To Conservative Faith Based Voters

I fully agree, Peter, that the Body of Christ is the key concept for describing the church and our relationships with each other.

How then do we go about seeking the unity you speak of? Do we find it in doctrines about God and Christ, by seeking an intellectually consistent spiritual unity? Do we find it by following in the Way, as best we can teach each other to recognize where it leads?

One of the difficulties is that the various members of the Body are called to do different things. In our pride, we tend to hold to what we individually believe we're called to do and disparage other callings. We need to discern the harmony that, in many respects, already exists in the actions of the members.

Bill

Our differences are still there but what brings us together is the love of Christ. If we can unite under that banner, then much can be accomplished.

What I say is that even if it's taken to be "a cute story", it's still part of the Good News.

What it isn't, though, is a timeline for 'ensoulment'. The question remains, when?

"A group of rapidly dividing cells" is a description of the early embyonic stages. Once organs begin to form, the fetus is obviously more than rudimentarily organized cells.

Yet, Luke 1:15 says nothing about when the Holy Spirit will fill John in the womb.

Like other passages that refer to God's knowledge and actions concerning people before their births, this can also be taken as referring to God's nature and abilities rather than to the nature of people. Is John like everyone else before birth or is he special, specially chosen, and specially treated? The text doesn't support any particular conclusions.

Not all literal interpretations lead to the same results: there are always conflicting options.

Bill

Ben,
No I haven't been to a Crisis Pregnancy Clinic. It sounds like they are doing some great work and I'm sure they have an impact on the lives of the women and children that they touch. I don't think that any of us here would say that such ministries are not good ways for churches and religious groups to reach out.

As to your concerns about Planned Parenthood, I don't think that you could justifiably call it big business even if they are not volunteer or nonprofit. I have been to a Planned Parenthood office as a client with my then girlfriend and now wife more than 12 years ago now. We were young and had made mistakes. Neither of us felt like we could go to our parents, we were at a conservative Christian college which would likely give us the boot if we were pregnant together and we didn't know where else to turn. We were given a free pregnancy test and counseling that emphasized ways we could keep our baby. Because of the help and support we received there, our son Isaiah is now sitting in his bedroom playing Tony Hawk on the Playstation. Am I saying that Planned Parenthood is perfect or that it has the best policies? No. But I know that my wife and I are very grateful to the Christian woman who was there that day, and to two professors at that college, and a few others who gave us support and showed us mercy in that time.

You didn't address my main point. I argued that we should do our best to err on the side of life, but we should also strive to be judicious and fair in the placement of that legal marker. Back to your example, what criteria do the paramedics and medical professionals use to determine whether they have a living person? Say they found a body with no head on the side of the road. Let's say that they have the ability to keep the cells in this body with no head alive. Is it a person that has rights and moral standing? It is a living organism with a unique DNA sequence. It seems to me that if we applied the same standard you suggest ought to be applied to the beginning of life to the end of life, we would have some seemingly absurd consequences.
What do you think Ben?
David

(for real, state VP for a couple of years even) and you do know N.O.W.'s position on reproductive freedom...

Well, I'd get up to speak on abortion rights and after a minute or so I could see staff members turning pale, shooting each other worried looks, the audience would start to get restless and look sorta mean. See, I'd always start my talk with my beliefs about abortion.

I'd tell the group "see, it was like this, me and God talked about this and decided that it would be absolutely wrong of me to consider it." Not what they were used to hearing, as you can imagine. I'd go on to explain that God 'n me didn't discuss the right or wrongness for anybody else, that wasn't in MY job description to decide. But for me, this would be a grave sin.

Then I'd tell why I am so strongly pro-choice. Which I'll tell y'all, but up front tell you I don't plan to discuss or debate this issue, we all pretty much have our minds made up and it would be a waste of bandwidth. I felt pretty good about how I got to pray it out and know God's will for me. And while my preference would be for every woman to come to the same decision, it really is a decision for a woman, her doctor and her god to decide.

And the absolute LAST entity I want involved with such an important decision is the government! Not any government! We put that sort of power in its hands, you never know when it may seem expedient to force women to have abortions, not just keep them from it. This is absolutely NOT a power of government, at least in my view of what government should be doing.

I can (and have) sat on boards and committees working on strategies to reduce the number of abortions. I personally would like to reduce them down to zero. I think REAL sex education is a key. They've got to take the class to graduate, so we should make it fact filled to give them the tools to NOT get pregnant. So getting pregnant is a very clear choice to be made. As a mother, I'd say just making "keep your legs together" a rule should be all that needs to be said, but as a mother, I do really know much better than that.

