Obama’s appeals to unity should not be taken for granted, however. Much was made recently of Russian thinker Igor Panarin’s prediction that the US will disintegrate in 2010. While well short of the mark, Panarin put his finger on a painful truth: America has become more divided and frail than many believe. The last two presidents, both baby-boomers who fought the culture wars, were very polarising figures. In Obama many of us see hope for a real oneness that is much needed.
All that said, I have deep concerns, on nothing so much as the issue of the commodification of life so prevalent in America. Obama famously said at Saddleback Church that the exact moment when life begins was a question “above” his “pay grade”. But if there even is a question whether it is life or not surely the error to make is on the side of life, otherwise we are like the hunter who shoots first in the forest and asks questions later.
My other great worry: America is in crisis over what exactly marriage is. Is it a social contract for the fulfilment of personal and sexual needs, or is it a lifelong covenant for the raising of children and of citizens who promote the common good? We seem to be veering ever more strongly in favour of the former, at the expense of the latter.
I compare the president with Jack Spong. He may be a man who is principled but his principles are wrong. It now appears that he is strongly aligned with the culture of death when it comes to the unborn. His support for those who engage in sodomy as a privileged class is also becoming very clear. I will pray for him, but not that his agenda goes forward.
Excellent letter!
Scott [#1]: Spong is a self-absorbed airhead. Obama is one of the brightest, most substantive persons ever to become president.
I agree with bright, but where do you get substantive?
Kendall: This letter bears careful rereading, to which I look forward. And I’m glad you make these points in a forum like The Guardian.
Diana [#4]: Obama is very conversant with policy but chose during the campaign to focus on broader themes: partly in keeping with running a Reaganesque campaign; partly, perhaps, to make sure he wasn’t seen as an Ivy League know-it-all. The folksier Bill Clinton could be a first-class policy wonk without sounding elitist. If you doubt Obama’s mastery of substance, wait and see.
I like smart, and agree that Obama is smart. But smart is not wise, nor is it moral. Smart can be put to very wicked ends. Obama has already shown that he will put his intelligence to evil ends by virtue of his support for the FOCA and funding of abortion abroad.
Re. when life begins:
Back in Bill Clinton’s days as President, a couple of Christianty Today writers/editors were riding in the presidential limo with him during an interview. At one point, they were talking about abortion issues. Clinton suddenly asked: “At what point does the spirit enter the body?”
It troubled me to learn later that no one in the car asked a key follow-up question or two: “Does that mean you believe there are spirits lined up out there somewhere waiting to enter someone’s body? Where would these spirits have come from? How long ago? How would you account for their separate existence?”
The spirit part of me has been with me from the very beginning. I can only conclude that it came with the conception package.
w.w.
WW [#8]: The notion of “ensoulment” has a long history in Christian thinking. That doesn’t mean it occurs [i] after [/i] conception, but the question is worth asking. I wish more people on Clinton’s side of the abortion debate would consider it.
[blockquote]3. Irenaeus wrote:
Scott [#1]: Spong is a self-absorbed airhead. Obama is one of the brightest, most substantive persons ever to become president
[/blockquote}
I wish I could agree with at least part of this but I cannot. He is not in the most important office in the world and we know very little about him except that out of the gate he chose the culture of death and is looking like he will for the Sodomy message on our children. I can not wish that agenda well as it is not in keeping with Christian morals.
Irenaeus,
Like all Americans, and indeed the world, I am now required to wait and see. I would be overjoyed if I see it, but I am not expecting substance. I am interested to know where you get the idea that it’s there.
In #9 Irenaeus raises a critical question that is rarely discussed. My understanding is that infusion of the soul occurs at birth, according to traditional Jewish and Christian theology. Indeed a rabbi first pointed out to me that Exodus 21:22 clearly showed that a fetus was not a life. So I am unclear as to how we got to a theology of “life begins at conception”.
Please note that this is a serious inquiry. So let’s forego the usual hate mail that this debate usually seems to spark.
Also please note that this question in no way suggests that abortion is morally justified. That is a separate, albeit related, question.
