The #MarchForLife2015 Thread

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WASHINGTON, D.C.
The lobby and corridors of this hotel were crowded with Catholic school kids when we checked in yesterday. St. Vincent de Paul of Perryville, Missouri, was the most visible contingent — dozens of kids wearing blue-and-gold letterman’s jackets — but the annual March for Life brings groups from all around the country, not all of them Catholic. On my way down to the lobby to go out for a smoke this morning, I noticed one of the kids was wearing a nametag with the familiar Episcopalian (or Anglican) symbol: Red cross on a white field with the St. Andrew’s cross in blue. “Episcoplian?” I asked.

“Yes, sir,” the boy said.

“Wow, I didn’t realize there were still pro-life Episcopalians.”

Out on the sidewalk in front of the hotel, the boy joined a group of about a dozen kids, and I spoke to one of the adult leaders, who told me they are from St. Michael’s Christian Academy of San Clemente, California.

Seeing so many fine young Christians who support the cause of life is very encouraging to me. I’ve spent the past several months of researching radical feminism and being immersed in such evil can be psychologically disorienting. “Has the whole world gone crazy?” I find myself asking, knowing how many millions of taxpayer dollars are spent to propagate this weird ideology in colleges and universities. “Is our civilization utterly doomed?”

The March for Life reminds me that there is still hope. There are still people who have not been deceived and corrupted. Unfortunately, however, there is the problem of Congress.

Pro-life conservatives were livid this morning after the House GOP leadership demonstrated its incompetence yesterday:

Today marks the 42nd anniversary of the Supreme Court legalizing abortion on demand throughout pregnancy. The pro-life movement commemorates this day with marches, worship services and lobbying for bills to protect unborn children. Pro-lifers were promised by the Republican leaders they just helped elect and re-elect that the House of Representatives would pass a bill today banning most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, a point after which infants can feel pain and survive if born prematurely.
The legislation has been passed by the House in the previous Congress and is extremely popular in national polling. “One of the clearest messages from Gallup trends,” the polling firm reported, “is that Americans oppose late-term abortion.” A Washington Post/ABC survey showed that 64 percent of Americans favor limiting abortion at 20 weeks of pregnancy or earlier. . . .
We’re one of just a small handful of countries, including notorious human rights violators North Korea and China, that allow late-term abortion.
And yet somehow the Republicans managed to make a disaster of passing the bill. Instead of passing the legislation and sending it to the Republican-controlled Senate, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act was pulled at the last minute and replaced with a bill that bans taxpayer funding of abortion.
What in the h-e-double-hockey-sticks just happened? It takes a special combination of incompetence and cowardice to miss an easy lay-up like this, but apparently the new Republican Congress has it in spades. . . .
If Republicans can’t pass wildly popular legislation protecting innocent unborn children, what’s going to happen when they face difficult legislative battles? . . .

You can read the rest. What happened is that two Republican members — including Rep. Renee Ellmers, whose election campaign in 2010 I strongly supported — decided at the last minute that they didn’t like some language in the bill. The problem, as I see it, is not with the bill, and not even with Ellmers. The problem is that the leadership doesn’t know how to whip the caucus properly and make sure they’ve got 100% support on crucial votes. Tom DeLay never would have let a trainwreck like this happen. Organizational incompetence is perhaps even more dangerous than ideological wobbling in a situation like this.

Proverbs 29:18: “Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.”

The lack of vision among some of our leaders is disappointing, but the people who “keepeth the law” are still happy. When I went out for another smoke, I encountered a group of about 20 people from Voice of Truth, a church near the central Georgia town of Dublin:

Voice of Truth is a non-denominational church where the Word of God is taught and preached. The church was formed when several Christian families felt called by God to reach out to the unchurched in our community. God has blessed us and we have grown in a few short years to a congregation of more than two hundred.

