Recurring issues

Tip of the day: if you can't work out what to do to stop an issue from recurring, you probably haven't found the root cause.

Someone posted that on Twitter recently.

Two issues that I find keep recurring are abortion and homosexuality.

Wherever I look in online forums people keep discussing them ad nauseam and ad bored-I-am.

American Evangelical Christians seem to be obsessed with the former, while Anglicans everywhere are obsessed with the latter.

And it is indeed quite probable that I have not found the root cause.

If anyone has found the root cause, please let me know.

Two evils for the price of one: abortion and pro-lifers

I think that wilful abortion is evil, and a violation of human rights. But there are times when I think pro-lifers are just as evil, especially when I come across things like this, found via a link on Facebook.

The person who posted it on Facebook introduced the link by saying "The Obama administration rules that stock holdes aren't really owners and have no real say in the operation of the business they hold shares in."

I was curious and had a look at the site.

Obama agency rules Pepsi use of cells derived from aborted fetus ‘ordinary business’ | LifeSiteNews.com:

In a decision delivered Feb 28th, President Obama’s Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) ruled that PepsiCo’s use of cells derived from aborted fetal remains in their research and development agreement with Senomyx to produce flavor enhancers falls under “ordinary business operations.”

I became curious about "President Obama's agency", and discovered that the site that mentioned it couldn't even get the name right. I think they were referring to this:

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (frequently abbreviated SEC) is a federal agency[2] which holds primary responsibility for enforcing the federal securities laws and regulating the securities industry, the nation's stock and options exchanges, and other electronic securities markets in the United States. In addition to the 1934 Act that created it, the SEC enforces the Securities Act of 1933, the Trust Indenture Act of 1939, the Investment Company Act of 1940, the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 and other statutes. The SEC was created by section 4 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (now codified as 15 U.S.C. 78d and commonly referred to as the 1934 Act).

Was Obama even alive in 1934, when this particular agency was created? Will it cease to exist when his term of office ends? This really is a prize piece of vicious and malicious misreporting, and with such standards of dishonesty and lack of integrity I would not trust anything found on that site.

Yes, I'd boycott Pepsi too, if it were available and if the report were true, but it is wrapped up with so much deliberate misreporting that I wouldn't trust anything in that story.

Fifty years ago folk singer Jeremy Taylor did a rap piece called Joburg talking blues, in the course of which the supposedly American narrator said, "In America there's two things we can't stand: the one's segregation, and the other's niggers."

When I read pieces like this, I feel a bit like that narrator. There are two things I can't stand. The one's abortion, and the other's pro-lifers.

The link between abortion and assisted suicide

This blog post on abortion and assisted suicide set me thinking about the ways in which society likes to kill people, and the moment we get rid of one means, we tend to introduce others.

Ordered Liberty: The link between abortion and assisted suicide:

prudential problems are only secondary objections in regard to the practice of assisted suicide. The primary problem is that it still involves the deliberate, intentional killing of an innocent human being. To kill an innocent, even to prevent suffering, is to violate a moral law deeply ingrained in our nature. To create a system where such killing is protected and celebrated is a distortion of proper human community, and like ripples in a pond, that distortion with flow outward to have effects which none of us can fully anticipate.

(Hat-tip to A conservative blog for peace)

And it turned my thoughts to capital punishment, which some people would like to see return to the statute book, though I haven't seen as many bumper stickers in favour of it as there were ten years ago.

It was the mention in the Ordered Liberty post of taking the life of an innocent human being. Of course in the case of captial punishment there has been due legal process, and the executee has had his or her day and say in court.

As the song puts it:

I learned that murderers die for their crimes
Even if we make a mistake sometimes.

And it occurred to me that capital punishment might be acceptable if it were reintroduced with one proviso: if it should ever be shown that a person put to death by order of a court was actually innocent of the capital crime they were charged with, then the judge and the prosecutor (if the prosecutor demanded the death penalty) should, within three months, suffer the same fate as the vindicated accused, with no appeal, no reprieve, no remission. They could, however, the option of going to a thanatorium and being assisted in suicide earlier, if they chose to do so -- at their own expense, of course.

Detective novels and moral relativism

When is killing another person legitimate? What criteria do you use to decide? Does the fact that something is legal make it morally acceptable?

This book raises these questions and more.

Spoiler alert: if you have not read this book, and want to read it, stop reading now. This post contains spoilers that reveal important elements of the plot.

