Land, Wallis debate faith & policy issues
- Oct 23, 2007 - 1
The evangelical left and right should be able to work together to reduce the number of abortions in the United States, but that does not eliminate the need for efforts to outlaw the procedure, Southern Baptist ethicist Richard Land said in a debate at the Values Voter Summit in Washington.
Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, and evangelical left leader Jim Wallis debated the role of faith in politics during the Oct. 19-21 conference sponsored by Family Research Council Action and five other organizations.
Both men said they wanted to find “common ground” for a multi-pronged effort to save unborn babies from abortion. Land, however, said protecting the “sanctity of all human life” requires more.
“I want to put together a coalition that will work and do what we can to save individual babies one at a time,” said Land, citing a legislative proposal promoted by Democrats for Life with the goal of decreasing abortions by 95 percent in 10 years. “But the fact is, if we didn’t have laws against segregation, we would still have it. If we didn’t have laws against slavery, we would still have it. And if we don’t have laws saying no human being, even a mother, has a right to absolute life and death over another human being, we are not a civilized society and we will still have abortions.”
The “debate is now over” on whether faith should influence the government, Land told the audience Oct. 19 in a Washington hotel ballroom. “Americans want to bring their faith to bear on public policy.”
Wallis, president of Sojourners, said he and Land agree “it is not whether faith should shape our public life but how.”
“First, there are biblical principles of the Kingdom of God on which we can agree,” Wallis said. “Then there are prudential judgments about policies where there is room for disagreement and deeper dialogue. Third, we must make sure our faith trumps our political ideology.”
For Wallis, that means making “sure that my faith challenges the left too,” he told the audience, which consisted overwhelmingly of conservative evangelicals. “Most of you probably don’t have that problem. But [you must] make sure your faith challenges the right. Together, Richard and I both try to make sure we challenge all those who wish to banish religion from the public square.”
Land and Wallis acknowledged there would be “prudential” disagreements on how to address some issues. Iraq, the environment and poverty surfaced as examples during their debate.
Land said he believes the American-led coalition’s military intervention in Iraq satisfied just-war criteria, while Wallis said at the conference he believed “this war was a mistake.” Wallis has signed on to an evangelical statement endorsing the view that global warming is human induced, while Land has not. Land supported welfare reform in the 1990s, but Wallis did not.
They agreed that younger evangelicals have a wider policy agenda than older evangelicals -– and that these newer issues can be addressed while still supporting the sanctity of human life and the protection of marriage.
“That doesn’t mean they are abandoning their concern for the sanctity of life or the health of marriage,” Wallis said. “They just don’t want there to be only two moral values issues. I think the wider agenda is a good thing for America.”
Land said he has “full confidence, and have had full confidence, that evangelicals can walk and chew gum at the same time, that we can stand for the sanctity of all human life, that we can stand for marriage as defined by God, and we can be concerned about human rights and we can be concerned about the environment as well.”
Land also issued a warning to the Republican Party.
He is “around enough younger evangelicals under 30 to know that there is certainly a broadening of the agenda … and if the pro-life issue is effectively taken off the table by the Republican Party nominating a pro-choice candidate, the Republicans are going to discover that a lot of those evangelicals disagree with them about other issues,” Land said. “[I]t has been the case; it is the case, and, as long as there is an evangelical movement, it will be the case that we are profoundly offended and we are horrified that our nation allows about 1.2 million American citizens every year to be killed before they have a chance to be born.”
Cosponsors of the meeting were Focus on the Family Action, Alliance Defense Fund, American Family Association Action, American Values and the High Impact Leadership Coalition.
Further Learning
Learn more about: Family, Sexual Purity, Homosexuality, Life, Abortion, Citizenship, Christian Citizenship, Church and State, Religious Liberty, Social Issues, War, Science, Environment, Issues
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