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April 04, 2006
Maybe Three Trimesters Is Not Enough?
Chicago Theological Seminary president Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, a United Church of Christ clergyperson, recently told Planned Parenthood's Clergy Advisory Board that abortion restrictions indicate that America has "lost its soul."
Rev. Thistlethwaite suggests the abortion issue is inherently theological, coming down to one's view of "ensoulment," when the soul is imparted to the human body. Pro-life Christians see this "ensoulment" at conception; she sees it at birth. Therefore, according to Thistlethwaite, the state should guarantee abortion rights so as not to interfere in such a theological matter.
The most chilling line of the Religion News Service article on Thistlethwaite's comments, however, comes at the end:
"Ensoulment is a lifelong project but individuals and nations can not only gain their souls but lose it,"said Thistlethwaite. "The U.S. no longer knows it is or what it stands for."
Now, Thistlethwaite has already argued that lacking a soul gives you the right to kill something. If ensoulment is a lifelong process, what stops the abortionist from coming for any of us? Maybe we're all fetuses now.
Come to think of it, if America has lost its soul, and you can kill something without a soul, then...
Ah, it's just a "theological matter," I guess.
Posted by Russell D. Moore at 04:23 PM | Permalink
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Isaiah's warning seems pertinent Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! (Isaiah 5:20).
Posted by: Terry Bohannon | Apr 4, 2006 6:39:02 PM
United Church of Christ? Sounds more like the United Church of Moloch. It's fortunate that this apostate body is rapidly shrinking. Faster, please.
Posted by: Scott Walker | Apr 4, 2006 9:12:03 PM
I'd love to hear her preach on Luke 1:39-45. She could explain to us that neither John nor Jesus had a soul at the time.
Posted by: Kathy Hanneman | Apr 5, 2006 12:32:42 AM
That was quite a meeting, this "prayer breakfast" held by Planned Parenthood in Washington. Note the reference below to Margaret Sanger that completely ignores how she espoused eugenics to eliminate the burden of the "unfit" on society.
from the New York Times:
THE ABORTION-RIGHTS SIDE INVOKES GOD, TOO
By NEELA BANERJEE
Published: April 3, 2006
In any given week, if you walked into one of Washington's big corporate hotels early in the morning, you would find a community of the faithful, quite often conservative Christians, rallying the troops, offering solace and denouncing the opposition at a prayer breakfast.
So you might be forgiven for thinking that such a group was in attendance on Friday in a ballroom of the Washington Hilton. People wearing clerical collars and small crucifixes were wedged at tables laden with muffins, bowing their heads in prayer. Seminarians were welcomed. Scripture was cited. But the name of the sponsor cast everything in a new light: the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
To its critics, Planned Parenthood is the godless super-merchant of abortion. To its supporters, it is the dependably secular defender of abortion rights. But at this breakfast, God was everywhere, easily invoked by believers of various stripes.
"We are here this morning because, through our collective efforts, we are agents in bringing our fragile world ever closer to the promise of redemption," Rabbi Dennis S. Ross, director of Concerned Clergy for Choice, told the audience. "As clergy from an array of denominations, we say yes to the call before us. Please join me in prayer: We praise you, God, ruler of time and space, for challenging us to bring healing and comfort to your world."
"Amen," the audience responded.
The Interfaith Prayer Breakfast has been part of Planned Parenthood's annual convention for four years. Most ministers and rabbis at the breakfast have known the group far longer.
Margaret Sanger, founder of the organization that became Planned Parenthood, drew clergy members in the early 20th century by relating the suffering of women who endured successive pregnancies that ravaged their health and sought illegal abortions in their desperation, said the Rev. Thomas R. Davis of the United Church of Christ, in his book "Sacred Work, Planned Parenthood and Its Clergy Alliances."
In the 1930's, Jewish and mainline Protestant groups began to voice their support for birth control. In 1962, a Maryland clergy coalition successfully pressed the state to permit the disbursal of contraception. In the late 1960's, some 2,000 ministers and rabbis across the country banded together to give women information about abortion providers and to lobby for the repeal of anti-abortion laws.
"The clergy could open that door because the clergy had a certain moral authority," said Mr. Davis, who is chairman of Planned Parenthood's clergy advisory board but whose book is not sponsored by the group. "They balanced the moral authority of the critics."
As the scrape of silverware quieted at the breakfast, the Rev. W. Stewart MacColl told the audience how a Presbyterian church in Houston that he had led and several others had worked with Planned Parenthood to start a family planning center. Protesters visited his church. Yet his 900 parishioners drove through picket lines every week to attend services. One Sunday, he and his wife, Jane, took refreshments to the protesters out of respect for their understanding of faith, he said.