Strange Affair by Peter Robinson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Though this is a whodunit, the thing that stands out about it for me is the way it reflects the inconsistent and ever-changing moral values of society. And that makes it indeed a strange affair.

Writers of whodunits like to involve their fictional detectives in current crimes in the news, and so Peter Robinson involves Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks in human trafficking and related crimes. It is hard to imagine such things happening in North Yorkshire, where Banks is based, so the story begins with a mysterious phone call from Banks's brother Roy, who lives in London. Banks, who is on leave, travels to see his brother, who is not at home, and appears to be missing. His brother's disappearance also seems to be linked to a murder victim in North Yorkshire, whose death is being investigated by Detective Inspector
Annie Cabbot, who is in charge while Banks is on leave.

It transpires that Roy Banks hsd been murdered too, in a similar fashion to the Yorkshire victim, who turns out to be Roy's latest girlfriend, whom he had sent to his brother to report their suspicions about human trafficking and prostitution. The girlfriend, Jennifer Clewes, worked in the management side of a chain of abortion clinics, and Roy Banks had met her when he took his previous girlfriend, Corinne, there for an abortion. There are several "late girls", who come to the clinic after hours when they are pregnant. They are prostitutes, many of whom have been abducted in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, brought there by their pimps, and too afraid to speak of their sexual slavery. An exception is Carmen Petri, who does not want an abortion, and is older and more sophisticated than the other girls. She agrees to have her baby adopted by Gareth Lambert, a wealthy businessman who has invested in the human trafficking and other schemes of dubious legality.

The moral cognitive dissonanance comes up when Banks discovers that Gareth Lambert does not intend to adopt Carmen's child and bring her up as his own. He rather wants to use the child as the source of a heart for his own ailing daughter. Banks shows extreme moral revulsion towards this idea, as well as to Gareth's role in the betrayal and murder of his brother.

The moral inconsistency lies in the fact that what Gareth proposes to do with the baby is not all that different from embryonic stem cell research, which many people find morally acceptable. In Britain, according to the novel, abortion is legal up to the age of 24 weeks. So in the book there is no there is no great moral revulsion about killing a child up to that age. But if it happens at 40 weeks, and for the purpose of harvesting organs for a heart transplant, then it suddenly becomes morally repuslive. And I want to ask why?

Surely the same arguments that are used in favour of embryonic stem cell research can equally be used for harvesting organs from unwanted children who are only a few weeks older?

Moral relativism is nothing new, of course, and one can expect detecive novels to reflect the current mores of the society in which they are written. Perhaps a detective novel written 50 or more years ago would reflect the same moral revulsion in the protagonist when confronted with any form of abortion, and those running the abortion clinics might be seen as the villains of the piece.

What stands out in this book, however, is the enormous difference that 16 weeks makes. An act that would be acceptable when the child is 24 weeks old becomes morally reprehensible when it is 40 weeks old. Perhaps in another 50 years, in a more enlightened age, people will see the inconsistency and shift the boundary to allow organs to be harvested from unwanted children up to school age, puberty, or even later, and, if anyone questions it, will say that "this is, after all, the 21st century", and will look down on the quaint ideas expressed by Alan Banks as "so 20th century".

O tempora! O mores!



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Universal health care tends to cut the abortion rate

Apparently some people in the USA are opposed to universal healthcare on the grounds that it will increase the abortion rate. It seems that they are operating on a faulty premiss.

T.R. Reid - Universal health care tends to cut the abortion rate - washingtonpost.com:

Increasing health-care coverage is one of the most powerful tools for reducing the number of abortions -- a fact proved by years of experience in other industrialized nations. All the other advanced, free-market democracies provide health-care coverage for everybody. And all of them have lower rates of abortion than does the United States.

This is not a coincidence. There's a direct connection between greater health coverage and lower abortion rates. To oppose expanded coverage in the name of restricting abortion gets things exactly backward. It's like saying you won't fix the broken furnace in a schoolhouse because you're against pneumonia. Nonsense! Fixing the furnace will reduce the rate of pneumonia. In the same way, expanding health-care coverage will reduce the rate of abortion.

At least, that's the lesson from every other rich democracy.

Catholic Nurse Sues Hospital over Abortion

Catholic Nurse Sues NY Hospital over Abortion - US - CBN News - Christian News 24-7 - CBN.com:

A Catholic nurse is suing Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City for forcing her to participate in a late term abortion and violating her rights of conscience.

The Tuesday lawsuit claims hospital administrators told nurse Cathy Cenzon-DeCarlo the abortion was an emergency and insisted she participate in the second-trimester abortion or face possible termination. The woman was 22 weeks pregnant.

