It's Easier If We Pretend They Don't Exist

James Pate ProgressiveChurchlady notes a piece on the practice of "hiding" the homeless during major events, which is doublespeak for arresting them for being an eyesore. It seems that with the Super Bowl this weekend, Tampa Bay has joined the long list of cities to sweep for vagrants and lock them in jail while the crowds have their fun.

Instead of dealing with the problem directly--which would require admitting the numerous ways we dehumanize and disenfranchise the homeless--we cart them off and pretend then don't exist.

Quote - Religion in the Ancient World

A nice summary by John Kloppenborg, in his interesting little book on Q: The Earliest Gospel:

In the twenty-first century we usually think of religion as a discrete and identifiable aspect of culture and distinguish it from economics, politics, education, and other cultural domains. Yet in the ancient Mediterranean languages there is no word at all that is equivalent to our abstract term "religion." There are words for altars, sacrifices, prayers, and temples and words for attitudes towards gods (piety, impiety, fear). But there was no collective word that gathers all of these into a single domain, distinguishable from the city, the empire, the army, trade and professional associations, and other social institutions. Religion in the ancient world was embedded in these institutions. (pg. 85)

Quote - Science Fiction and Heroism

Sean Cubitt, editor of Aliens R Us: The Other in Science Fiction Cinema, from an excellent interview at TheoFantastique (HT James McGrath):

In the West today, we live in a deeply managed society. From traffic regulation to the management of crowd movements through malls and stations and airports; from statistical aggregation of behaviour to the management of supermarket stock, our societies work on probabilistic predictions that tomorrow will be pretty much the same as today - within statistical variations which themselves can be planned for. In this kind of world, action is incredibly difficult. It’s even more difficult because we are told over and over in our stories that only individuals can take action. But how can little me make an action that changes global warming? I can’t. We feel like action is impossible. In SF, action is possible, heroism, sacrifice, generosity, making a moral choice, changing the course of history.

Private Vice and Systemic Evil

Human nature being what it is, we almost never admit that something we do habitually is wrong. We might condemn others for doing the same things, or critique our own vices in the abstract, but if it is something that we do not want to give up doing, we will pretend we are innocent, and either deny it’s a vice at all, or pretend that we don't do it. It is for this reason that moral arguments can place very little stock in claims that come in the form: “I’ve done such and such for years and it’s never done any harm.” Such claims are rarely credible and have been used to justify of all manner of systemic evil.

To see this, consider an example that may at first seem trivial, but turns out to be anything but: Speeding. Most of us consider speeding a minor vice at worst, and could give a thousand reasons why it really isn’t that bad, how it has never done me any harm, how it is sometimes more dangerous not to speed, etc., etc., etc. But the truth is these are just excuses. We enjoy speeding, it gives us a thrill and, supposedly, saves us time, so it’s tempting to dismiss it as harmless and acceptable. Thus, even when we do get in an accident, this rarely convinces us to make a consistent or concerted effort to change. We just do not want to make the sacrifices necessary, even though an honest appraisal would recognize that speeding doesn't actually save as much time as we imagine, and adds a great deal more stress than we usually admit.

For the truth is that speeding is not harmless at all. It directly contributes to auto accidents which injure or kill over 50 million people a year and cost untold billions in property damage. Though we like to tell ourselves that speeding is a private choice, that we are adults who know the risks and have the right to take them if we wish, speeding does not just affect the people who do it; it impacts everyone around us: other drivers, pedestrians, the families of those hurt or killed, businesses and insurance companies, health care providers, law enforcement and other government agencies, and through them, all of us. Though we, as individuals, may be lucky enough not to be seriously harmed by it, every individual choice to speed carries these risks and encourages others to speed as well.