Mr. MacColl said a parishioner called him the next day to comment: "That's all very well for you to say, but you don't drive to church with a 4-year-old in the back seat of your car and have to try to explain to him when a woman holds up a picture of a dead baby and screams through the window, 'Your church believes in killing babies.' "
Mr. MacColl said of the abortion protester: "She would, I suspect, count herself a lover of life, a lover of the unborn, a lover of God. And yet she spoke in harshness, hatred and frightened a little child."
Mr. MacColl quoted the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr: " 'Sometimes the worst evil is done by good people who do not know that they are not good.' "
The crowd murmured its assent.
Then Mr. MacColl challenged them. "The trouble is, I find myself reflected in that woman," he said. "Because I can get trapped in self-righteousness and paint those who oppose me in dark colors they do not deserve. Is that, at times, true of you, as well?"
This time, people were silent.
It is not lost on Mr. Davis how the passion of the Christian right in its effort to abolish abortion and curtail access to birth control now mirrors the efforts of clergy members 40 years ago to do the opposite.
"They're a religious tradition, too, and they are moved by Scripture," he said, although the Bible says nothing explicit about abortion. "When we understood the suffering in these kinds of situations that women were in, we understood that for reasons of justice, we had to act. We're doing it for theological and Biblical reasons."
A perception may exist that the denominations supporting abortion rights are outnumbered and out-shouted by their more conservative brethren. But that worried Mr. Davis little, he said, for he and other like-minded clergy members were in the minority in the 1960's, too.
Still, some clergy members could barely contain their outrage. "The more we are able to cultivate the capacity in every person — women and men — to make informed ethical judgments both in ourselves and our society, the more we are coming into relationship with the transcendent, with God," said the Rev. Susan Thistlethwaite, president of Chicago Theological Seminary.
"Human existence as a materialistic quest for power and dominance, a crass manipulation of fear and intolerance for political gain, drives us apart both from one another and from God," she said. "For what does it profit you to gain the whole world and lose your soul?"
Posted by: maria horvath | Apr 5, 2006 6:38:30 AM
'Sometimes the worst evil is done by good people who do not know that they are not good.'
But sometimes it's done by thoroughly degenerate people, who actually know it full well. Unless "enbrainment" hasn't happened to them yet.
A theological matter, indeed. Can I employ my personal "soul detector", and start committing non-homicides on any non-ensouled bodies which happen to be walking around? And if I do, will anyone who yells at me for it be "hateful" and interfering with my "rights"?
Posted by: Joe Long | Apr 5, 2006 8:02:59 AM
"Ensoulment is a lifelong project but individuals and nations can not only gain their souls but lose it," said Thistlethwaite.
And Thistlewaite would no doubt argue that the aged, infirm and handicapped have lost their souls, which is why the medical community should feel no qualms about dehydrating these folks to death.
And since "ensoulment" and losing one's soul applies to nations: Does this mean that America should be put death as well? Is this why the Left supports Islamofascist terrorism against America? Were all those in the Pentagon, Twin Towers and Flight 93 soul-less Americans who deserved to die? Are all those soldiers and contractors in Iraq soul-less machines that deserve to die?
Posted by: Daniel C. | Apr 5, 2006 11:06:30 AM
We gain or lose grace, not our soul.
Posted by: Terry Bohannon | Apr 5, 2006 11:22:46 AM
Apparently "soul" equals "state of grace according to enlightened folks on the Left". Lose their approval and/or lack usefulness to them, and you're an expendable automaton.
Posted by: Joe Long | Apr 5, 2006 1:49:31 PM
Conception (fertilization of an egg by a sperm) is a process, and even if one assumes an egg acquires a soul sometime during this process, it is by no means clear when (during the process) this occurs. We can assert the value of respecting human life without making religious arguments about when a soul is received. In 1973, the Southern Baptists agreed with Thistlethwaite. Respecting human life is a point we can agree with those of other religions on. Biblically, there is nothing to tell us that we are right that an embryo receives a soul at conception, and that the Muslims are wrong that the soul is received at 120 days. Augustine and Aquinas guessed that the soul was received at 30-42 days. We just don't know.
Posted by: Jennifer K | Apr 5, 2006 11:25:07 PM
We just don't know.
Jennifer,
That is precisely why we must respect life from conception. I'd rather save a person and then find out that they did not yet have a soul than murder a person (thinking that the soul was to come later) only to find out later that they had had one already. However, I do believe that the soul is indeed given at conception.
Posted by: Kathy Hanneman | Apr 6, 2006 1:02:57 AM
FWIW, Orthodox Christians believe that the soul is present (for lack of a better word) at conception. This is what the Church teaches. In other words, the Dawn of our Salvation in Christ was made manifest when the Word was conceived in the womb of Mary.
"Ensoulment", IWSTM, can lead toward erroneous beliefs such as the pre-existence of souls. Then again, perhaps that's not a problem for some.