Preaching the Word of God and reaching out to “the unchurched”? Of course God will always bless that kind of work. I spoke to the leaders of the church, including brothers Phil and Keith Mills. They hold to a very basic Bible-focused theology, the kind you don’t need a Ph.D. to understand. As they were ready to leave for the march, they asked me to walk with them a little way. Phil explained that he and his brother were once a couple of young hellbound sinners, “just as bad as we could be.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I used to be a Democrat myself.”

 




 

157 comments

  1. And there you go with the afterlife threats again. I’d still like to know why you do that in the name of a god of love.

    Can we just focus on making this world a little better before we leave it?

  4. Where in the blessed world did you get the idea I was against the law? I’m not even denouncing Christianity here.

    I am saying that in this situation you need to decide if Bible verses are more important than taking a pro-life stand.

    I am saying that someone can be moral and not be Christian.

    I’m saying that demanding morality must come only from Christianity is going to drive away allies you need.

  5. I’m saying that if you are not Christian, that’s pretty much what Christianity is. It’s actually a fairly decent one if you ignore all those rules in the Old Testament.

    Still not mine though.

  7. You didn’t write that you were. That’s the problem. Morality and the law go hand in hand. You need to recognize this if you plan on staying out of jail. The cops don’t care if you think there’s nothing wrong with whatever you did, just because you have your own personal morality.

    Either that, or you’re making far too big a deal over where morals come from, and not the fact that most morals in society exist irrespective of religion, and surprisingly, they tend toward agreement, regardless of where they came from because they are logical, make sense for any society, and have been examined for thousands of years.

  9. The work of a Christian WILL result in a batter world now. The problem is what God expects does not sit well with sinful man, people just like you. Being moral is NOT the issue.

    I really don’t care about your whining about afterlife threats. Those threats are from God. You don’t like that, then your problem is with Him, not me. I’m just warning.

    Lest you start whining that it is me, save your pixels for God. You can tell Him all about it and why you rejected the only way to life when He extended His hand to make a way for you and you rejected it so you can remain a willful rebel. Your lame attempt at morality will buy you nothing when you stand before God, naked and ashamed.

  10. Morality preceded Christianity and there are moral people today who aren’t Christian.

    You can work with moral non-Christians or you can throw Bible verses. Which serves your goals better?

  11. He’s not going to because he can’t. He thinks he can make his own way, just like the rest of the rebels in this world that have rejected the gospel.

  13. Only if they chose it.

    There’s no way This Side we can know what’s true. You can believe, that is the root of faith after all. Your belief doesn’t control me though.

    Meanwhile, I think a good example would work better than Bible verses.

  15. If we all just said, “Wow, you have a good point!” and “Wow, you’re sooooo smart!” would you stop being such a self-righteous, obnoxious little prick in your efforts to sow doubt in those who’ve found salvation and want to share it with others?

  16. My point is that simply quoting the Bible to someone who doesn’t accept it as absolute truth does very little to buttress a moral argument.

    Much like me quoting a Buddhist text to a Christian.

  20. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

    “There is more than one way.”

    Those two statements are mutually exclusive; they cannot both be true. If your statement is true, which you clearly believe, then the other one is false. The inescapable conclusion of your train of thought is that Jesus is a liar.

    Of course, you’re going to rely on the inartful dodge that “Jesus never really said that” (which is based on what precisely?)

    And how do you know that I, and countless others before me, haven’t taken a closer look at the men who wrote in his name?

  21. “I am saying that someone can be moral and not be Christian.”

    Again, you clearly don’t understand Christianity. No one can be truly moral.

  22. Honestly I’m on the fence on this particular issue. It’s one of the few I haven’t made up my mind about.

    I do think it’s way too easy today and an escape from responsibility,

    I think if you’re making a case against abortion, you shouldn’t depend on writings more than a thousand years old to make your case for you. Live your faith instead of reciting it.

  23. Please don’t put words in my mouth. I in no way said or implied that you said I was not a Christian. I said that you do not understand Christianity.

  24. *sighs*

    The world is seldom black and white, and real choices are seldom either/or.

    I’m not here to debate the merits of Christianity. I’m here asking one question.

    Does someone have to be Christian to be moral?