A case of "terminate or be terminated"?

There is something in this story that someone is not telling us. Without the missing piece of the puzzle it is not possible to make sense of the actions of the participants in the story.

The missing piece is the nature of the "emergency".

Some news stories are mysteries because not enough is known at the time -- the cause of a plane crash, for example. B ut this is one of those that are mysteries because the people who tell the story know but won't tell.

Perhaps the truth will come out when the case comes to court, but will the new media be bothered to tell us the missing bits then?

Unfavourable opinions of religions

In my previous post I commented on a survey that asked whether people had a favourable or unfavourable opinion of a religion (in this case Wicca), and said I would be among those who was neutral or had no opinion.

But the question was raised if the people who practised the religion did things one disapproved of, what then?

I disapprove of some practices of some adherents of some religions, but one can't blame a religion for the behaviour of its followers.

Where a practice is something I believe to be wrong or immoral and intimately bound up with the practice of the religion, that is something else, and probably deserves a separate discussion, and is not something that can easily be determined by a survey questionnaire.

Let me give an example of practices that I believe to be wrong or immoral, but which are closely bound up with the practice of a religion.

When Protestant missionaries evangelised the Kikuyu (Gikuyu) people of central Kenya, they strongly disapproved of some features of Kikuyu culture, such as polygamy and female circumcision, and urged the British authorities (Kenya was at that time a British colony) to assist them in suppressing them. They demanded that all teachers in church schools (and all schools for Africans in Kenya were church schools) take an oath against female circumcision. As a result two independent school associations were formed, the Kikuyu Karing'a Educational Association and the Kikuyu Independent Schools Association. The former became affiliated with the Orthodox Church, and the latter with the African Independent Pentecostal Church (for more details, see my article on Orthodox mission in tropical Africa).

Female circumcision (female genital mutilation) was an integral part of Kikuyu religion and culture, but Christianity generally opposes bodily mutilation (Protestant missionaries in China, for example, started the Natural Foot Society to counter the Chinese practice of binding the feet of female children to keep them small). So the Protestant approach was to suppress practices that they regarded as immoral, and to seek the aid of the government in doing so, thus linking mission and colonialism.

The Orthodox Church, however, did not begin with moral denunciations of practices it thought immoral. Polygamists could be baptised, but after baptism further marriages were discouraged. Now, after 70 years, polygamy and female circumcision are not practised by Kikuyu people who are Orthodox Christians, but this was not achieved by a direct frontal attack on Kikuyu culture. The Orthodox approach was that people need first to know Christ, to worship the Triune God, and and then gradually be transformed into the image of God, not by human laws and prohibitions and sanctions and punishments, but by the working of the Holy Spirit.

Female circumcision is still practised in some parts of Africa, and some Westerners still make an issue of it, and those who do are not always puritanical Protestant missionaries, but are often quite secular. They regard African cultures that do such things as barbarous, and, like the puritanical Protestant missionaries, campaign for laws to be passed against them, yet their own cultures practise wholesale abortion, which seems equally barbarous to many Africans (and to many Christians outside Africa). What lies behind it, in the case of both the Protestant missionaries and the secular social reformers, is Western cultural imperialism.

So there are two things here.

One is the behaviour of some adherents of a religion. Is that adequate cause for indicating disapproval of a religion?

Some people cite the Inquisition and the Crusades as examples to show that Christianity is an evil religion that one should disapprove of. But I think it is silly to blame a religion for the behaviour of some of its followers. The Crusades and the Inquisition were products of certain periods of human history, and show that Christians, like other people, sometimes succumb to social forces and sometimes even mistakenly identify these with mandates of their religions. One can say the same of suicide bombings and pogroms and various other things.

In the case of Wicca, it is clear that some Wiccans have created a myth of "the Burning Times", which they have quite deliberately and consciously used to fan the flames of hatred against Christians. Should I therefore disapprove of Wicca? No, because not all Wiccans do this, and some have spoken quite strongly against it. One cannot blame a religion for the behaviour of its followers, unless that behaviour is an integral part of following the religion.

And that brings us back to the second thing. Female circumcision was an integral part of Kikuyu traditional religion and culture, which is why the attack on it by Protestant missionaries was seen as a direct attack on Kikuyu culture and part of a scheme by the colonial government to deprive the Kikuyu people of their land. The Protestant missionaries demanded oaths against female circumcision, and, almost as a counter to that, the Mau Mau movement began demanding oaths to recover the land, and suddenly the Kenya colonial government began denouncing "oath-taking" as the greatest evil of all, and to punish people for doing that, and detaining them if they were even suspected of it.

