It seems the carnival came early this week, and you can find it over at The Evangelical Ecologist. It includes my post on Knocked Up and Juno, and plenty of other good stuff. In particular, check out this post by Nick at Crossinator, which begs perspective on the Evangelical obsession with abortion:
94% of Evangelical voters think abortion is the most important issue facing America today. Poverty doesn't even make the top 5. That angers me beyond belief. What do you think a major cause of abortion is? Yup, poverty! We should focus more on reducing poverty and not legislating morality. Why have the Evangelicals lost sight of what the Bible so clearly states? We are so focused on "saving the unborn" we don't care how the born actually live. It makes me irate to think that we spend millions of dollars on preventing an abortion and then sit back and do nothing when the "teenage mom" isn't able to adequately support her child. Where is the love in that?I completely agree that, if we truly claim to be "pro-life," we should care as much about ending poverty as we do about ending abortion (after all, life doesn't end at birth! heh). It truly is shameful that poverty doesn't even appear among many Evangelicals' top five political concerns. That said, I don't really understand how Nick can be "irate" over those who focus primary attention on abortion, which has cost over 40 million lives in this country alone. The two issues are not mutually exclusive.
I might also add that part of the disconnect Nick identifies stems not from a lack of concern for the poor (though this is sometimes the problem), but rather from a feeling that caring for them best occurs on a personal level, rather than on a government one. Nick's objection to "legislating morality" cuts both ways.
2 comments:
i like your comment about issues that are not mutually exclusive. it seems a natural tendency amongst us to make things either-or; well, at least, heh, it is in me. this ability to unbox things and see their relationships not only enables us to work toward building right-ness in the world but between us as well. good point.
Thanks Carmen! I think you're right about this being a basic tendency of human nature. We seem to like things simple, but when they are not and we're forced to focus on one part of the problem, we can quickly lose sight of the rest. That's one thing that drives me crazy about politics (in this country at least): In many ways, we all want the same things - freedom, prosperity, hope, etc. - but then we fight so hard over how to accomplish them that we forget what we have in common.
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