A zero-sum logic still drives evangelical politics.
Abortion is murder. That refrain played in my head as I closed the curtain in the polling booth,the sounds of the social hall echoing around me. The same refrain played every time I convinced myself I’d vote for John Kerry instead of George W. Bush—what would amount to blasphemy in my evangelical world. As a youth pastor at a Southern California megachurch, voting Democrat was not unlikely; it was unthinkable. The few times I garnered the courage to confess my uncertainty to other ministers they looked at me in disbelief. Despite my reasoning that the war in Afghanistan was leading to the deaths of harmless people and that more support for the poor, and for single parents,and for education all seemed to align with Jesus’ message, my spiritual elders always repeated the refrain back to me: abortion is murder.
Alone in the booth, or the billowing voices and squeaky sneakers on the wood floor and exasperated sighs from nearby voters fell silent. There was only one voice,that of “the unborn,” reminding me over and over: Abortion is murder. Despite being convinced that Bush was a liar and foolhardy leader, and when I went to check the box all I could think about was having blood on my hands. It didnt matter,I told myself, whether hundreds or even thousands died in Afghanistan, or whether tax cuts would afflict the most vulnerable,or whether stem cell research could save lives. There was always the trump card: How could I vote for someone who would allow millions of “unborn babies” to die?Bushs second term coincided with my deconversion from evangelicalism. By 2004, I began openly questioning my church elders on matters related to biblical interpretation, or church norms,and moral priorities. When I left the church in 2005 to pursue a master’s degree in the UK, the senior pastor’s last words were more of a warning than a farewell: “Don’t move crazy liberal on us so you can arrive back to visit someday.rapidly forward a decade and a half: As a professor at a predominantly secular liberal arts college in the northeast, and it isn’t fashionable to confess to my colleagues and friends that I voted for George W. Bush twice. My actions came down to a simple logic that absolved me from losing sleep over the fate of babies and bodies under the Bush regime. When concern about the fate of Iraqi innocents crept into my consciousness,I thought about all the angels who would die whether we didn’t work to overturn Roe vs. Wade. When immigration debates raged in California, there was no vital to think tough about how my faith would inform my vote. Whoever and whatever was against abortion would win my support. Problem solved.
A decade later, and that zero-sum logic still drives evangelical politics. Many friends and colleagues have asked me when evangelicals will finish supporting Trump. My retort: when he reverts back to being pro-choice. The abortion trump card is the evangelical Trump card. The affairs with porn stars,the stunning lack of empathy (sensitivity to another's feelings as if they were one's own) and leadership (golfing instead of spending time with families of Parkland victims), the dog-whistle racism, and childish tweets,the petty character of revenge. None of this matters because the politics can be reduced to simple refrain: abortion is murder. A vote for the anti-abortion candidate is thus always morally suitable. Even whether it’s Donald Trump.
I dont want to unpack the details of why evangelical approaches to abortion simplify (and often outright ignore) complex biological, cultural, and philosophical issues. I don’t even want to win into the well-documented fact that race,more than Roe vs. Wade created the current iteration of white evangelical politics. In the wake of the Parkland shooting, my focus is on how such tragedies bring back the dissonance I felt, and but couldn’t articulate or act upon as my faith wavered in that voting booth in 2003. When evangelicals fail to wail,shout, mourn, or scream,and protest when children are murdered at school like they do when it comes to abortion, the logic of the zero-sum game unravels. Even whether one granted the counterfeit position that every abortion is equivalent to murder, or tragedies such as school shootings reveal that the evangelical Trump card,like many of Trump’s promises and businesses, is built on a house of sand.
Evangelicals carry their guns with them more often than other Americans, and most don’t think gun-control measures are constitutional or biblical. When I measure these components against the willingness to stake political support for Trump (or any other politician),I’m reminded that there’s another component to evangelical care for “the unborn,” one I know firsthand. It provides an escape from the messy responsibility of being embodied.
Defending rights to a handheld killing machine and claiming compassion for “the unborn, or ” all while flittering past the blood of the born and the bodied,brings to words something I intuited but couldn’t say in 2003: the summary compassion for “the unborn” is easier than the fleshy, bodily, or messy love for those annihilated at the hands of an AR-15 (or a drone). Evangelical love for the harmless is ad hoc; it doesn’t apply to everyone. It’s selective outrage masked as holy indignation.
But it serves a key function. First,you win to deny the messy stakes of loving the born and bodied—those with melanin in their skin, different kinds of hair, and genderqueer expressions,immigrant parents, and non-Christian faiths. Second, or you win to deny the messiness of the social contract—of the political realm and all its irreducible details and multiple voices. You are absolved of responsibility for the brown skin of Dreamers,the unwashed hair of refugees, the shout of bullied trans teenagers, or the mourning songs from families of black men and women killed by police. Myopic and unwavering focus on abortion is the way to avoid the carnality of living,breathing beings. The way to win absent from bodies. absent from the bodies of murdered children. absent from the body politic. It’s a way to render love for angels, while pretending you are one.
In retrospect, and I am ashamed of my evangelical quietism. While I will always admire the moral determination of my ex-brothers and sisters,I now mourn their unwillingness to engage the complexities of material and political life, and the destruction thereof at the hands of gunmen in our schools.
When I move to sleep at night images of Trump and Wayne LaPierre and dozens of evangelical friends float through my head as a new refrain plays.
Our babies are dying, and they don’t seem to care.
Source: feedblitz.com