  25. And you’re simply being a troll. And I’m starting to lean towards the conclusion you are being intentionally obnoxious.

    The “threats” are in God’s word. Turn or burn dude. I doubt you will turn. As you have shown, you are a willful rebel and you don’t like the warnings because they require something you are utterly unwilling to give.

  27. The question is not about morality, but the state of your soul. You are born separated from God, and you become a rebel because of it. God has sent people to warn you of the consequences and made a way so you can escape the wrath to come.

    God has extended amnesty. You accept or reject. Being a moral individual will buy you nothing. God requires belief and repentance. Mr. Buddha found nothing that leads to God, but only to an eternity without God. Nirvana does not exist, and morality means nothing outside of Christ.

  28. If you change your last sentence to include “people calling themselves Christians” then I can agree. I can assure you that people like “Bishop” Robinson, however, are not Christian by any measure except their own. Christians look to the word of God as the guide for life, not themselves. Relativism is utterly incompatible with Christianity.

  31. You have been honestly challenged, and yet you continue. The primary problem is that the site is not yours, nor is it ours, so to “debate” you in something which you really do not have an open mind is useless, and takes up RSM’s bandwidth for no good reason.

    From what I have seen of you here, If this were my site, or I were a moderator, you would be under an IP ban because your purpose for being here is not compatible with the purpose of this site. I think, in the end, even Wombat or RSM will tire of you trolling and finally pull the trigger. This is tax season, so Wombat can not give as much effort to moderating has he has in the past, but if your were an honest man, you’d simply leave on your own. That’s something called being moral, which you claim to understand, but I have yet to see any evidence of it.

  32. What is the basis for morality? It is either transcendent or it is based upon human power over others. People who don’t believe in a transcendent morality, but who rather subscribe to a moral code based upon some nebulous “social contract,” can never answer the question, “What happens when that social contract breaks down?” When that happens, there is nothing left but the exercise of power over others. No amount of camouflage of “game theory” or “mutual cooperation” can disguise that fact.

    Is it possible for people to behave morally without a transcendent basis for their actions? Sure. So what. That’s not the ultimate philosophical point.

  36. That’s the convenient thing about being the arbiter of one’s own morality — you get the ego boost of following a strict moral code, with the indulgence to ignore it when it becomes inconvenient.

    In other words, Juggalo morality. Whoop whoop!

  39. Ahem. My point is, in a very real way, you are no different than any Christian. Or Muslim, for that matter. You follow a path, and tell people that your path is better.

    (Or, should I say, “More enlightened”?)

    Yes, you do offer a different way. But that’s proselytizing even if it is indirectly. Especially with your moral superiority, most evident when you are denigrating Christian beliefs while ignoring the positive. That’s why you fail to convince people of your sincerity.

    I suggest a different approach: state how any religion offers a path to a moral lifestyle consistent with Christian beliefs, and note how this can build up and support a strong America. Because, y’know, we’ve been a melting pot for a couple hundred years, and I’m sure that there are plenty of examples out there.

    It’s worth a try, don’t you think?

  40. The rape requirement wasn’t controversial when they passed this bill previously and in any case wouldn’t be germane until after 20 wks. The Democrats didn’t make that part of the bill an issue in any of their campaigns last year. Ellmers is creating an issue which can only help their war on women tactics. Depending on the poll somewhere between 60 and 80% support this ban. Obviously many of them do support abortion in varying degrees. Those who might object to this legislation based on this minor and extremely rare situation aren’t going to support the ban anyway and they certainly aren’t going to be voting for Republicans.

    Legalizing murder is never a state issue. At some point almost all abortion will be struck down by the court probably based on the 14 amendment.

  42. Note that he while he states what his path is not, he doesn’t state what it is. I’m betting on one of them ”Sponge Bob” cults.

  46. Boy what a dead end that link was. I stopped reading after ”libertarians are what used to be Classical Liberals”

  50. So what? That’s no argument against Christian morality. It’s like saying the blueness of the sky comes more from the Indian ocean than the Atlantic.

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