{"id":29112,"date":"2016-10-09T16:01:35","date_gmt":"2016-10-09T21:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/voxnova\/?p=29112"},"modified":"2016-10-09T16:01:35","modified_gmt":"2016-10-09T21:01:35","slug":"the-church-the-state-and-the-sanctity-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/voxnova\/2016\/10\/09\/the-church-the-state-and-the-sanctity-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"The Church, the State, and the Sanctity of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

As I sat down to watch\u00a0Tuesday\u2019s vice-presidential debate<\/a>, knowing that much has already been made of both candidates\u2019 self-professed Christian faith, what I dreaded most was the possibility of the name of Jesus Christ being taken up as a political weapon on both sides. In fact, they almost<\/em> made it through the debate without doing so \u2013 until moderator Elaine Quijano raised a question about how they balance their faith with public policy. We can\u2019t know for sure whether the question was intended as a veiled reference to life issues, but the candidates appeared to interpret it as such, unquestioningly accepting (and further perpetuating) the problematic stereotype that the only grounds for respecting life are religious ones.<\/p>\n

Predictably enough, Tim Kaine adopted a JFK-style compartmentalization between his personal faith and his public life, citing from past experience as governor of Virginia how he had not allowed the former to influence the latter regarding \u2026 the death penalty. With this example, he appears at pains to demonstrate his willingness to allow existing laws to override his conscience even where his own party does not necessarily require it. Even more predictably, when the discussion turned to abortion, he took the disconnect a step further, from a reluctant acceptance of what the law is<\/em> to a moralized assertion (contrary to his professed personal views) of what the law ought<\/em> to be, portraying it as a question of trust, and thus making it politically palatable to set the decision to end a life (whether on the part of \u201cAmerican women\u201d as a handily monolithic political abstraction or, to apply the same principle back to the death penalty, the state) at a higher value than that life itself.<\/p>\n

Mike Pence, for his part, made a few truly laudable statements, when taken by themselves, around his invocation of \u201cthe sanctity of life.\u201d For purposes of public witness, I find it preferable to refer to \u201cthe dignity<\/em> of life,\u201d a term that is just as deeply rooted in Church teaching while also being more translatable into a secular context. But it doesn\u2019t take much of a cynic to recognize that Pence\u2019s chief concern here was not to translate his beliefs so much as to appeal to a part of his base that already shares them, and in a similarly limited way. When he talks about \u201ccherishing the dignity, the worth, the value of every human life,\u201d when he states, \u201cA society can be judged by how it deals with its most vulnerable,\u201d I couldn\u2019t agree more. I only wish he applied these beliefs more consistently. But right in the middle of all this, he repeated the violent caricature he\u2019d been drawing of those he refers to as \u201ccriminal aliens,\u201d revealing a glaring blind spot in his defense of the vulnerable \u2013 one that is unfortunately reminiscent of his attempt<\/a> last year to dissuade the archbishop of Indianapolis from allowing Catholic Charities to resettle a Syrian refugee family, belying his claim to prioritize Christian faith above party loyalty (unlike Archbishop Tobin<\/a>, thankfully).<\/p>\n

While I found Quijano\u2019s question and the vice-presidential candidates\u2019 responses mostly cringe-worthy, the whole exchange forces me to grapple with a more vexing underlying question: what is<\/em> the role of faith in public life in, as Kaine called it, a \u201cfirst amendment nation\u201d? And how does this relate \u2013 and how should it relate \u2013 to the way we talk about social issues, especially life-and-death ones?<\/p>\n

I believe the separation of Church and State is necessary for the health of the Church. Mike Pence is just one of many politicians whose awkward attempts to baptize the party line only underscore this point when they invariably lead to compromise and counter-witness, notwithstanding any pronouncements that faith comes first: the State is a jealous god and will not docilely accept second place. But neither can I accept Tim Kaine\u2019s privatized notion of faith and morals, to be sectioned neatly away to free the conscience to contradict those morals in one\u2019s public and professional praxis \u2013 whatever one\u2019s state in life happens to be \u2013 willingly conceding first place to State and party in whatever loyalties they demand, and turning back to practice one\u2019s faith only in one\u2019s spare time.<\/p>\n

But respect for life should go beyond the Church<\/a> in any case. If it were only<\/em> a matter of religious faith, Kaine would be right, and we\u2019d be on shaky ground trying to \u201cmandate\u201d anything reducible to an article of faith as national law. But if the dignity of human life is truly fundamental, we should be able to trust people of multiple faiths and no faith to come to this conclusion through what we might call natural<\/em> law, through science and reason and moral intuition and empathy. Better that than to leave the matter of trust, as Kaine did, to decisions to end lives \u2013 lives he knows are of value, if we\u2019re to believe what he says about his own beliefs.\u00a0\u00a0To build a culture of life, we need to somehow find the language to prove we\u2019re not simply talking to ourselves.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I sat down to watch\u00a0Tuesday\u2019s vice-presidential debate, knowing that much has already been made of both candidates\u2019 self-professed Christian faith, what I dreaded most was the possibility of the name of Jesus Christ being taken up as a political weapon on both sides. In fact, they almost made it through the debate without doing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2932,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,871,763,604,150,191,39,52,919,13,49,319,45],"tags":[1670,1671,1020],"class_list":["post-29112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abortion","category-agreementdisagreement-with-church-teaching","category-conscience","category-consistent-life-ethics","category-culture-of-death","category-culture-of-life","category-death-penalty","category-immigration","category-life-dignity-responsibility-of-the-human-person","category-politics","category-pro-life","category-public-policy","category-the-state","tag-mike-pence","tag-tim-kaine","tag-vice-presidential-debate"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Church, the State, and the Sanctity of Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As I sat down to 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