"...the noisy minority [of 'born-again Christians'] ... wants to reduce the power and the glory of their religion to a set of knee-jerk issues. Christianity, in this dehydrated version, means you're anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, and anti-stem cell research. Just add vindictiveness. As for what you believe and how you conduct your life, those are metaphysical matters we don't bother with anymore, right? Such a constricting, totalitarian view is as repugnant to Christian teaching ('Judge not, lest ye be judged') as it is to constitutional law. Why should abortion be such a pivotal issue for Christians? If the answer is, 'because it's murder,' then why would a Christian vote for the party that legalizes assault weapons and campaigns for the death penalty? It's intriguing that 'faith' tends to choose issues that rile people's emotions, rather than those that awaken their beliefs. One could theorize, for instance, that the anti-abortion movement is merely a capitalist plot: The more unwanted children get born, the more uneducated low-wage workers are available, and the less you need to pay them."
--Michael Feingold, in The Village Voice
Thursday, January 20, 2005
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