Mr. Matz #12 –
The “life begins at conception” line of thought comes from science which clearly has demonstrated that at this point a unique body has been established with its own biological code and independent function. Jewish, and hence Christian, theology has always been very clear that there is not a clean line of demarcation between the soul and the body. As with Second Temple Judaism (apart, of course, from the Sadducees), we Christians have always proclaimed the resurrection of the body vice the immortality of the soul, a more pagan Greek concept (yes, the Church Fathers talked about such things, but they had specific reasons for doing so). The notion of ensoulment is therefore a highly problematic one both theologically, in light of the inseparability of the soul from the body (Dante recognized that even the sould in heaven were in a profoundly unnatural state so long as they awaited the Resurrection and were disembodied) in Christian thought, and philosophically inasmuch as there is no clear line of demarcation between the two as was thought to be the case by the pagan Greeks. The clear evidence from science alluded to earlier leaves the matter fairly unambiguous: abortion, even at an early stage of development, is homicide (albeit not necessarily murder, as that requires intent, which may or may not obtain in any particular act of homicide).
The difficulty is neither theological nor philosophical (and certainly not at all scientific), but political – and that does not make it in the least unimportant. It is simply a very difficult thing that the prolife movement asks of this society, that abortion be considered homicide from the moment of conception on – however clear the philosophical case for such a thing is. I suspect that the vast majority of the prolife movement would be willing to take the baby step of treating late-term abortion as homicide and regulating it just like any other. This President Obama and his political party resolutely refuse to do, and that is a significant problem.
Incidentally, Maine is about to start eh ssm wars again. This time will be a l’outrance, I suspect, down and dirty. Maine has become even bluer than California – only without the intellectual credentials. The battle will be cast as the war between right-thinking, civil riths proponents vs hate-filled religious reactionaries, a fraudulent bifurcation that has played very well in the past. Most of the papers here are well to the left, and it is doubtful that ssm will be halted thistime around – although, given prop 8, one never can tell. It is unlikely that rational discussion and careful examination of consequences will be given any attention. Larry
Hello Bill Matz,
I hope the following is helpful:
15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
16 your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be. – Psalm 139
*****************
God called me when I was in the womb,
Before my birth he had pronounced my name. – Isa 49:1
*****************
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you came to birth I consecrated you. – Jer 1:5
*****************
41When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. 42In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! 43But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. – Luke 1:41-44
*****************
I believe that from these verses we can see the creation of the soul and that God ordains our days. God calls us by name while we are in the womb. He knows us in the womb. He consecrates us in the womb. He writes about us in his book while we are in the womb.
John the Baptist, while in the womb, was able to feel the emotion of joy and react to external stimulus.
Science informs us that from conception, the baby has it’s own distinct DNA. The baby’s heart begins to beat after 18 days.
When I saw the ultrasounds of my children in their mother’s womb, I had absolutely no doubt that they were “persons†and that they had value and worth and personality. Did you know that babies in the womb often suck their thumbs? Why would they do that if they did not derive “comfort†from the activity? How could they derive comfort if they have no soul, no personality, and no cognition?
Kendall – you should be happy – its good commentary, and represents a magnanimous conservative view of the presidency.
Some argue that Obama wants to stay away from the culture wars as much as he possibly can.
I’m not sure if Obama is moral or immoral, but he has said that he wants to reduce abortions. He thinks that the best way is probably to offer as many alternatives as possible. He does not believe that the state should criminalize it on religious grounds. There may be good secular grounds for banning abortion (and I believe Hentoff and Hitchens are both anti-abortion).
I’m not sure how Jefferson judges morality, but comparing the personal choices and lifestyle that Bush, McCain and Obama made in the early part of their lives, Obama does pretty well. Didn’t rely on family connections for the fabulous job; sought public service jobs, seeking to serve over personal wealth; has one wife and seems to be providing a healthy example of how to raise two children. He passed some serious ethics legislation. It’s not perfect, but it does seem to represent some sort of moral thinking.
I would add, Kendall, there is one other good of marriage. That of peace and cooperation among people. Peace is what Jesus asked of his disciples.
Does anyone know whether Orthodox Judaism regards human life—and with it, the human soul—as beginning at the moment of conception?
Diana [#11]: I know quite a few of the people close to Obama, and they find him very impressive.
Note, moreover, how he managed the transition over the past three months—constructing his administration and being prepared to govern from day 1. Although he took office under difficult circumstances (very possibly the most difficult since 1933), he has had the best-organized, most-surefooted transition of any modern president. A lightweight could not have accomplished that.
I have no doubt that he is competent, intelligent and well-organized, he and the people around him; but it also seems to be rather beside the point, in the vein of Mussolini making the trains run on time. He’s in office a few days and already it’s open season on babies. That is the more relevant metric on Obama.
Thank you, TridentineVirginian – you are so right.
Irenaeus,
This is not definitive, but this is what I found in a quick search…
“In Torah tradition, the soul enters the body forty days after conception.”
