Abortion, Execution, and the Consequences of Taking Life

James D. Slack

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781412853989
• eBook ISBN: 9781351534277
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Historia y teoría filosóficas

This book focuses on the relationship between public morality and personal action in the American political community. It emphasizes the responsibilities of citizens and government to find and confirm truth, looking to specific sources: religious scripture and empirical events. Recognizing that we have a natural preference for distraction and distance from both sources of truth, Slack uses qualitative, open-ended interviews and direct observation to uncover the intimate consequences of life-taking in open societies.

Abortion and murder/capital punishment are instances in which there is a sequence of events that result in life-taking. The act of murder denies the sanctity of life of someone else. Abortion and capital punishment also deny the sanctity of the lives of others. The intimacy of life-taking is not typically acknowledged or remains hidden. This makes it difficult to assess the consequences for victims, survivors, and the political community as a whole. As a result, there is only a tenuous link between public actions that question the sanctity of human life and the moral compass professed by the American democracy.

The volume presumes a theocentric foundation envisioned by the American Founders. It explores the model's first source of truth, biblical scripture, as it applies to the public actions of murder, abortion, and capital punishment. Then it investigates the intimate reality of these acts. These realities are examined in a variety of settings, resulting in a mosaic pattern of public action about capital punishment and abortion. Slack underscores the importance of government's role of providing outward justice, as well as the citizen's responsibility to be supportive of government tasks in order to reconcile the reality of life-taking with the moral compass professed in the American political community.

1

Morality, Choice, and America

“We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.”

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Bethge, 2011:10)

Intrepid words, considering they were penned in Nazi Germany by a man who could have remained in America. Writing from his Gestapo prison cell, Dietrich Bonhoeffer came to understand one critical fact about the choice to destroy Imago Dei: societies, like individuals, grow numb to the act of killing. There is little concern for the intimate consequences of taking life. This seems true in all types of regimes and, as it was in Bonhoeffer’s day, so it is today.

* * *

Causes and consequences of public actions do not occur in a vacuum. Here we examine public actions concerning abortion and capital punishment that take place in a particular setting, the American political community. This is decisively a democratic environment and, as Montesquieu says in Spirit of Laws (2005), it therefore requires much more virtue from its citizens and leaders than any other form of government. James W. Ceaser (1990) points out that, for this kind of political setting to work, citizens need to understand that democratic action is not unrelated to the moral actions of each individual.

Hence, the American political fabric is much more than democratic. While its creation was aided instrumentally by John Locke (1689), the Founders intended for this particular political community to be anchored firmly in a special kind of morality. Desired values and practiced norms were to be based on the morality of the God of Abraham (Novak, 2004).

This is not to say the Founders sought a theocratic government; that is, one where private actions and civic behavior would be determined and judged by laws requiring specific religious rituals and the adherence to a specific set of religious doctrine (Meacham, 2006). Too often the early colonies implemented penalties for not praying at the appropriate time of day and for blasphemous speech against the church and God. Specifically, the Founders feared two types of theocratic tendencies: (1) a national or federally sanctioned church and (2) legislative preferential treatment for various religious sects (Lonang Institute, 2006).

Rather than relying on secularism to combat the theocratic past, as the French would soon do, the Founders envisioned a political community where public action and its consequences would be anchored on theocentric, or God-based, moral principles. Certainly the Age of Enlightenment nurtured the primary Lockean value of individualism, as well as the need for equality in order to protect the pursuits of each rational person. This, after all, was the impetus for entering into political community. But the idea of individualism and equality could not stand alone (Locke, 1689; 1689b). The question became, how do you regulate the civic engagement of choice—of Lockean entrepreneurs whose self-interest may not always succumb to the need of living in community with one another?

Theocentric moral principles seemed the best answer. George Washington (1796) often underscored that the public morality of the community cannot prevail “in exclusion of religious principle.” As reflected by John Adams, “the notion that a state and society could remain neutral and purged of any religion was . . . a philosophical fiction. Absent a commonly adopted set of values and beliefs, politicians would invariably hold out their private convictions as public ones” (Witte, 2004:25). Hence, the Founders were not necessarily concerned about people getting to heaven, but rather how each citizen had to behave publically in this lifetime in order for the political community to “work.”

Society would regulate itself through laws and expected behavior based on this-world moral values found in the God of Abraham, but this would be checked by the notion of tolerance toward man’s conscience and choice of religion. As Thomas Jefferson (1786) and James Madison (1785; Munoz, 2003) believed, right of conscience and religious tolerance were necessary to ward off the unintended consequences of officially placing Christianity above all religions, as well as the adverse effects of placing one Christian sect above others. Moreover, Madison (1785; Frohnen, 2002) cautioned about passing laws to persecute nonbelievers, arguing that “we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yielded to the evidence which has convinced us. If this freedom be abused, it is an offence against God, not against man.”

