Posted on 07/22/2007 3:57:36 AM PDT by Kaslin
One of the most prolific writers on the subject of the Democratic Party and religion is Amy Sullivan, an editor with the Washington Monthly. TIME magazine recently posted two essays by Ms. Sullivan that are must-reads for evangelical Christians as we consider the faith of the Democratic presidential candidates. In one of the essays, a parsing of a recent TIME poll on the faith of the Republican and Democratic candidates, Ms. Sullivan sees a shift “in which it is the Democrats who are talking about faith while their Republican counterparts dodge the subject.” She is quick, however, to point out that while the reality may be changing, the perception of voters that a “religious Democrat” is an oxymoron still prevails.
Not that the Democrats aren’t working hard to overcome the electorate’s perception of them as ambivalent or even hostile toward religion. Howard Dean is challenging his party to reach out to evangelical Christians, even sitting for an interview with CBN where he stated that Democrats have much in common with evangelicals. Hillary Clinton recently sat for an extensive interview about her faith with the New York Times. And Barack Obama has made his conversion experience at a church on the south side of Chicago a staple of his stump speech.
On a recent broadcast of my radio program I spoke with Amy Sullivan about the faith of political candidates and the uphill climb the Democrats have to overcome the perception of their party as ambivalent or even hostile toward religious expression. In the interview I made the observation that while Democrats and Republicans may be reading from the same Bible, the lens they look through causes them to focus on different things: the Democrats are drawn to the social justice texts and the Republicans are drawn to the texts dealing with sanctity of life issues. I asked, Why can’t both parties see the whole picture? To which Sullivan responded:
You’ve put your finger on it. The candidate who, in the long run, is going to be most successful - which is to say that this may be just an unusual election cycle and may be tilted in Democrats’ favor for all sorts of different reasons - but in the long run candidates are going to need to find that middle ground, which is why I’m surprised that Hillary Clinton hasn’t been talking more about her efforts to reduce abortion rates, which she has been very active in the Senate over the last few years. And that’s one of those issues that acknowledges that people do have concerns about abortion.
Say that again? Hillary Clinton is working in the Senate to reduce abortion rates? Why isn’t Senator Clinton talking about this? If indeed it is true that the Senator is working to reduce abortion rates, could it be that Clinton is not anxious to make it known because she fears a backlash from the Democratic Party based on its abortion platform? And, of course, this backlash would betray the fact that the Democrats really aren’t as interested in reaching out to religious voters on sanctity of life issues as their interviews with the media might suggest.
Sullivan confirmed my suspicion:
This really is the key challenge for the (Democratic) Party. I believe some of the candidates are a little concerned running in the primary that they don’t want to be too outspoken about a different approach to abortion, and yet that’s exactly what the majority of Americans are telling them they want to hear. Most people believe that abortion should be legal, but they believe there should be fewer abortions. And so there has been a coalition of pro-choice and pro-life Catholic Democrats in the House of Representatives, and Hillary Clinton has been involved in the Senate, in efforts to reduce abortion rates both by preventing unwanted pregnancies, but also by providing resources to women who want to carry their pregnancies to term but often can’t.
It’s hard to take seriously the claim that Senator Clinton is working to reduce abortions. This is the same Hillary Clinton who basically stated that an America without abortion as an option would be the same as the totalitarian states of Romania and China:
When I defend my pro-choice position in the debate over abortion in our country, I frequently refer to Romania, where pregnancy could be monitored on behalf of the state, & to China, where it could be forcibly terminated. One reason I continue to oppose efforts to criminalize abortion is that I do not believe any government should have the power to dictate, through law or police action, a woman’s most personal decision.
[The Romanian dictatorship in the 1980s] banned birth control and abortion, insisting that women bear children for the sake of the state. Women told me how they had been carted from their workplace once a month to be examined by government doctors whose task was to make sure they weren’t using contraceptives or aborting pregnancies. I could not imagine a more humiliating experience.
In Romania and elsewhere, many children were born unwanted or into families that could not afford to care for them. They became wards of the state, warehoused in orphanages (Hillary Clinton, Living History, 354-5).
The facts are that Senator Clinton, at every opportunity, has voted in lock-step with the liberal Democratic Party on abortion. She opposed the ban on partial birth abortion and was against criminalizing harm to a fetus during an attack on the mother. While she has supported the funding of programs to reduce teen and other unwanted pregnancies, that funding was not for abstinence based educational programs, but for "family planning" programs that employ the use of contraceptives, at tax-payer expense.
If indeed Senator Clinton, as a devout Methodist, is morally opposed to abortion the courage of her convictions should prompt her to stand against the immorality of the Democratic Party platform on the issue of choice. But the Senator’s morality goes only so far. Her faith tells her that abortion is morally wrong. But her faith doesn’t seem to inform her morals on the issue of the behavior that produces the need for abortion in the first place. Which brings us full circle to my original point: Democrats read the Bible with the lens magnifying the social justice texts while seemingly blinded to the texts that call for upholding the sanctity of human life.
For there to be a real conversation on the faith of politicians and its influence on their candidacies there must first be agreement on the need to read and apply the whole Bible, not just the parts that fit our particular political ideology. It’s a lesson candidates from both parties need to master.
Paul Edwards is the host of The Paul Edward Program and a pastor. His program is heard daily on WLQV in Detroit and on godandculture.com
wonder if the pubbie candidate for 2008 will have the balls to ask comrade hillary about waco?
-Ms. Sullivan sees a shift “in which it is the Democrats who are talking about faith while their Republican counterparts dodge the subject.-
You do not talk about your faith, you live it.
That's because she is NOT 'working' to ELIMINATE the free and ready access TO abortion!!