Source: http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2007/11/21/jews-and-the-pro-life-movement—must-we-eat-herring/
“Judaism holds that human life begins upon first breath, and Jewish law requires abortion if necessary to save the mother’s life prior to birth. Most believe that potential human life should never be terminated casually, but abortion is generally regarded as a personal decision, especially within the first 40 days of pregnancy.”
Source: http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/2001/06/What-Orthodox-Jews-Believe.aspx
[blockquote]I’m not sure if Obama is moral or immoral, but he has said that he wants to reduce abortions. He thinks that the best way is probably to offer as many alternatives as possible. He does not believe that the state should criminalize it on religious grounds. There may be good secular grounds for banning abortion (and I believe Hentoff and Hitchens are both anti-abortion). [/blockquote]
Hentoff is anti, Hitchens is definitely pro. But what a lovely way to go about reducing the number of abortions, subsidizing them. I suppose that will work fine in this alternate reality where all demand curves slope backward. I trust Obama will take the same approach to firearms that he wants to get off the street. I can hardly wait.
[blockquote]I’m not sure how Jefferson judges morality, but comparing the personal choices and lifestyle that Bush, McCain and Obama made in the early part of their lives, Obama does pretty well. Didn’t rely on family connections for the fabulous job;[/blockquote]
No, he seems to have relied mostly on Bill Ayers, an admitted terrorist. You know, [i]moral[/i].
[blockquote]sought public service jobs,[/blockquote]
There’s nothing inherently moral about government employment. On the contrary, government, particularly government as envisioned by Obama, is aggressive and menacing. I find it far more moral that talented individuals use their skills at creating, building and employing than living at the expense of others.
[blockquote]seeking to serve over personal wealth;[/blockquote]
There are many types of greed. Greed for political power is one of the most pernicious.
[blockquote]has one wife and seems to be providing a healthy example of how to raise two children. [/blockquote]
Ever hear of Vera Baker?
[blockquote]He passed some serious ethics legislation. [/blockquote]
[url=http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/apr/14/obamas-stretch-ethics-reform/]Ahem.[/url]
Correction Irenaeus,
Not since 1933, but since the Carter years. The financial situation we are in is not even nearly as bad as when Carter left office. Reagan had one heck of a mess to clean up, much worse than what Obama inherited.
As to his substantiveness (I just made up a word!), I’d say his oratory style has everything to do with his high approval ratings. As I have said before, one of my friends said she voted for Obama simply because “He sounds presidential. It’ll be nice to have someone in the office who sounds presidential againâ€.
Too bad his style is to say nothing couched in very eloquent words. It would be better if he could be substantive in his speech and not just stylistic. Even his acceptance speech at the convention (hailed by many) was nothing more than clichés and famous quotations strung together.
[i] The financial situation we are in is not even nearly as bad as when Carter left office. Reagan had one heck of a mess to clean up, much worse than what Obama inherited [/i] —LibraryJim [#23]
My comment #18 stated that Obama “took office under difficult circumstances ([i]very possibly[/i] the most difficult since 1933).”
But I will take issue with your “correction”—your assertion that “the financial situation we are in is not even nearly as bad” as what Reagan faced.
Reagan inherited a federal budget surplus, which his tax cuts quickly transformed into yawning deficits.
Reagan inherited a savings-and-loan industry whose assets were basically sound loans. High interest rates had reduced the market value of thrifts’ mortgage loan portfolios by enough so that, if you marked thrifts to market, they were balance-sheet insolvent. But Reagan-era thrift deregulation replaced a curable interest-rate problem with an incurable asset-quality problem. Thrifts made hundreds of billions of dollars of bad loans and other bad investments. The taxpayers paid for it all big-time later in the decade.
Substantive discussion on issues like this is impossible as long as we impute evil motives to each other. Jeffersonian clearly wants to see the worst in the President (It couldn’t possibly be that he wanted power so that he could help people, like the folks he met on the South Side of Chicago – No, it must be a pernicious desire for power for its own sake. And I have heard nothing about Vera Baker that was one iota more substantive than what I heard about, say, Vicki Iseman. Thanks to David Horowitz for seeing that there really is an Obama Derangement Syndrome forming to match anything the left felt about Bush). Irenaeus sees substance where Jim and Diana do not. Conservatives think that liberals will destroy the country. Liberals think conservatives already have. O’Reilly hates Olbermann hates Limbaugh hates Maddow. And all we do is go around in circles like a dog chasing its tail. I have come to believe that most liberals want what is best for this country, and that they have reasons for being pro-Choice: a genuine concern for women’s rights, a genuine concern for economic justice, a genuine concern for medical necessity. I think they’re ultimately wrong, because the sanctity of life trumps all of those issues. But I don’t fault them for caring about those issues. Likewise I think most conservatives want what is best for this country, and are tired of being portrayed as misogynistic and theocratic for wanting to defend human life. I think that our new President sees this. I am disappointed that he chose to make these some of his first actions, but I am hopeful that he follows through with his commitment to policies that will reduce the number of abortions over all (I’m personally hoping for something like the 95-10 initiative that has been proposed by Democrats-for-Life). But as long as each side thinks the other is inherently “evil”, there can be no reasoned debate, only bluster, division, fiat and tyranny.
