In the past I have always tried to post on this day, 24 June.
First, it is the Feast of the Nativity of the Forerunner.
Second, it is the anniversary of the battle of Bannockburn.
Third, it is the day on which I was received into the Orthodox Church, 22 years ago.
But this year it has taken on a peculiar meaning for the American Pro-Life movement, of which I count myself a part, namely the day Roe vs. Wade was overturned.
Anti-abortion rights activists march toward the U.S. Supreme Court during the 2019 March for Life in Washington, D.C. President Trump spoke at this year’s rally on Friday.
This 6-3 decision by the high court will change things in a number of states almost at once, where abortion will now be outlawed, or outlawed with some rare and notable exceptions. For many states, it won’t change anything. Many companies have said they will subsidize their workers abortion trips. I wonder how many of them were willing to subsidize adoptions?
What this really means is that the whole question has gone back to the states. As whatever I am, I am a federalist, this agrees with me. If I hold abortion ends a human life, than I need to do everything in my power to stop it, and there have been given a great many vehicles to help in this regard, but of course more could be had.
But I think it means something else. Too many Christians thought the America of Ward and June Cleaver was a Christian nation. It certainly had some Christian mores, but to me they are like Nietzsche’s appraisal of George Eliot, that she didn’t want the Christian God, but still couldn’t divest herself of His commandments.
In truth, a lot of the problems we have is that too many people will use terms attempting to give them new meanings, but can’t wrest them wholly from Christian presuppositions. Why should we care about justice if the highest form of ethical good is power? We hear people crow about oppression, but if there is no Christianity, against what are we measuring the offense. This is a long discussion, but one we need to have.
I pray fervently that it does, as the alternative is a civil war far more like what we have seen with most civil wars, and not the one this country experienced 1861-1865. There will be no boundaries, no blue and gray, no respective capitols, and almost certainly no non-combatants.
And so now we must begin the long slow fight for the minds of men.
This won’t be easy, as we now no long speak a shared language (cf. justice and oppression above). Gone is the language of natural rights, teleological and normative ethics, and most of all, a shared cultural heritage that stretches back to Plato and Aristotle on one hand, and Moses on the other.
But in keeping with my Orthodoxy, I believe in the long game. It took the Church hundreds of years to bring about the conversion of Rome, and as history showed, it was something fought for and accomplished via much blood, prayer, and evangelism.
Nor is it a matter of changing laws. Laws don’t change peoples’ hearts, but changing peoples’ hearts will result in the changing of laws.
Ultimately, people cannot change what they are, creatures made in the Image and Likeness of God, that is, in the Image and Likeness of the Word of the Father. All people, in the end, will try to argue from some form of reason, even if they are very bad reasons and in dreadful form.
I am glad Roe is gone (as well as Casey). It was all bad law, built on dreadful legal reasoning, which in its turn produced a great deal more shoddy thinking.
This country needs prayer, it needs the Faith, and it needs people who are ready to go out, as the fields are white unto harvest. Where are the laborers who will do this.
More tomorrow.