Moreover, even when it doesn’t cause an accident, speeding uses more fuel, which costs more money and contributes to the energy crisis and all the attendant evils that has wrought, environmentally, economically, geo-politically, and more. Therefore, while as individuals, it is easy to tell ourselves that our own speeding does no real harm, this ignores both the small-scale risks and the large-scale impact that our actions have on the world around us. Of course, there are various technical solutions offered to these problems—seat belts, air bags, crumple zones, etc.—and the development and use of such things should be encouraged, but if allowed to excuse speeding as a choice then they can only be self-defeating, for they do not address the real issue, which is moral, not technological.

As this example illustrates, self-focus and private vice, even in “trivial” matters, can sometimes lead to massive evils beyond any one person’s control. And this is not just true of speeding. Most vices, even those widely considered “private,” are defended with the same kinds of excuses, yet they result in similar large-scale tragedies when they become broadly accepted. For instance, and to take up an example from recent discussions, promiscuity falls into just this category. Though everyone knows the dangers, these are dismissed on a personal level with the excuse that “it’s my body and I have the right to do with it what I wish.” But as with speeding, promiscuity creates both potential risks and large-scale tragedies.

Each year, there are more than 340 million new sexually transmitted infections (virtually all of which derive from promiscuity) and 42 million abortions (at least a significant portion of which derive from the same). The widespread acceptability of promiscuous behavior has also drastically increased the rates of illegitimacy and single-parenthood, which in turn result in poverty, abuse and increased crime rates. This impacts not just the people choosing to be promiscuous, but their families and communities, local businesses, insurance companies, health care providers, law enforcement and other government agencies, and through them, all of us.

Additionally, by fostering a widespread belief that sex can legitimately be separated, not just from reproduction but from relationship, these have in turn increased the demand for and acceptability of prostitution, leading to a worldwide system of sexual slavery and human trafficking. As with speeding, of course, there are technical and legal methods of reducing some of these risks, but to appeal to the availability of contraception or some hope for better goverment control to justify promiscuity is rather like appealing to seat belts and traffic cops to justify speeding.

My Contraception Article...

I’ve mentioned before that I was writing an article on contraception for Salvo Magazine, provisionally titled: “Sex, Drugs and Reproduction: Is Birth Control a Blessing or a Curse?” It was published this week (you can read it here), but the version you will find in Salvo is very different than the version I submitted.

As originally written and accepted for publication, the article attempted to balance and hold in tension two opposite aspects of the social impact of the rise of contraception. On the one hand, it discussed some of the more disturbing social results of widespread contraceptive use (though it also, more briefly, recognized the positive goods that modern contraception has provided). On the other hand, the article discussed the long and tragic history of reproductive coercion whereby far too many women have had their rights and dignity curtailed “for the good of society.”

Unfortunately, just days before the magazine went to print, I was informed that the Editorial Board had thoroughly rewritten the article, with the title: “Sex, Drugs and Reproduction: Birth Control Is a Messy, Messy Business.” As the new title implies, this draft stripped the article of every positive argument made for contraception and, worse in my opinion, removed the entire argument concerning sexual coercion. The result is an article that seems much more like a polemic against contraception than the balanced discussion I intended. With only days to review it, I had little choice but to allow them to print the new version (though they did allow me to make a handful of minor revisions), and the result may be read here.

In response to this matter (and other longstanding concerns that I will not detail), I resigned my position as a Contributing Editor on the 3rd of this month. I wish them all the best, but I doubt I will be writing for them again. I do not think it would be appropriate for me to post the original version of my article (if for no other reason than that that my contract forbids reprinting an article for at least three months), but I did want to post the original conclusion, in hopes that it will provide some context for understanding my view of the published version:

Such observations cannot rule out all contraceptive usage – indeed, comparing our present array of birth control options with those available to pre-moderns, it’s hard not to feel thankful – but they all point to an underlying problem: the impossible attempt to solve a fundamentally moral set of issues – abuse, oppression, sexual immorality – through purely technological means. Promiscuity, absent or abusive fathers, abortion – these are perennial moral concerns that cannot be solved merely by reducing a few of their physical consequences through contraception, nor even by passing better legislation. Unless we are willing to change ourselves – our choices and lifestyles – contraception will never be more than a stop-gap measure, maintaining the illusion that we needn’t become better people; all we need are better technologies. Such is an inevitably self-defeating attitude, since our use or abuse of technology itself will always be a direct correlation of the kind of people we are.