But Hillary doesn't oppose taking away the rights of the unborn boys and girls, and having them killed!
Madam Hitlery's answer:
"I don't recall".
According to the National Right to Life Network the United Methodist Church supports legalized abortion on demand.
The United Methodist Church began in the early 1970s to view abortion as a "choice". The United Methodist position in favor of abortion has been so strong that two of its institutions helped organize and affiliate with the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights. For many years RCAR used office space in the United Methodist Building which is located across the street from the U.S. Supreme Court. In both 1996 and 1997 the United Methodist Church publicly supported President Clinton’s veto of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. While the 1996 United Methodist Church’s Book of Discipline still maintains a strong pro-abortion position, it now includes wording recognizing the "sanctity of unborn human life." It further states, "We cannot affirm abortion as an acceptable means of birth control and we unconditionally reject it as a means of gender selection."
"And Barack Obama has made his conversion experience at a church on the south side of Chicago a staple of his stump speech."
According to the same NRTL page,
The United Church of Christ (UCC) has strongly supported the legalization of abortion since 1971. The UCC supported FOCA and strongly opposed the PBA ban to the point of joining the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARRAL) in a statement affirming President Clinton’s veto of the PBA Ban Act in 1996. The UCC has also called for the church to support abortion in any national health care bill.
If Obama subscribes to the position taken on abortion by his socially liberal denomination he is not likely to agree with the views of the vast majority of Christians, either Roman Catholics, Orthodox, or evangelical protestants, concerning the legalization of abortion. In fact he has voted against every Senate effort to place legal restraints on abortion and to criminalize partial birth abortion.
The bottom line is that no Democrat can claim to oppose abortion without rejecting the official platform of the Democrat party which clearly states the party's support for Roe v Wade and legal abortion on demand.
"Because we believe in the privacy and equality of women, we stand proudly for a woman's right to choose, consistent with Roe v. Wade, and regardless of her ability to pay. We stand firmly against Republican efforts to undermine that right. At the same time, we strongly support family planning and adoption incentives. Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. Source: The Democratic Platform for America, p.36
The positions regarding legalized abortion of a few major denominations are summarized here
Hillary’s Faith Goes Only So Far
when the piaps takes the oval office....the seal of the POTUS on the carpet will be removed and replaced with a pentagram!!!!
at least this cloven one will wear a burka and cover the hideous face and the world famous canckles!!!!
Speaking of living your faith, here is the statement of Mother Teresa at a UN conferance in Cairo:
I speak today to you from my heart -- to each person in all the nations of the world, to people with power to make big decisions as well as to all mothers, fathers and children in the cities, towns and villages.
Each one of us is here today because we have been loved by God who created us and our parents who accepted and cared enough to give us life. Life is the most beautiful gift of God. That is why it is so painful to see what is happening today in so many places around the world: life is being deliberately destroyed by war, by violence, by abortion. And we have been created by God for greater things -- to love and be loved.
I have said often, and I am sure of it, that the greatest destroyer of peace in the world today is abortion. If a mother can kill her own child, what is there to stop you and me from killing each other? The only one who has the right to take life is the One who has created it. Nobody else has that right; not the mother, not the father, not the doctor, no agency, no conference, no government.
I am sure that deep down in your heart, you know that the unborn child is a human being loved by God, like you and me. How can anyone, knowing that, deliberately destroy that life? It frightens me to think of all the people who kill their conscience so that they can perform an abortion. When we die, we will come face to face with God, the Author of life. Who will give an account to God for the millions and millions of babies who were not allowed to have the chance to live, to experience loving and being loved?
God has created a world big enough for all the lives He wishes to be born. It is only our hearts that are not big enough to want them and accept them. If all the money that is being spent on finding ways to kill people was used instead to feed them and house them and educate them -- how beautiful that would be. We are too often afraid of the sacrifices we might have to make. But where there is love, there is always sacrifice. And when we love until it hurts, there is joy and peace.
If there is a child that you don't want or can't feed or educate, give that child to me. I will not refuse any child. I will give a home, or find loving parents for him or for her. We are fighting abortion by adoption and have given thousands of children to caring families. And it is so beautiful to see the love and unity that a child brings to a family.
The child is the most beautiful gift of God to a family, to a nation. Let us not refuse this gift of God. My prayer for each one of you is that you may always have the faith to see and love God in each person including the unborn. God bless you.
I'm not Catholic, but I agree with everything that Christian lady said at that conference of Godless UN officials.
The only faith the hildabeast has is in her hero Karl Marx-—and her socialist self of course.
...the perception of voters that a “religious Democrat” is an oxymoron still prevails.
Go figure.
Hillary is a practicioner of liberal religion as in mainline Protestantism.
Religion is the opium of the people when they mainline it.
Her “faith” is about using religious words that have no meaning.
Destroying millions of unborn children and saying it should continue to be legal while claiming one wants to make abortion “rare” is the deepest pile of dung I’ve seen in a long time.
bump
I suspect nobody has the balls to ask Hillary the questions that need to be asked of her. Fred Thompson might actually be the only one. I could see that. But nobody else, especially the media.
Fred Thompson is the only one who would dare to since he is the only one with a chance to become POTUS who actually has a viable career outside of politics.
Elections are like Halloween for the Clintons; this elections they’re dressing up as faithful Christians!!
If Americans swallow this act there is no hope for this nation into the forseeable future.
Bingo. Not one mention by the DBM when the democrats go to a church to campaign. They will say the candidate is there to "worship". Let one Republican go into a church and mention one political theme, and the DBM goes nuts about separation of church and state.
As our pastor said at a non church event, "I don't understand how anyone can go to church on Sunday, and vote for a democrat the following Tuesday."
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