With its stepped-up focus on faith, this year's Democratic National Convention has slated a number of religious leaders to offer benedictions and invocations, including Joel Hunter, the Florida megachurch pastor who was once slated to be president of the Christian Coalition before he decided they were too nasty. Hunter, a registered Republican, has been at the forefront of the "abortion reduction" movement and recently, shall we say, blessed the Democratic Party platform, declaring that "pro-lifers of both parties can now support Senator Obama."
But Jim Wallis, the president of the evangelical anti-poverty group Sojourners, will be taking center stage, moderating two of four Faith Caucus meetings: "Common Ground on Common Good" and "Faith in 2009: How an Obama Administration will Engage People of Faith." (The moderator of the other two faith caucus meetings, "Moral Values Issues Abroad" and "Getting Out the Faith Vote," will be Joshua DuBois, Obama's National Director of Religious Affairs.)
So what can we expect from Wallis' leadership? Today Pastor Dan sticks it to Wallis, picking up on a post from Wallis' blog about abortion reduction that "oozes patriarchy." Wallis wrote:
Support for women caught up in difficult situations and tragic choices is a better path than coercion for really reducing the abortion rate. Yes, I agree there is never a "need" for abortion except in the case where the health of the mother is threatened. But until we can reach out to women who "feel" the need for abortion and support them in alternative choices, we will never change the shameful abortion rate that both sides seem content to live with while they just attack each other. It is time to move from symbols to solutions.
Pastor Dan shot back:
This is literally the most patronizing attempt to legislate morality that I have seen in a long long time, outside of the Bush administration. It is smug, elitist and condescending. There is no vision of social benefit, no argument about the values of one policy option over another. When it boils down to it, the purpose of this dubious proposal is to make the Democratic party safe for people like Wallis and other pro-lifers who want to act upon women in the guise of "reaching out to them."
I don't want to hear any more crap about how "we're all on the same team." Until Jim Wallis can start his discussion of abortion with the recognition that women are moral agents in their own right and don't need him to guide their decision-making, we're not on the same team at all.
Wallis doesn't like the phrase "reduce the need for abortions" in the party platform -- he and his allies wanted the phrase "reduce the number of abortions" instead. He doesn't want anyone to think that an abortion is ever needed -- in fact, he's intent on passing judgment on women who choose abortions, and to remind them, before and after the fact, of the "shamefulness" of that choice. The platform writing committee might have turned this judgmental rhetoric aside, but Wallis may well bring it to the convention anyway.
--Sarah Posner