And our teens need to hear a lot of truth about what having a baby is like. I think every teen in America should have to watch that film they showed us in childbirth classes (when it was too late to change my mind!) that got very graphic about pregnancy, labor and delivery. That would be a strong deterrent don't you think? I mean, my husband passed out during the labor part of the film. So whatever super graphic film they're showing childbirth classes (probably not the one with the '70s hair and clothes that I saw) that's what we need to be showing.

Anyway, that's how I approach the abortion question. We need to give our kids the motivation and the skills to not be in position to need one. And definitely keep our government out of the process!

Ben, I bet we agree more than disagree on this one. And you'll find others here who agree with you even more than I do. So hop on over to another topic... we're full of 'em!

Ben,
Consider this scenario. You are the king of a small country and have the same religious beliefs that you now have. In this country, a one wealthy man owns the stores and manufacturing plants and controls most of the economic means. He controls wages so that there are large numbers of people who cannot afford medication and medical checkups. Some of them struggle to afford food and shelter for themselves and their children while the wealthy man lacks nothing.
You, as the a Christian king have never taxed the people for more than was required to sustain yourself and therefore cannot give enough to help many and certainly not all.
You have asked the wealthy man to consider being more generous to the people who make his lavish lifestyle possible. He refuses and indicates that he feels he doesn't owe them anything. He was a self-made man and they ought to do what he did.

Don't you think that as the king who has the power to require it, that you should take some action and use your power to help those people who need it as a matter of justice?

David

Hi Benji, thank you for contributing your ideas and for debating everyone in a civil discourse. A lot of your posts really do a good job of challenging our usual liberal assumptions about the government's role in helping the poor. I don't necessarily agree with what you're writing, but it's intelligently stated and you back up your arguments well.

If churches want to take more of a load in helping the poor, I don't think anyone here would be against that.. In the early 20th Century, many progressive Christians tried to to aply the social gospel to the community. Jane Addams, for instance, created the Hull Houses to help out immigrants and poor women with community education programs. Dorothy Day created the Catholic Worker houses to feed the poor. Their local efforts did do some good, but eventually most of these early progressives came to the conclusion that only the federal government could deal with the enormous problems caused by an unregulated free market. Whether it was Progressive Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt or Progressive Democrats like Woodrow Wilson, FDR or LBJ, they made government programs that did things that state and local agencies were not able to handle: child labor laws, Social Security programs for the elderly, laws to upgrade working conditions, laws to protect the right of workers to organize.

I attended an evangelical church for about 8 years and one of the things I kept hearing was how the same 10% of the church was doing 80% of the work. A lot of the 10% were overworked and on the verge of burnout. I don't blame the other church people. They worked 40 to 50 hours a week and then spent their time with their families. Between work and family, they just didn't have the energy to volunteer for any long term work for the church. In the Episcopal church that I now attend, they have a program called Our Daily Bread that feeds the poor every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The majority of people who volunteer are either retirees and students doing community service.

What does it mean to help the poor? There's the feeding of the poor. But then there's also giving the poor educational training and job training. For the homeless, there's pschiatric counseling that may be needed, a place to sleep. If the churches are to take from the government the services to help the poor, they'll need to take these things into consideration. Personally, I would have more confidence in a trained social worker who is trained in the nuisances of poverty issues.

I think the free market is basicly neutral: it has some good benefits and it has some inherent flaws. If you look at the various Progressive movements in the last century, from the early Progressives of the Teddy Roosevelt era to the New Dealers to the Progressives of today, they all deal with basicly the same problems: the concentration of wealth within a few corporate hands, the gap between the rich and the poor, the exploitation of cheap labor and the indifference to poor working conditions, the exploitation of natural resources and the resulting degradation of the environment. I don't think that the government is capable of eradicating poverty, but I do think it has the power and the responsibility to alleviate the worst aspects of poverty.

You're right that churches should be in the forefront in the fight against poverty. Churches have been in the forefront in the fight to abolish slavery, for women's suffrage, for worker's rights, for civil rights. In the fight for poverty, I think churches have been most effective as an agent that mobilize government to action. Maybe I misunderstand what you've written, but you seem to be making the argument that fighting poverty is an either/or choice between churches and the federal government. I don't think it has to be one or the other. Both could work in concert.