Yet many who have considered these matters have feared that emphasizing such broad-brush dangers and social consequences risks stripping real men and women of the rights and dignity to make their own reproductive decisions. If history is any guide, this fear is warranted, as society has often justified the reproductive coercion of individuals on such grounds. But the dangers inherent in forcing people to live morally are too often allowed to excuse immoral living as a choice. Liberty requires the freedom to decide for oneself (within reasonable limits), but it does not free us, as individuals, from the obligation to choose well. Beneath all the risks and statistics, therefore, the real questions we each must face are these: Will we treat contraception as a means of living better, more ethical lives, or simply as a fruitless attempt to undo the consequences of our actions? Will we choose to treat our fertility as a disease or a gift, our children as a threat or a blessing? Will we view birth control – however we choose to pursue it – as an aid to virtue, or a substitute for it?

Fundamentalists Come in All Kinds

A minor explosion occurred this week in the “culture wars,” started by a surprisingly small fuse. It seems a certain Florida college student attended Catholic Mass at a local parish and, instead of consuming the consecrated bread (which Catholics believe is literally the body of Christ), he took it home with him. When he initially refused to return the wafer, he unleashed a storm of protest that might shock anyone unfamiliar with how seriously Catholics take the Mass. Among the hysterical reactions to the incident, a spokeswoman for the parish was quoted saying “if anything were to qualify as a hate crime, to us this seems like this might be it.” Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League, even called this an attempt to take “the Body of Christ hostage,” which was “beyond hate speech.”

In response, outspoken atheist scienceblogger PZ Myers wrote a blistering rant against “Dark Age superstition and malice,” mocking Catholics for even comparing the theft of “a cracker” with true hate crime:

Wait, what? Holding a cracker hostage is now a hate crime? The murder of Matthew Shephard was a hate crime. The murder of James Byrd Jr. was a hate crime. This is a g-------d cracker. Can you possibly diminish the abuse of real human beings any further?

Now if he had stopped there, I’d probably be agreeing with Myers, crude and disrespectful though he was. In fact, the student in question eventually returned the wafer because, he claimed, he felt his life was in danger. Ironic. Maybe it’s just me, but I tend to think death threats ought to be considered a more serious crime than disrespect of a religious ceremony. Jesus, I am sure, can handle the disrespect towards his Body shown by an ignorant college student “stealing” a consecrated wafer. But death threats against a student? How do you think Jesus views that? The Church, after all, is also believed to be Jesus’ Body, and I have a hard time accepting that a stolen piece of the consecrated bread can possibly be considered to do greater harm to that Body than the kind of vitriol some have leveled against this student.

Besides all that, I think the concept of “hate crimes” is seriously out of hand anyway, coming dangerously close to criminalizing thought. As I see it, if a crime is committed, the criminal should be punished for the crime itself, not for some presumed motive that the court attributes to him. Why should a crime be punished more severely just because it was motivated by hate rather than, oh I don’t know, spite, or greed, or lust, or even boredom? (For that matter, I'd think a person who can kill merely out of boredom ought to be considered a greater threat to society than one who kills out of hatred, but that's just me.) Intention should be relevant to crime, not the particular motive, or else we open the door to punishing beliefs and motives themselves, even where no actual crime is committed. In fact, that is precisely what has happened. Now that the concept of crime has been stretched in that way, simply saying certain politically incorrect things (like homosexuality is a sin) is now viewed as a “hate crime” by certain groups, which is not only absurd, but a serious threat to our freedom of speech. In short, “hate crimes” are ridiculous enough as it is, without adding disrespect for a religious ceremony to the list of illegal activities.