[i]nd all we do is go around in circles like a dog chasing its tail. I have come to believe that most liberals want what is best for this country, and that [b]they have reasons for being pro-Choice:[/b][/i]
Alta, you know it is not at all possible for both sides to be right about this issue, not even a little bit. All the motive in the world is irrelevant; abortion is objectively wrong, objectively murder, objectively mortal sin. If a concern for women’s rights, however defined, leads one to embrace infanticide, then one’s intellect and will are disordered and have lead one to embrace mortal sin, and thus be firmly on the road to Hell. It is no charity to try to square the circle with abortionists. This is above politics, it is about souls, whether they will be lost forever or be saved by the Lord. To relativize the choice of “choice” is to deceive those supporting abortion from the terrible peril they are in, they must be warned. It is not reason to compromise on this issue.
Just because the settlement of the abortion issue hasn’t proceeded according to your schedule, does not mean that we should accept objective evils that kill children, in the vain and foolish hope that somehow legalizing infanticide will make it less common. This is precisely the line the Kmiec catholics have taken, and it is frustrating in the extreme. I have never heard anything quite so foolish, and that is something in this day and age.
It’s been said that future generations will view our embrace of abortion as we view now the slaveholders of the antebellum South. I think that view is correct. What irony our first African-American president embraces this doctrine so strongly.
Ireneaus,
Just for example: right now we have about oh, beteween 5 and 7% unemployment. When Reagan took office it was closer to 20%
Right now interest rates are around 3% When Reagan took office it was closer to 25%.
Not to mention the gas shortage. sure we went up to $4.00 a gallon recently, but it’s back to $1.80 now. Look at the situation during the Carter administration: drivers were limited to getting gas on certain days and only allowed a certain amount each time. Prices were much higher when adjusted for time differences.
As to the surplus, they were not using the ‘real’ accounting of the CBO, as we have been doing since the Clinton administration (at the insistence of the Republican’s Contract with America), so the accounting was different.
Obama is proposing another 1 – 1.8 Trillion in deficit spending, so I don’t see how he is working to solve that one. Actually, the CBO estimates that the Obama plan will only push us further into problems. Reagan’s plan HELPED America and pushed us from crisis into prosperity.
So I hold my to my statement that this crisis is NOT nearly the level of intensity as the Carter years of the 1970’s, and certainly not near the levels of the 1930s.
And this in spite of the fact that I myself have been unemployed since October 3, and have few prospects at this time, even though most of my days are spent searching for jobs and emailing applications or running to the post office to mail in an application packet.
I’m right now working on another one to send in, and have to fill in an online .pdf to print off.
RE: “Substantive discussion on issues like this is impossible as long as we impute evil motives to each other.”
Actually it’s pretty much impossible to have meaningul discussion on issues like this when the sides have [i]mutually opposing and antithetical moral visions[/i] of the role of the State, and our country’s duty to the Constitution, and collectivist economics, and abortion, and so so so much more.
I like Obama, I think him substantive, and I don’t think he’s evil. But I still can’t have a meaningful conversation about the issues with liberals simply because we don’t start from the same foundational worldview of government. My [politically] liberal friends and I don’t talk politics — we talk dogs and hiking and books and movies. My [politically] conservative friends and I talk the politics — two hours at IHOP yesterday. ; > )
[i] Just for example: right now we have about oh, between 5 and 7% unemployment. When Reagan took office it was closer to 20% [/i] —LibraryJim [#28]
False. When Reagan took office, the unemployment rate was [url=http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/UNRATE.txt]7.5%[/url]. That’s quite close to what the rate is now. Let’s hope the unemployment rate doesn’t exceed 10%, as it did during parts of Reagan’s second and third years in office.
[blockquote]abortion is objectively wrong, objectively murder, objectively mortal sin[/blockquote]
If that were at all true, I think [i]Roe v. Wade[/i] would’ve never made it to court—and I think this topic would have caused far fewer hissy-fits both before and after [i]Roe v. Wade[/i].
