Why I Will Not Be Voting "Pro-Life"

31 August 2008
“Why I Won’t Be Voting ‘Pro-Life”

The conflation of politics and Christian faithfulness has been vitriolic, persistent and death-dealing since the deliberate, power-motivated assassination of Jesus of Nazareth about 2000 years ago. Unfortunately, the followers of this non-violent zealot quickly adapted, and even commandeered the methods of the people who killed him, choosing to mesh the life of their messiah and the lifestyle of his killers, failing radically to follow the Messiah, and succeeding with the basest of human triumph in the imperialistic, patriotic, and bloody way of being in a world of hatred and injustice.
This being the case, and Constantinism (the action of “baptizing” the state to do the will of God) being among the first heresies, I would like to reflect on the place, if any, of voting in the life of the followers of Jesus. For an extended reflection the place of “conscientious abstention” see Electing Not to Vote: Christian Reflections for Not Voting, http://wipfandstock.com/store/Electing_Not_to_Vote_Christian_Reflections_on_Reasons_for_Not_Voting . Being almost completely convinced of this political stance of the church (see John Howard Yoder, Body Politics: Five Practices of the Church Before the Watching World), I could not in good conscience vote during the 2004 Presidential Election. I had, as a good Evangelical boy, voted for the first Presidential election that I could in 2000, obviously for George W. Bush, and remember watching with great anticipation the night of the election as the votes were tallied and re-tallied.
Having subsequently been exposed to the larger scope of the Christian tradition – perhaps most notably, the Anabaptists – I became more and more convinced that power in the gospel is not power held, power gained, or power seized, but is in the most robust of ways – the cross – power relinquished, power shunned, and loved given through the suffering of a “Crucified God.” This over against the most imperialistic foreign policy since the Reagan attempt to colonize space, and far more actualized than even that, more than convinced me that to vote again for the Bush administration was in stark contrast to the self-giving love of God, that in the person of Jesus called us to enemy love. In short, I had become a pacifist, not for the fun of it, not because it was popular, but because only in this practice could I hold onto the faith that had been the core of my self since birth. I could no longer believe in God, Jesus, the church, or anything without a real, lived and fleshly belief that the church was really called by God to speak prophetically to the powers that be by being something that the powers that be could not: a people so politically structured by and around the cross of Jesus that love of enemy was not only a way to death, but also a way of life, real life – for everyone, including real enemies.
This for me means that no one is pro-life who still holds to the “myth of redemptive violence,” including war, the death penalty, and any type of action that seeks to actively take the life another. Not only this, but the peacemaking that followers of Jesus are directly called to (Matthew 5.9), means that in a world of very real injustices, we are not allowed to sit and wait for the eschaton, but are to actively make peace between victims, the victimizers, the oppressed and oppressors, and to actively recognize where we are the victimizers and oppressors. Ours is a witness of repentance for violence and injustice everywhere, and a hope in a God who makes all things right. With this very real injustice, the deep divides between rich and poor, the inability for many millions of people to make a living wage, and a rising poverty level; a direct correlation between economic factors and the number of abortions, I became convinced that a politically powerful response to abortion in the United States, was not faithful to the life and teachings of Jesus, and that it was pragmatically a terrible answer to a large and systemic question.
This has morphed into at least a threefold reasoning why I will not vote “pro-life” (as defined by the politically powerful, especially including those of the “religious right”):
1. Abortion is a systemic question from the start. Abortion can never be thought of rightly by the Christian until issues of poverty, inequality, continual racism, injustice, abuse, neglect, and the place of women have been thought of in line with the work of the Spirit of Jesus to remake the cosmos in the image of God have been addressed with boldness, honesty, humility and hope.
2. I do not know how to define “life,” much less when it begins. Psyche, nous, the real, physicality of “life” classically defined, understood differently in the modern, and post-modern worldviews, make the “self” a question addressed by scholars, seminarians, peasants, postmasters, union workers, and the unemployed. This being the case, it does not fall to the scientist or senator to define what life is and when it begins. If this baseline space of shared humanity is defined by the powerful then the hope that the church holds in the personhood of God, and in the continued work of God’s Spirit within the world is endangered. Ex Nihilo: “out of nothing,” God called the life of the cosmos. God’s good Spirit enlivens the whole world, and the life of humans is classically thought to be the crowning achievement of this good creation. Thus only God defines, makes, and has the enlivening grace to re-make the creation to be the “new creation.”
3. It won’t make any difference. Abortions have not decreased in eight years of what was the darling administration of the religious right. Instead the deaths of countless thousands of children worldwide, by destructive foreign policy, eerily reminiscent of “manifest destiny” has only been added to the mounting totals of abortions, both early and late term. This, combined with a an ecclesiology that is concessionary in that it concedes its method and manner of being – its ontology – to the empire by needing the validation of the state to do the work of the kingdom as it understands that work to be, draws the church away from its political witness and prophetic power by tying more and more closely with power held, power grasped, and humility abandoned for an imperialistic self-understanding of what is good, right, and salvific for the world, by imposing that will on it (a perfect fit for a foreign policy that believes that democracy can be enforced). This is what Brennan Manning rightly called “conversion by concussion.” (See, The Ragamuffin Gospel).

If these are the reasons I will not vote “pro-life,” I owe a conversation, at least, to the place of the military. For now I will table that conversation. If anyone is interested in this little piece of writing and cares to start a dialog around the topic, I’m of the deepest belief that my thoughts on the place and role of the military in the topic of voting will come up shortly.
These are far from my complete thoughts on the current election cycle, the theological construction of a world gone mad with selfishness, greed, and self-love. However, I’m stopping with this. Let me know what you think.