So like I said, if PZ Myers had stopped with defending the student and mocking Donohue’s absurd claim that the incident was “beyond hate speech,” I’d probably agree with him, though not with his abusive and vulgar tone. But Myers did not stop there. His post went on to encourage the willful desecration of the Eucharist:

Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There's no way I can personally get them — my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I'm sure — but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I'll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won't be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a g-------d cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart.

As you might expect, his horde of sycophants have added a few thousand comments offering more of the same. Apparently they are all so blinded by disbelieving indignation that Catholics would consider “a cracker” so important, that they fail to notice how Myer's own response is quite as absurd and over-the-top as Bill Donohue’s, indeed, much more so. But it seems there are Fundamentalists everywhere, and in the sequel, both Donohue and Myers have found their inboxes flooded with vile and hypocritical hate mail.

All I can say is, if hate were a legitimate crime, there seem to be a lot of people guilty of it right now.

My Published Writing

Here is list of all of my published work (print and online), with brief descriptions:

February 2005-February 2008: I was a regular contributor to the Crux Project blogs “New Adventures in Sci-Phi,” “Situation Critical,” and “Signs of the Times” (all three now defunct), and to the second incarnation of “Signs of the Times,” which replaced them in January 2006 when Crux became Salvo. [Except for what I have reposted here and what archive.org has preserved, the original three blogs are no longer available, but the newer “Signs of the Times” is here.]

February-November 2006 and June-July 2007: “It’s Greek to Me,” a monthly column published in First Edition, the newsletter of my local church. [This was a series of Greek word studies, 300-800 words each, written for a lay audience; they are not available online.]

June 2006: “Interior Design: DNA and Its Complex Specified Information” (plus two sidebars), in Salvo 1, pgs. 76-79. [A moderate-length article written before the Dover trial, it maintains a more positive view of the Intelligent Design movement than I currently hold; it is available here.]

April 2007: A review of The First Edition of the New Testament by David Trobisch, in Canadian Evangelical Review, Spring 2007 issue, pgs. 83-86. [A critical review of Trobisch’s revisionist interpretation of the canonization of the New Testament; it is not available online.]

August 2007-Present: C. Orthodoxy.

August 2007: “My So-Called Second Life: Born Again into a Virtual Reality” (plus a sidebar review of Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson), in Salvo 3, pgs. 38-45. [A lengthy article on the social impact of Second Life and other “Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games”; it is available here.]

August 2008: A review of the film Atonement, chosen as Runner-Up (Second Place) in the Looking Closer Review Contest. [Focusing particularly on the film's presentation of the corporate nature of evil. Click the previous link to read the review, or for an earlier version than that submitted, see here.]

September 2008: “Sex, Drugs and Reproduction: Birth Control is a Messy, Messy Business” (plus “Decoding Contraception” sidebar), in Salvo 6, pgs. 32-36. [A critical look at the moral and social impact and implications of contraception; available here. As the previous links indicate, this article was substantially revised by the editorial board to make it more one-sided than I intended, leading to my resignation from Salvo.]

I was also a Contributing Editor for Salvo from January 2007 to September 2008.

Camping and the Christian Carnival

This week's Christian Carnival is up at Fish and Cans (be warned, the page loads pretty slowly; I think it's got too much stuff in its sidebar), and includes my post on Inclusivism and Injustice plus a whole lot of other stuff.

I also just started reading this fascinating article at The Weekly Standard on the changes in parenting practices over the last 50 years (HT: Maverick Philosopher, who's back after taking a month off blogging). I haven't had a chance to finish the article yet, but it's worth a look.

In any case, I'm about to rush off to go camping with my family, so I won't be back til Saturday. God bless and have a great week!