And this is a point at which I follow the Orthodox missionary tradition, which is not to denounce the religions and cultures of others. All human religion and all human culture is fallen, including my own, and needs to be transformed by the grace of God through the Holy Spirit. This can be seen in the missionary instructions of St Innocent of Alaska

On no account show open contempt for their manner of living, customs, etc., however these may appear deserving of it, for nothing insults and irritates savages so much as showing them open contempt and making fun of them and anything belonging to them.

Even if one disagrees with their culture and customs, one can show respect for people. One can disagree with their theology, and can say why one does. as St John of Damascus did in pointing out where Islamic theology differed from Orthodox theology (he regarded Islam as a Christian heresy). But it should be done in an atmosphere of respect. It is fashionable nowadays in some Western to belittle the notion of respect, and to despise it as mere "political correctness", and that is something I think worthy of disapproval!

St Innocent of Alaska also disapproved of the linking of mission and colonialism, when he said,

2. On arriving in some settlement of savages, thou shall on no account say that thou art sent by any government, or give thyself out for some kind of official functionary, but appear disguise of poor wanderer, a sincere well-wisher to his fellow-men, who has come for a single purpose of showing them the means to attain prosperity and, as far as possible, guiding them to their quest

and

12. Ancient customs, so long as they are not contrary to Christianity, need not to be too abruptly broken up; but it should be explained to converts that they are merely tolerated.

So tolerance is an Orthodox missionary principle. Some things cannot be tolerated, as contrary to Christianity, such as human sacrifice. In this, I think Fr Thomas Hopko's account of tolerance is worth repeating:

Tolerance is always in order when it means that we coexist peacefully with people whose ideas and manners differ from our own, even when to do so is to risk the impression that truth is relative and all customs and mores are equally acceptable (as happens in North America).

Tolerance is never in order when it means that we remain idle before wickedness which harms human beings and destroys God's creation.

To be tolerant is to be neither indifferent nor relativistic. Neither is it to sanction injustice or to be permissive of evil. Injustice is intolerable and evil has no rights. But the only weapons which Christians may use against injustice and evil are personal persuasion and political legislation, both of which are to be enacted in an atmosphere of respect. While Christians are permitted under certain conditions to participate in police and military actions to enforce civil laws and to oppose criminality, we may not obey evil laws nor resort to evil actions in defence of the good. This means that Christians are inevitably called to suffer in this age, and perhaps even to die. This is our gospel, our witness and our defence.

So generally my attitude towards religions other than my own is one of tolerance. I neither approve nor disapprove of them. I may approve of some of their beliefs or practices, and disapprove of others, but recognise that if these are integral parts of the religion that they cannot be abruptly separated without destroying the whole, therefore I cannot either approve or disapprove of the whole, unless the whole thing is evil or based on evil, and such religions are rare.

I disapprove of the Hindu caste system and sutti, I don't disapprove of Hinduism. I disapprove of Jewish support for Zionism, but don't disapprove of Judaism, and recognise that Zionism is a secular movement, and is no more necessarily tied to Judaism than crusades and crusading and pogroms are tied to Christianity.

There are also some aspects of these and other religions that I might approve of, though that does not necessarily mean that I approve of the religion per se, nor that it would be right for me as an Orthodox Christian to believe and practise them. I used to think, and to some extent still do, that Jack Kerouac's Zen Catholicism was quite cool, but Orthodox Christianity has different, and I believe better, ways of achieving similar ends.

Pro-War is Not Pro-Life! � Thicket & Thorp

Pro-War is Not Pro-Life! Thicket & Thorp:

All the sins against humanity, abortion, euthanasia, war, violence, and victimization of all kinds, are the results of depersonalization. Whether it is “the unwanted pregnancy”, or worse, “the fetus” rather than “my son” or “my daughter;” whether it is “the enemy” rather than Joe or Harry (maybe Ahmed or Mohammed), the same depersonalization allows us to fulfill our own selfishness against the obstacle to my will. How many of our elderly, our parents and grandparents, live forgotten in isolation and loneliness? How many Afghan, Iraqi, Palestinian and American youths will we sacrifice to agonizing injuries and deaths for the sake of our political will? They are called “soldiers,” or “enemy combatants” or “civilian casualties” or any variety of other euphemisms to deny their personhood. But ask their parents or children! Pro-war is NOT pro-life! God weeps for our callousness.