Tolerance, however, was never meant to subjugate religious practices (Glenn, 1987). In order to control this-world behavior, this-world morality—regardless of source—had to be compatible with the God-based values of the political community. This-world behavior and values, in other words, could not run counter to those prescribed by the God of Abraham. Jefferson (1820) may have supported separating the actions of government from the desires of individual sects or churches, but he never suggested a wall of separation between God and the political community (Church, 1989). This is perhaps why Jefferson, in his letter to the Danbury Baptists, neither diminished the value of theocentric morality nor implied that public officials must refrain from incorporating it into either the process or product of public actions (Dreisbach, 2004). “Separation of church and state” never meant distancing community from God. In essence, the antidote to rid the political womb of theocratic nightmares was not to prescribe murder or maim for the infant republic inside the womb.

The distinctive relationship between the this-world morality of Abraham’s God and limited right of choice reflects John Locke’s idea that a state of liberty is not the same as a state of license (1689 at 6.1–10)—the former is needed for a successful political community in this particular setting, while the latter only destroys that community. It also reflects congressional consensus on the intent of the Establishment Clause: (1) to ensure that one religious sect does not interfere with the rights of other sects; (2) to guarantee that a government-based “national” religion would never be established; and (3) in the words of Representative Benjamin Huntington, with whom Madison concurred, to guard against the amendment being used to “patronize those who professed no religion at all” (Debate, 1789; Frohnen, 2002). Founding thought never intended for the weight of toleration to be so great as to crush the very foundation it is designed to protect. The ideas of religious tolerance and right of conscience were not to be used as a license for exchanging a God-based morality for secular humanism and individual selfishness. It was never to be used someday to disembowel the theocentric moral base “for those,” in Huntington’s words, “who professed no religion at all.”

To summarize: We focus on this-world moral principles—of how to behave toward one another in this lifetime, not necessarily how to get to heaven for eternity. This-world moral principles are found in the scriptures read by the Founders, who claimed the God of Abraham. While the Founders’ words reflected their own religious beliefs, this particular group of Christians opened the door for choice—toleration of other religious and secular views—as long as this-world moral values of those choices meshed compatibly with this-world moral values of the God of Abraham.

So What?

Why is this important to know? We have forgotten much of the original intent of the Founders and, consequently, contemporary debate over many issues often renders two popular yet polar broad-stroked caricatures of morality within the American political community. This is especially true in the case of Life Policy and Death Policy—public action that either nurtures life or facilitates death.

One caricature is a Christian theocratic community where biblical doctrine dictates private lives and, ultimately, public action. If not a pure theocracy, government should have strong theocratic tendencies to monitor behavior in an effort to maintain Mosaic regulations within the community (Rosenblum, 2000). The other caricature is that of a completely secular political community where religious convictions of individuals are expelled from public display and expunged from public action in order to avoid both the perception and actuality of a theocratic state. At stake is the protection of the individual’s right of conscience and the potential imposition of one’s own moral compass upon the right of conscience of others. The secular argument, therefore, is that government should be completely free from the constraints of God and the concomitant sanctioned application of religious doctrine (George, 2013; Elshtain, 2008; Ivers, 1995).

The problems of either caricature are found at two levels. Most immediately, advocates of one adversely impact the advocates of the other. For instance, the triumph of the Christian theocratic argument hinders the right of conscience and sincere efforts of Lockean individuals. The triumph of the secular argument suppresses sincerely held religious beliefs of fellow citizens.

At a higher level, either stereotype renders a dichotomous and artificial set of choices for many contemporary political and social issues. Creating a cultural kaleidoscope (Dunn, 2012), arguments are often skewed by inconsistencies with the original parameters as set forth by the Founders. For instance, if I advocate a theocratic ideal, then all of my truth will be derived from scripture. I will miss truth as it might be expressed in the reality of the world, and this will impact my choice. If I advocate a secular ideal, then all my truth—everything that I am willing to “see” as being truthful—will be based on anything but the morality found in the Words of Abraham’s God. This, too, will impact my choice. The lack of reconciliation between the Founders’ intent and the rationalization made by contemporaries on both ideological sides is the crux of the problem. It permits us to make comfortable and selfish choices by artificially reconstructing the issues we face.

The Political Thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the American Political Community

Seeking truth about the intimate consequences of Death Policy—in our case, abortion and capital punishment—is a complicated task. It may seem strange to turn to a German theologian whose life and experiences were anchored in a monarchy, then a fledgling democracy, and ended via execution by a totalitarian regime (Bethge, 2000). But Dietrich Bonhoeffer was heavily influenced by his American experience and, as such, became the most important (and least acknowledged) political philosopher of the twentieth century.¹ His words speak from the heart of God to the soul of all twenty-first century political communities that treasure democratic values in public action while acknowledging that the genesis of such public action lies in the morality found in the God of Abraham. Given that the American Founders envisioned a democratic political community with a theocentric moral foundation, Dietrich Bonhoeffer speaks about the need for moral truth to govern our choice of actions.