Save Money: Gallons Per Mile

This is well outside my usual subject matter, but it was news to me, and very practical (HT Evangelical Outpost):

Inspired by debates they had while carpooling in a hybrid car, management professors Richard Larrick and Jack Soll ran a series of experiments showing that the current standard, miles per gallon or mpg, leads consumers to believe that fuel consumption is reduced at an even rate as efficiency improves. People presented with a series of car choices in which fuel efficiency was defined in miles per gallon were not able to easily identify the choice that would result in the greatest gains in fuel efficiency.

For example, most people ranked an improvement from 34 to 50 mpg as saving more gas over 10,000 miles than an improvement from 18 to 28 mpg, even though the latter saves twice as much gas. (Going from 34 to 50 mpg saves 94 gallons; but from 18 to 28 mpg saves 198 gallons).

Here's something to think about when you buy your next car. A difference in fuel efficiency between a 10 mpg SUV and a 20 mpg SUV will save 500 gallons of gas per 10,000 miles driven (more than $2000 by current prices). By contrast, the difference between a 35 mpg sedan and a 50 mpg hybrid only saves 86 gallons per 10,000 miles (around $400 by current prices). Consider that the next time you contemplate the sticker price difference; I know I will.

"Pro-Life" Pharmacies?

According to this article in The Washington Post (free registration may be required; HT Salvo), a small but growing number of drugstores are refusing to stock or sell contraceptives:

The pharmacies are emerging at a time when a variety of health-care workers are refusing to perform medical procedures they find objectionable. Fertility doctors have refused to inseminate gay women. Ambulance drivers have refused to transport patients for abortions. Anesthesiologists have refused to assist in sterilizations.

The most common, widely publicized conflicts have involved pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control pills, morning-after pills and other forms of contraception. They say they believe that such methods can cause what amounts to an abortion and that the contraceptives promote promiscuity, divorce, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and other societal woes. The result has been confrontations that have left women traumatized and resulted in pharmacists being fired, fined or reprimanded.

In response, some pharmacists have stopped carrying the products or have opened pharmacies that do not stock any.

The concerns raised by those pharmacists are among those I discuss in my upcoming article in Salvo 6 (due out in early September). I think they are legitimate, though not enough to rule out all contraceptive use, still I find such "Pro-Life" drugstores interesting. As the article notes, there are two conflicting issues here: One is the right of a business to decide for itself what to sell (and pharmacies are businesses), which seems to be pretty fundamental. Just because a customer wants a business to sell something doesn't mean the business has any legal obligation to do so (though they obviously have an economic incentive). In an urban context where, presumably, anyone seeking contraception should have little trouble finding another drugstore that does stock them, this seems pretty indisputable. But what about in a rural context where there may only be one pharmacy within 20 miles, or where all the pharmacies in a county might conceivably adopt such a "Pro-Life" practice?

"We may find ourselves with whole regions of the country where virtually every pharmacy follows these limiting, discriminatory policies and women are unable to access legal, physician-prescribed medications," said R. Alta Charo, a University of Wisconsin lawyer and bioethicist. "We're talking about creating a separate universe of pharmacies that puts women at a disadvantage."

The article also quotes bioethicist Nancy Berlinger that "If you are a health-care professional, you are bound by professional obligations...You can't say you won't do part of that profession." But I can't see how this is true. Doctors routinely practice only one form of medicine or refuse to perform procedures that they consider unethical or dangerous. A pediatrician could not be held liable for refusing to perform brain surgery, nor should a gynecologist be required to perform abortions if she is morally opposed to them. Why should a pharmacist be any different? Granted, if they stocked contraceptives and simply refused to give them to certain customers, that would seem to be a form of discrimination and would likely be illegal. But to choose not to stock certain products seems within their rights, at least as long as customers have another option within reasonable driving distance.

