practice of partial-birth abortion — pulling a child from the womb, stabbing its skull, and sucking out its brains to collapse the skull. I recognize this is nauseating language, but it accurately describes this barbaric procedure. By evasive and euphemistic deception, the media have tried to withhold the raw truth from the public. Let's tell the unpalatable truth in plain words so that the actual horror of the practice will forever be banned without court challenge.

4) Equip women and men to be sexually responsible. Every pregnancy is “chosen” if a couple has chosen to have sex. And that decision entails responsibility. Having chosen sex, adults have a moral duty to protect and nurture those they conceive.

5) Cherish children in the womb. Many of us started life as “unintended.” Yet we always had value and the right to life. Let's guard each unborn child as if it were our own life.

6) Communicate honestly about abortion. For too long, pro-abortion warriors have misrepresented and distorted the issue. For example, many of them liken an unborn child to a parasite, a tick or a worm infestation. Such images picture the unborn child as a predator, attacking one's body.

No responsible communications medium should abet and enable that kind of debased rhetoric. A newly conceived child belongs in the womb and nowhere else. Pregnancy by rape or incest is thankfully very rare. The vast majority of children come into being as a result of the union of two consenting partners. Their willing act causes a child to spring to life and take up residence in a natural organic home. The attempt to project blame on the innocent child as some sort of predator deserves the editorial delete key — and contempt by all civilized persons.

By promptly adopting these policies, pro-abortion forces will begin to journey back toward some moral sanity and decency. And as Supreme Court vacancies loom, pro-abortion senators and groups can demonstrate their good faith by stopping the savaging of judicial appointments.

Sounds good, doesn't it? But, of course, it assumes the pro-abortion politicians mean what they say. I'm not holding my breath, but I am praying.

FOR FURTHER READING

• Ellen Goodman, “The Politics of Abortion,” Washington Post writers group.

• David Rogers, “Goodman still fuels debate,” Palm Beach Daily News, 9 March 2005.

• “How Serious Are Democrats?: Making abortion rare will take more than words,” Christianity Today, 16 March 2005.

• William Saletan, “Safe, Legal, and Never: Hillary Clinton's anti-abortion strategy,” Slate, 26 January 2005.

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Copyright (c) 2005 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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