A Message from Metropolitan Jonah of the Orthodox Church in America. Read the whole thing here.

Brian Cloughley: Kid Killers are Barbarians

Brian Cloughley: Kid Killers are Barbarians: "People who kill kids, for whatever reason and no matter in what manner, are disgusting, murderous, cowardly barbarians."

I take that to include aerial bombing, suicide bombing and abortion.

Hat-tip to A conservative blog for peace

The politics of abortion: The Moral Minefield

Matt Stone has asked for an informal synchroblog on the politics of abortion -- Glocal Christianity: Abortion, Politics and Christianity:

Is abortion the only political issue that should count for Christians as we decide who to vote for in elections? Should the church be a single issue community?

Beyond that, what does it mean to be pro-life? I am pro-life, but I ask, is there a broader way of looking at the issue, one that includes care for the lives of 'born' children as well as 'unborn' children?

And Janet Woodlock writes in Secret Women's Business: The Moral Minefield:

debate has raged over the U.S. election on Alan Hirsch’s blog, a fascinating glimpse into the passionate and divisive world of American politics. I’ve been reminded of this passage because it is the closest thing to an abortion in the biblical record. (ripping babies out of the wombs of mothers would cause the death of mothers in a world without surgery or antibiotics, so I don’t think those passages count).

I noticed that a lot of Americans who were anti abortion said they were going to vote Republican in the last couple of elections for that reason. It seems that they were conned by slick political rhetoric from politicians who were unable or unwilling to fulfil their "anti-abortion" promises. Has the number of abortions in the US diminished significantly over the last 8 years?

If I were American, I would regard abortion as a non-issue in the election. Regardless of what politicians may promise, you can rest assured that if elected, they are not going to do anything about it.

And as for wars, when one party was in power the US bombed Baghdad, and when the other party was in power the US bombed Belgrade. So both the major US parties are bloodthirsty warmongering abortionists.

"Put not your trust in princes, nor in any child of man, for there is no help in them" (Psalm 2)

In the Christians and Society forum we recently had a straw poll on "How pro-life are you?" and found that few people were consistently prolife.

The thing that most agreed was immoral was reckless or negligent driving.

On the question of the morality of killing, whether in war or by abortion, it seems to me, as an Orthdox Christian, that in these matters Western theology is legalistic. In Western theology "justification" seems to be central to debates about salvation, and everything else. Is homicide justified or justifiable? Is a war "just" (and theologians have laid down criteria of a "just" war). Are we "justified" by grace? And if so, is it through faith, and if so, is it through faith alone? Is the grace imputed or imparted?

While "justification" is not absent from Orthodox conceptions of salvation, it does not seem to be as centraql as it does in Western theology.

And similarly, Orthodox theology does not seem to have any conception of a "just" war. All wars are the result of human sin, and no killing is justified. The Orthodox Church, however, is not a "peace church", in the sense of the Quakers or Mennonites. Many Orthodox saints were soldiers. But killing in war is not thereby "justified". It's not OK. A soldier who kills in battle cannot say "It was a just war, and therefore that killing is not a sin I need to confess, because it was justifiable homicide and therefore a righteous act." The canons of the Orthodox Church require soldiers who kill in war to confess that as a sin and do penance.

We live in a sinful world, a world in which wars happen. Wars are part of the fallenness of the sinful world and cannot be "justified". Killing in war is a sin to be confessed, no matter how "just" the cause for which the war was fought.

And so with deliberate abortion.

One can come up with all kinds of rationalisations, in order to try to "justify" it -- to "save the life of the mother" or for some other reason. But none of these rationalisations make it OK. It is still a sin that needs to be confessed. But there is also no sin so great that it cannot be forgiven. Abortion is a sin, but it is not the only sin, and it is not the worst sin. Perhaps "single issue" voting on this kind of thing is just as sinful.

An inconvenient truth

Hat-tip to The Western Confucian for this remarkable statement by Ecuadorian obstetricians and gynecologists on abortion.
The 15 Conclusions of the Workshop on the Prevention of Abortion:

Science teaches that human life begins at conception. If it is also true that it is affirmed by religion, it does not for that reason cease to be a strictly scientific truth, to be transformed into a religious opinion. He who denies that human life begins with conception does not need to contend with religion, but science. To deny this certainty of biology is not to express a lack of faith, but a lack of basic knowledge of human genetics, something that is even known by the general public.

'Nuff said.