Quote - Wendell Berry on Art and Sex

Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community:

When sexual lovemaking is shown in art, one can respond intelligently to it by means of a handful of questions: Are the lovers represented as merely "physical" bodies or as two living souls? Does the representation make it possible to see why Eros has been understood not as an instinct or a "drive" but as a god? Are we asked to see this act as existing in and of and for itself or as joined to the great cycle of fertility and mortality? Does it belong to nature and to culture? Can we imagine this sweetness continuing on through the joys and difficulties of homemaking, the births and upbringing of children, the deaths of parents and friends--through disagreements, hardships, quarrels, aging and death? Does it encourage us to forget or to remember that "certainly it must come to pass that the very gentle Beatrice will die."?...

The relevance of such imagining is urgently practical; it is the propriety or justness that holds art and the world together. To represent sex without this fullness of imagination is to foreshadow the degradation and destruction of all that is not imagined. Just as the ruin of farmers, farming, and farmland may be predicted from a society's failure to imagine food in all its meanings and connections, so the failure to imagine sex in all its power and sanctity is to prepare the ruin of family and community life and of much else. In order to expose the privacy of sex, we have made of it another industrial specialization, leaving it naked not only of clothes and of customary discretions and courtesies but also of its cultural and natural connections. (pgs. 165-166)

An Evangelical Manifesto

I’ve long been unsure whether or not to consider myself an Evangelical. As I have been an active member in no less than five very different denominations, and have worked with a couple dozen more, I usually just called myself a “Christian” and avoided any further labeling. But my roots are in Evangelicalism, and I’ve never completely lost them. Even as I’ve developed a deep appreciation for other Christian traditions, including Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, this is still where I feel most at home. I have many times felt shame and disappointment over the actions and beliefs of those who bear the name Evangelical, but always with the sympathy of an insider, not the derision of an outsider. And yet, as my views have changed, I’ve wondered whether I still qualify as an Evangelical, or whether my rejection of inerrancy and other popular views exclude me from their ranks.

Thus it was with some trepidation that I read the Evangelical Manifesto which was published yesterday by a group of Evangelical scholars. The media is reporting it as a response to overly-politicized segments of Evangelicalism, and to a certain extent it is that, but it is also much more. It is a wide-ranging attempt to clarify what it means to be Evangelical, an affirmation of how Evangelicals have often failed to live up to this, and a proposal for living it out. In spite of myself, I’m impressed, and can find very little in it with which to disagree. Though this document represents just one view of Evangelicalism, it provides a compelling vision of what the movement could be.

A detailed summery is provided by Justin Taylor, who also has an interview with Os Guinness (who helped write it), but I recommend taking the time to read the whole 20 pages (available in pdf here), as I’ll only be highlighting a few points for comment. First:

Nothing is more natural and necessary than the human search for meaning and belonging, for making sense of the world and finding security in life. When this search is accompanied by the right of freedom of conscience, it issues in a freely chosen diversity of faiths and ways of life, some religious and transcendent, and some secular and naturalistic. Nevertheless, the different faiths and the different families of faith provide very different answers to life, and these differences are decisive not only for individuals but for societies and entire civilizations. (pg. 3)

I especially appreciate this recognition of the inevitably pluralistic nature of a free society, combined with a firm affirmation that what choices we freely make nevertheless have profound consequences not only for ourselves but for society as a whole. Freedom demands that we respect the rights of all people to choose what to think and how to live, but it also requires open and civil discussion of the truth and value of these beliefs and actions. The Manifesto’s repeated emphasis both on the important separation of church and state (against those who would seek to impose a theocracy, or who would equate Evangelicalism with any one political party or issue), and on the importance of public religious discourse (against those who would relegate faith entirely to the private sphere) is precisely correct.

We call for an expansion of our concern beyond single-issue politics, such as abortion and marriage, and a fuller recognition of the comprehensive causes and concerns of the Gospel, and of all the human issues that must be engaged in public life. Although we cannot back away from our biblically rooted commitment to the sanctity of every human life, including those unborn, nor can we deny the holiness of marriage as instituted by God between one man and one woman, we must follow the model of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, engaging the global giants of conflict, racism, corruption, poverty, pandemic diseases, illiteracy, ignorance, and spiritual emptiness, by promoting reconciliation, encouraging ethical servant leadership, assisting the poor, caring for the sick, and educating the next generation. We believe it is our calling to be good stewards of all God has entrusted to our care so that it may be passed on to generations yet to be born. (pgs. 13-14)

If we can take seriously their earlier rejection of using state power to impose it on those who disagree, this platform is sensible and biblically sound (including even the more “partisian” views on abortion and marriage, so long as these are not allowed to overwhelm the rest).