Posted by: Fr Joseph Huneycutt | Apr 6, 2006 7:46:29 AM
I believe the whole notion of "ensoulment" is unbiblical - in the Hebrew understanding, are human beings bodies harnessed to souls? I don't believe so ...
Posted by: Juli | Apr 6, 2006 8:00:51 AM
We should be clear that, even when there has been dispute in the Church concerning when ensoulment occurs, abortion at any time throughout the pregnancy was nevertheless condemned as a sin. Saying "we don't know" in this case is not license to do it.
Posted by: Ronny | Apr 6, 2006 10:12:25 AM
Juli, are you suggesting that we have no souls?
Posted by: Terry Bohannon | Apr 6, 2006 10:37:07 AM
Even if it may someday be determined (and I really don't see how it could be) that the soul enters a living being at a certain time, I don't think that should make a case FOR abortion, anyway. To do so would be making too much of time. If God "didst knit me together in my mother's womb", and breathed a soul into me at a later moment, does that mean that before that moment it would be all right to kill me? That would then be PREVENTING "ensoulment", sort of a "contraceptive abortion".
Posted by: Janet | Apr 6, 2006 12:39:44 PM
Terry, Juli wouldn't say such a thing. Don't put words into her mouth that way.
Posted by: Luthien the nasty den mother | Apr 6, 2006 4:44:52 PM
Does anybody know what a soul is? Can a human have a body without a soul? What's our data set? The Bible seems to use "soul" as we would use "person."
Posted by: Gene Godbold | Apr 6, 2006 4:59:22 PM
Did I put words in her mouth? I didn't say she said that, I asked if she did. There's a difference between asking for clarification and making a declarative statement.
Posted by: Terry Bohannon | Apr 6, 2006 5:25:28 PM
Why not honor human life before conception, and compel all eggs to be fertilized if possible? An egg is biologically human and genetically unique even before fertilization. It is clear from the stories of Samuel and John the Baptist that God knows us even before conception. What makes conception special?
Posted by: Jennifer K | Apr 6, 2006 8:47:11 PM
Ok,
I'd sworn off commenting on any blog because I occasionally find myself making unconsidered statements in a moment of excitement. Then I go back sometimes and wince at them. Jennifer K's last comment, however, calls forth a response. I'm sure mine won't be the only one. The points below are addressed to her.
First I want to address this business about conception being a process. So is death (you might say we spend our whole lives dying). That doesn't stop us from setting some pretty strict guidelines as to when someone is, in fact, dead. We still (contra Peter Singer) tend to take a pretty dim view of those who want to take that process into their own hands. There are even laws against it, and we even prosecute doctors for violating those laws. We have no way to stop conception once the egg and sperm have joined. We can destroy the resultant zygote, but we can longer prevent it from being. Our nanotechnology isn't that good yet. Until it is I think your argument from the fact that conception is a process works against you, and if the nanotechnology is ever that good then we will have prevented, precisely, conception. I don't see that you have a point here.
Then there's your argument about the uniqueness of a woman's egg cells. While true, it's trivial (especially given the slightness of the actual differences and what causes them as opposed to utter distinctness of a zygote). Find us a human being walking around that can function on one chromosome instead of two and you'll have demonstrated that conception is biologically and morally unremarkable; not before then.
This brings us to my last point. What *is* special about conception is that it creates a living being, genetically unique and undeniably human that needs nothing different than any other human does to live and grow: food, shelter, and, I think we would all agree with this part, love. That the fertilized ovum is entirely dependent on his or her mother for those things scarcely makes him or her different from a newborn or even a toddler in this respect. If the latter two have a right to life so does the first.
Posted by: jayman | Apr 6, 2006 10:10:28 PM
Several years ago on the Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor mentioned some weird religious idea that had probably come out of Hyde Park. His Minnesota audience knew exactly what he was talking about--the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago--and laughed.
This laugh I regard as a small note of hope about ravings that come from Hyde Park and similar environs. Even among the worldly there remains an understanding that certain people are paid to rave.
Listening to raving is one of humanity's favorite pastimes. We are both amused and comforted by madness we do not share. The problem comes in when we are intimidated by the dirt-eater on the soapbox, who is a True Believer in the Madman's Cause, into thinking as madmen ourselves.
Posted by: smh | Apr 7, 2006 11:32:14 AM
Ensoulment was a consideration in the Middle Ages when there was a heavy influence of the physiology of Galen, but modern medicine has given us a better understanding. I think the general concensus in the medical field is that human life begins at conception.
Regardless of the issue of ensoulment or conception, the Didache an early christian document dating from the first century contains the following:
"thou shalt not procure abortion, nor commit infanticide"
Acceptance of abortion by some christians has been recent innovation.
Posted by: LeRoy Bainbridge | Apr 9, 2006 12:12:59 AM
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