[i]If that were at all true, I think Roe v. Wade would’ve never made it to court—and I think this topic would have caused far fewer hissy-fits both before and after Roe v. Wade.[/i]
Well I suppose whose yardstick you are using is relevant: God’s or the world’s?
I thank Daniel Muth and S&TN;for their thoughtful comments. But I think #21 clearly illustrates my underlying point, that there is substantial theological disagreement about when life begins theologically. Both Jeremiah and the Psalms attest to God’s foreknowledge of us. But God knew us even before our (or even our xxx-grandparents’) conception; so that foreknowledge is hardly dispositive of when human life begins, theologically. so I think it would be better to focus on the goal of eliminating abortion without using the questionable allegation of murder.
Based on your reasoning in #30, Irenaeus, I trust you will soon be faulting Obama when unemployment hits 8%, when he inherited only 6.9% from Bush. Come on, we both know that no president can make an economy turn on a dime.
#33 – the unclarity presented is the view of Jews; it has never been acceptable practice in Christian tradition to procure an abortion, going back to the earliest times. From the Catholic Encyclopedia:
[blockquote]The early Christians are the first on record as having pronounced abortion to be the murder of human beings, for their public apologists, Athenagoras, Tertullian, and Minutius Felix (Eschbach, “Disp. Phys.”, Disp. iii), to refute the slander that a child was slain, and its flesh eaten, by the guests at the Agapae, appealed to their laws as forbidding all manner of murder, even that of children in the womb. The Fathers of the Church unanimously maintained the same doctrine. In the fourth century the Council of Eliberis decreed that Holy Communion should be refused all the rest of her life, even on her deathbed, to an adulteress who had procured the abortion of her child. The Sixth Ecumenical Council determined for the whole Church that anyone who procured abortion should bear all the punishments inflicted on murderers.[/blockquote]
Mr. Matz #33 –
I respectfully but strongly disagree. I am well aware of the Jewish tradition that compares abortion to removal of a limb – and the strong disagreement with this in some Orthodox quarters. The Christian Church is much more unified and has always been. Some of the Fathers speculated with regard to “quickening”, when the child supposedly came to life, but the general consensus – certainly among the Orthodox and Catholics, comprising three fourths of the world’s Christians, not to mention most Protestants – is that this represented scientific ignorance rather than solid theology. Opposition to abortion and infanticide (the latter particularly odious to Jews in the Roman diaspera) marks the history of Christianity under Pagan Rome and continues to this day, despite the odd excitements of obscure ecclesial backwaters such as TEC.
The notion of life beginning with first breath rests on a misinterpretation of what God is doing in Genesis 2, Ezekiel 37 and other texts: it is God who gives the breath of life, not man who takes it. As far as foreknowledge, I am unaware of any tradition maintaining that God knew us before our grandparents. Poetry is surely not dispositive, science is – recalling that science may never substitute for either theology or philosophy. Scientifically, an organism is alive when it functions as an integrated unit and dies when such functioning ceases – hence the notion of brain death. As a functioning, indisbutably human organism, a fetus cannot be considered anything other than a living human person. A zygote becomes a grownup, not a human being.
Theologically, there continues to be no possible line of demarcation between soul and body (the two are distinct but inseparable) until death, after which the the soul continues in a profoundly unnatural state. There is no Christian doctrine of the soul’s pre-existence – God’s foreknowledge has to do with His timelessness, not our pre-existence. Life does not enter the unborn child, the unborn child is alive and no comforting mythology can take away from the brute fact that killing that child is by definition homicide.
Theology – at least Christian theology – is not the problem here, as I said before. Politics is. President Clinton is generally a decent man and was, I think, a pretty good president (for what it’s worth, I think President Bush was better), but he was no theologian and his question was indicative of his shallowness rather than his thoughtfulness. There is no point at which the soul enters the body. It is infused with it from the beginning and the two only separate – unnaturally, I reiterate – at the point of death, which we should recall is not God’s plan for His creation. Abortion is not necessarily murder. It is always homicide. I don’t like that fact and wish it were otherwise. But wishful thinking is not theology.
Bill Matz [#30]: The point of my comment #30 was to reply to mistaken assertions from LibraryJim [#28].
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
No one can make an economy turn on a dime. Those who try to do so often help assure a turn for the worse.
Daniel, thank you for the helpful additions.
Irenaeus, I understand and agree. My point, which you seem to acknowledge, is that either spot reading is meaningless in that comparison. We need to look at the trend or trajectory.