Finally, I would like to discuss briefly the two issues I was most nervous to see how they would handle: the doctrines of scripture and creation. Regarding the first, they include among seven defining features of Evangelicalism an affirmation that:

Jesus’ own teaching and his attitude toward the total truthfulness and supreme authority of the Bible, God’s inspired Word, make the Scriptures our final rule for faith and practice. (pg. 6)

While I am not entirely comfortable with this statement, it is better than I expected. I’m especially glad they chose not to expand this into the extreme view seen, for instance, in The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, nor claim that the Bible is the only “rule for faith and practice.” More directly, “Total truthfulness” seems a much better term than “inerrancy” (which defines scripture as a negative), though I'm not certain precisely what they mean by it.

As for creation, I’m thrilled that they did not include creationism (much less the young earth variety) among those seven distinctives of Evangelicalism. I could not expect them to reject creationism outright, but I’m thankful they neglected to embrace it, and I fully agree with their rejection of those who would pit faith against science:

All too often we have disobeyed the great command to love the Lord our God with our hearts, souls, strength, and minds, and have fallen into an unbecoming anti-intellectualism that is a dire cultural handicap as well as a sin. In particular, some among us have betrayed the strong Christian tradition of a high view of science, epitomized in the very matrix of ideas that gave birth to modern science, and made themselves vulnerable to caricatures of the false hostility between science and faith. By doing so, we have unwittingly given comfort to the unbridled scientism and naturalism that are so rampant in our culture today. (pgs 12-13)

In short, in firmly rejecting the extremes of both fundamentalism and radical liberalism, I find this Manifesto very encouraging. Indeed, the only significant objection I’m tempted to raise is that it presents a vision of what Evangelicalism should be but often isn’t. There are plenty of people who call themselves Evangelicals who embrace views this Manifesto explicitly rejects (James Dobson, who explicitly chose not to sign it, is an obvious but influential example). But the document’s authors are not ignorant of this, and take pains both to affirm that, as Evangelicalism is inherently non-hierarchical, they can only speak for themselves, and to admit that Evangelicals often have not lived up to these ideals.

Of course, like all attempts at balance and moderation, this Manifesto will be attacked from both sides (for instance, see opposite critical responses here and here), but if such a perspective can win the day, I may find myself proud to be an Evangelical after all.

Single-Parenthood Costs $112 Billion A Year?

Various news agencies (e.g. here) are reporting a new study that claims divorce and out of wedlock childrearing costs our country at least $112 billion tax-dollars per year. I’m no statistician, so I wont attempt to judge the accuracy of the study, but if it is even relatively accurate, it’s startling. The study’s sponsors, rightly or wrongly, conclude that this should encourage greater government support for “marriage-strengthening programs,” but the more fundamental need is not for government programs but to reverse our society’s cavalier attitude towards sex and family. Our sexual choices are not, as we so like to believe, merely private and personal. They always have broader effects on the wider community.

On that point, perhaps the most shocking figures to me are not from the conclusions of the study, but from its presuppositions:

Over the last forty years, marriage has become less common and more fragile. Between 1970 and 2005, the proportion of children living with two married parents dropped from 85 percent to 68 percent, according to Census data.

and

More than a third of all U.S. children are now born outside of wedlock, including 25 percent of non-Hispanic white babies, 46 percent of Hispanic babies, and 69 percent of African American babies.

Leaving aside debatable financial costs, these figures represent a massive human tragedy. As a society, we are failing our children, and especially those of minority groups.