Early Morning Christian Radio

I intentionally listened to social conservative leader and influential religious radio broadcaster James Dobson this morning, wanting to get his take on this week's election of Barack Obama to the US Presidency. I was surprised how shocked both he and his panel of commentators were at the outcome of the voting, especially since strong indicators showing how likely an Obama landslide would be were available days before the polls opened. They were worried about how Obama's total endorsement of reproductive rights would derail attempts to get Roe v. Wade reversed and result in the unrestrained push for abortion on demand at every level of government. Hunkering down together, the six vowed to keep fighting for the life of the unborn, in every courtroom and voting booth in the country.

Because the Presidential news was so dismal, conversation shifted quickly to the passage of Proposition 8 in California, which defined Constitutional marriage in the state as being between a man and woman only. No legal same sex marriages in California any more. Proponents of the bill spent $39 million to gain its passage. They gathered 7200 pastors to support the measure, and had massive prayer gatherings to petition God for the bill's passage. This included a 33,000 person, all day rally at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego days before the election.

So God lost one and won one in 2008, just about His success ratio in the passage of Civil Laws identifying themselves as His Will over the History of Western Civilization, and profoundly higher than His success ratio on legislation proposed and passed in the United States since 1900.

God is easily defeated, it seems. He is unable to muster enough juice to get McCain the 7 states and 5% he needed to become a President who supported right to life. I am a linear person; I have a hard time understanding how things fit together in space, but I do believe that they fit together differently than is being determined by Dobson and friends.I again question the efficacy of trying to maintain civil laws that support moral values that have probably never been supported by the majority of Americans, while using that imaginary support as the validation of the effort.I question time, money, organization, and religious furor being invested in legislation to keep people from getting married, at a time when marriage is in a steep decline.

I fully support life, and would like to see synergy in moving towards a non-legislative commitment to life, which would be built on the almost universal dislike of abortion. Is opposition to Obama and his abortion stand an effort to reduce abortion through partnership, prayer, education and investment, or an ongoing, fruitless attempt at an impossible to enforce legal eradication that sets up an endless series of legislative battles, that take time and energy from what can be done now to keep 15 year olds from the brink of a life altering event?

If Obama is President for 8 years, he will see a medical revolution regarding abortion. There are pills being developed that will bring safe, effective, non intrusive pregnancy termination to a woman's bathroom. Cheap, with little side effects, these will eliminate the need to visit abortion clinics, and will be much safer and convenient than the "morning after" pill. This technology, which the church will battle relentlessly, may desensitize pregnant women to the trauma of abortion, but it will also make later term abortions the one visible sign that procedures continue to be done. Such procedures will become even more questionable, and it may be that ongoing opposition by Christians will lead to some regulation of late term abortions.

But this is just more legislative stuff. Facing the future of reproductive rights issues, the Christian Church needs to do what it should always do: fragment into the world surrounding it, sharing the value of life and the time it begins; caring for those who have decided to follow the difficult choice to give birth; comforting those who are mourning a decision to terminate; teaching birth control to anyone who will listen and getting birth control devices into the hands of young people who are sexually active or about to be.

The task is simple and direct if the issue doesn't financially drive an organization. You wonder if people running family ministries really want the church to change its world, and positively influence abortion decisions from the bottom up. Success could cost them their prominence, and the political power that has brought them.