America and Bonhoeffer

Before all the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany, Bonhoeffer came to New York in 1930 to study as a postgraduate student at Union Theological Seminary. There he witnessed the reality of American life as it manifested in the early years of the Great Depression. Bonhoeffer gradually became fixated with the “concrete reality of the world of God,” and, while he did not waver from his core theological beliefs, he grew “strongly motivated by an insatiable curiosity for every new reality” (Bethge, 2000:165–66).

He became a student of the conditions of black America and grew frustrated by the condescension and counter-productiveness of white church intrusion into the black community. He also was alarmed by black youths’ loss of faith. Bonhoeffer elected to expand his comfort level by grasping onto the reality of the situation. With the help of a black seminarian at Union, he assisted in Sunday school classes at Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church. He took excursions to Howard University and was an invited speaker to numerous secular and spiritual organizations. He read everything about the early black civil rights movement. He became a fan of black gospel music and collected record albums that would be used to introduce German youth to God in the American culture.

The Social Gospel

Bonhoeffer came to America with a clear understanding of, and deep commitment to, the salvation gospel of Jesus Christ. This is captured in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” I believe it was his American experience, however, that brought Bonhoeffer closer to the social gospel of Jesus of Nazareth. This is perhaps best described in Matthew 25:31–46, with the key verse: “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”

I believe that Bonhoeffer began to fully realize that the community need for the social gospel in addressing the reality found in this world was as important in following his Lord as the individual need for the salvation gospel in preparing for the reality of the next world. In Bonhoeffer’s mind and heart, the spiritual began to translate into the practical, and the practical merged with the spiritual. As a result, he grafted an enhanced understanding onto the concept of political community that rests upon a foundation of public action filtered through theocentric morality. I believe he did not view this in the vein of traditional Christian charity. It went farther but did not extend to the secularists’ view that the social gospel meant simply social justice for the sake of social justice (Rawls, 2013). Rather, his view of the social gospel was biblical, based on the God of Abraham and the belief that all people are created in His likeness (Imago Dei). Because of Imago Dei, Bonhoeffer’s brand of social gospel requires a deep, constant, and intimate God-based involvement in the this-world reality created by God.

Social Gospel, Costly Grace, and Public Action

Upon returning to Germany, Bonhoeffer summoned Christians to witness the real (as he called it); to see the truth about the human condition and to use the Words of God as moral measurement of that condition. His words inferred intimate involvement, one not dictated by distance or detachment, using scripture as the moral compass with which to navigate our personal and collective exploration of others. His sermons were poetic yet often blunt, especially those rendered to the German youth, calling for a social gospel based on “costly grace.”

To Bonhoeffer, “costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again. . . . It is costly because it costs people their lives; it is grace, because it thereby makes them live . . . nothing can be cheap to us which is costly to God” (Bonhoeffer, 2003:45). He argued that the social gospel of Jesus Christ required one to make difficult and sacrificial choices about following Him in this world (Bonhoeffer, 2003:43–198). Bonhoeffer juxtaposed costly grace with “cheap grace,” which is the selfish act of seeking communion without repentance; of just going through the motions of piety; of listening to Sunday sermons and not applying them throughout the week; of neglecting to seek truth in the real. He believed that cheap grace stemmed from an erroneous assumption: once a Christian’s soul is saved, her work in this world is complete.

Costly grace offers no follower a “free ride.” With forgiveness a central tenet, salvation must still be acquired each day and is based on keeping Christ in one’s heart. When applied to the social gospel, it requires the follower to offer great sacrifice on behalf of other members of the political community and, this too, must be rendered every day.

Fear of Theocratic Tendencies and Secularization

Like the American Founders, Bonhoeffer developed a fear of theocratic tendencies and, like them, it resulted more from experience than from philosophy. For the Americans, it was in response to initial theocratic practices, as well as preferential treatment later given to selected sects by various colonial legislatures. For Bonhoeffer, this fear crystallized out of the practice of, and preferential treatment given to, Nazi Germany’s Reich Church. Like Jefferson and Madison, therefore, he came to argue for a clear distinction between the boundaries of church and state (Roberts, 2005:78). Like Jefferson and Madison, however, he feared the consequences of the amorality and immorality ingrained in ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Content Page
• Acknowledgments
• Preface to the Second Edition
• 1 Morality, Choice, and America
• 2 The Word of God and Other Reasoning
• 3 The Real of Abortion
• 4 The Real of Sustaining Life: Abortion Alternatives
• 5 The Real of Murder and Capital Punishment
• 6 The Real of Misery Shared: Prison without Parole
• 7 Outward Justice and Imago Dei
• Bibliography
• Index