The Blinne Blog

Fighting Poverty and Moral Values

The Democrats and liberal Christians have insisted that fighting poverty is a moral value. What is little known is that evangelicals agree with this assessment. In the New York Times piece, One More 'Moral Value': Fighting Poverty, Glen Stassen finds the common ground between evangelicals who are pro-life and liberals who are concerned with poverty and social justice. He also links poverty with evangelism.

Glen E. Stassen, a professor of Christian ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., said his students, who were largely conservative, agreed that poverty should be part of the moral values discussion. "A lot of Christians who are worried about abortion see poverty as a pro-life issue, because if you undermine the safety net for poor mothers, you'll increase the abortion rate and infant mortality rate," Dr. Stassen said. "We've seen that happen since welfare reform, just as the Catholic bishops predicted."

Dr. Stassen, who describes himself as "pro-life," added that many evangelicals, including his students, want to change the current moral values rhetoric because they think it drives people from, rather than to, the church. "They're both offended and worried that it will persuade people concerned about justice that they should not be Christians," he said.

Politics for Adults

Stephen Carter in his column Politics for Adults bemoaned the lack of civility in political discourse. What are we as Christians to do?

The division and strife that characterize our political life, the substitution of slogan for argument and attack for policy, have grown so heated and painful that they threaten our pretensions to democracy. We face political discord that leaves us mired in mutual suspicion so deep that hardly anyone wants to talk to anybody with a different view. The challenge we face—especially we who are Christians—is what to do about it.

We know that God calls Christians to an ethic of love. He also forbids us to stay silent in the face of evil. How do we meld these competing mandates in our political stances? Over the years, I have heard and read answers that usually say a Christian is obliged to hold position X on issue Y. Sometimes this is surely true. But recognizing the causes for which we ought to fight is not the same as knowing how we should conduct the fight.

As an evangelical you might think that Carter would hold up a conservative on how to solve this problem. Rather, he holds up arch-liberal Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall for whom Carter clerked. When he asked Marshall what he thought of segregationist, John W. Davis, Marshall had nothing but praise.

When I met Marshall many years after Brown, I asked him what he thought of John W. Davis. I expected him, in the fashion of the times, to respond with the sort of vicious and ad hominem assault that I no doubt would have selected. After all, the man was—no point in sugarcoating it—a segregationist. But Marshall surprised me. He said, "John W. Davis? A good man. A great man, who just happened to believe in that segregation."

Carter concludes with a very powerful a forteriori argument.

And if Marshall could reach out across the divide of segregation and meet people on the other side with respect and even affection, and so make deals to move the country forward, is it really impossible to imagine the rest of us doing the same?

Imagine that: a politics actually worthy of adults.

Indeed.

Iapetus from Cassini

NASA's Cassini spacecraft successfully flew by Saturn's moon Iapetus at a distance of 123,400 kilometers (76,700 miles) on Friday, Dec. 31. NASA's Deep Space Network tracking station in Goldstone, Calif., received the signal and science data that day beginning at 11:47 p.m. Pacific Standard Time.

Iapetus is a world of sharp contrasts. The leading hemisphere is as dark as a freshly-tarred street, and the white, trailing hemisphere resembles freshly-fallen snow.

Friday's flyby was the first close encounter of Iapetus during the four-year Cassini tour. The second and final close flyby of Iapetus is scheduled for 2007. Next up for Cassini is communications support for the European Space Agency's Huygens probe during its descent to Titan on Jan. 14.

The Huygens probe successfully detached from the Cassini orbiter on Dec. 24. The data gathered during the descent through Titan's atmosphere will be transmitted from the probe to the Cassini orbiter. Afterward, Cassini will point its antenna to Earth and relay the data through NASA's Deep Space Network to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and on to the European Space Agency's Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany, which serves as the operations center for the Huygens probe mission. Two of the instruments on the probe -- the camera system and the gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer -- were provided by NASA.

(Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

A Study in Contrasts

What are evangelicals to do with recent electoral victories? Two approaches are shown by Jim Dobson and Chuck Colson. The New York Times is reporting Evangelical Leader Threatens to Use His Political Muscle Against Some Democrats:

COLORADO SPRINGS - James C. Dobson, the nation's most influential evangelical leader, is threatening to put six potentially vulnerable Democratic senators "in the 'bull's-eye' " if they block conservative appointments to the Supreme Court.

In a letter his aides say is being sent to more than one million of his supporters, Dr. Dobson, the child psychologist and founder of the evangelical organization Focus on the Family, promises "a battle of enormous proportions from sea to shining sea" if President Bush fails to appoint "strict constructionist" jurists or if Democrats filibuster to block conservative nominees.

The same article refers to an open letter to the Christian Church by Chuck Colson. Here Chuck Colson warns evangelicals not to become yet another special interest group.

So, what are we lining up at Election Day to get in return for our votes?  Nothing.  All we want is the President to be the man that he is and do the kinds of things he did in the first term.

I resent the media implication that Christians are waiting for their payback.  We’re interested in the common good for all people (the theological term for that is common grace).  We vote with conviction about a man’s integrity, his faith, his beliefs, and his accomplishments in restoring the moral order in American life.

So, Mr. President, give us more of the same.

This is an open letter to the church and to church leaders.  Do not let the media typecast us.  We are not special interest pleaders.  The media would love to catch us in the trap, talking about what the president is going to do for us.  The media loves to use stuff like that to paint us as “theocrats.”  Note what the New York Times did Thursday.   Garry Wills wrote a harsh piece, charging that we were trying to “roll back the Enlightenment” which is, of course, pure nonsense.  Poor Thomas Friedman wrote that he woke up the morning after the election to discover that many of us want a different America than he does (yes, we do—we want a moral America, which boggles the minds of some who live on Manhattan Island.)  But the point is we mustn’t give them an excuse to bash us.

What we care about is what’s good for the nation.  Record numbers of Americans cast their votes for Bush because he proved to so many of us that he shares these values, that he cares about the moral state of American life, and that he puts his faith in practice.  He has shown us his faith by his works.  Let’s us show our faith, not by flexing political muscles but by our good works.

Chuck Colson is willing to make such a sentiment as part of his New Year's resolutions.

We also, however, face a sobering question. Evangelicals have come back into the limelight. Talking heads are commenting on the increasing power of “values voters” and conservative Christians. And to listen to some Christians, one gets the idea that this is the time for our political payback.

So the question is this: Can we handle success and increased influence with grace and prudence?

The sad fact is that all Christians are susceptible to worldly wiles. In fact, sad to say, the Church has managed to shoot itself in the foot almost every time it has achieved power in society.

So what we need most right now is a bracing dose of humility. We’re not a labor union, lining up for our share of the spoils after the election. We are the Church. Our job is to bring biblical truth to bear in society; to win people to Christ; and to promote righteousness and justice. We serve the King of kings, no mere temporal king.

The Apostle Peter tells us always to be prepared to give a reason for the hope that is within us, but with gentleness and reverence. And we are to keep a clear conscience so that when people slander us, they may become “ashamed of their slander.” Though we are commanded to engage in the political process, we are to do so lovingly, as citizens concerned for the common good. Trying to do that is my first resolution.

Not a bad way to start 2005.