Tag Archives: Protestantism

News

Obama revises contraception mandate but Catholic groups still pay for abortion drugs

4 Comments

Life News explains.

Excerpt:

The Obama administration has revised its controversial mandate that had forced religious employers to pay for health insurance coverage that includes birth control and drugs like Plan B, the morning after pill, and ella that can cause abortions.

Responding to a firestorm of opposition from pro-life organizations, Catholics groups and even some Democrats, the Obama administration has revised the mandate in a way that pro-life advocates are saying is even worse.

The revised Obama mandate will make religious groups contract with insurers to offer birth control and the potentially abortion-causing drugs to women at no cost. The revised mandate will have religious employers refer women to their insurance company for coverage that still violates their moral and religious beliefs. Under this plan, every insurance company will be obligated to provide coverage at no cost.

Essentially, religious groups will still be mandated to offer plans that cover both birth control and the ella abortion drug.

According to Obama administration officials on a conference call this morning, a woman’s insurance company “will be required to reach out directly and offer her contraceptive care free of charge. The religious institutions will not have to pay for it.”

The birth control and abortion-causing drugs will simply be “part of the bundle of services that all insurance companies are required to offer,” White House officials said.

“We are actually more comfortable having the insurance industry offer and market this to women than religious institutions,” the White House said on the conference call LifeNews listened to because they “understand how contraception works” and it “makes sense financially.”

[…]Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan told LifeNews in response to the revised mandate that it violates the right to religious freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

“This ObamaCare rule still tramples on Americans’ First Amendment right to freedom of religion. It’s a fig leaf, not a compromise. Whether they are affiliated with a church or not, employers will still be forced to pay an insurance company for coverage that includes abortion-inducing drugs,” he said. “This is not just a problem for church-affiliated hospitals and charities. Under these rules, a small business owner with religious objections to abortion-inducing drugs and contraception must either violate his religious beliefs or violate the law.”

“The liberal Obama administration thinks its political goals trump the religious faith of American citizens. That isn’t right, fair, or constitutional,” he said.

The abortions will still be paid for by the religious groups. They are going to pay for the drugs through medical insurance premiums. So religious organizations are still being forced to provide abortions for their workers.

Who is to blame for this? I blame Catholic bishops. Catholic bishops do believe in socialism. They do want a secular government to take money from religious people. And they do want government to hand out medical care to people, instead of letting individuals, businesses and charities provide health care.

Rick Santorum agrees with me on this.

Consider this interview with Rick Santorum in which he reacts Obama’s health care mandate.

Excerpt:

HH: Now I want to talk to you about two substantive issues, Senator Santorum. The first are these new regulations from the Obama administration. I read the letter from Archbishop Olmstead of Phoenix on the air. Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles has written a new article in First Things. It’s shocking, actually, what’s going on. Should this be a centerpiece of whoever the nominee’s campaign is?

RS: I talked about it in every speech I’ve given today. And here’s what I said, though, Hugh. I said that I took issue with the Catholic Bishops Conference, because Hugh, you may remember, they embraced Obamacare.

HH: Yes.

RS: They embraced it and said…here’s what I said to them. Be careful when you have government saying that they can give you rights, that you have a right to health care, and government’s going to give you something, because once you are now dependant on government, they, not only can they take that right away, they can tell you how to exercise that right, and you can either like it or not. And that’s the problem. That’s what the Catholic Bishops Conference didn’t get, that there’s no free lunch here, folks. If you’re going to give people secular power, then they’re going to use it in a secular fashion. And that’s why, you know, I hate to say it, but you know, you had it coming. And it’s time to wake up and realize that government isn’t the answer to the social ills. It’s people of faith, and it’s families, and it’s communities, and it’s charities that need to do this as it has in America so successfully for so long.

HH: Rick Santorum, what do you advise Catholic hospitals, Catholic colleges, Catholic…the centers of poverty assistance, the adoption agencies? What do you advise them to do in the face of, as Archbishop Olmstead said, we cannot comply with this unjust law?

RS: Civil disobedience. This will not stand. There’s no way they can make this stand. The Supreme Court, eventually, this thing’s going to get to the Supreme Court just like the ministerial hiring issue that was just decided by the Supreme Court the other day. And it was a 9-0 decision that said the Obama administration can’t roll over people of faith when it comes to hiring. Yet in the face of that decision, this radical, secular government of Barack Obama continues to have faith be the least important of the 1st Amendment. And I just think they fight. They fight in the courts, and they fight by civil disobedience, and go to war with the federal government over this one.

Evangelical protestants feel comfortable with Catholics like Rick Santorum. He gets it. If the bishops are wrong on socialized medicine and wrong on the death penalty and wrong on other things, then so much the worse for the bishops.

Obama did very well with Catholics in 2008 even though Obama is the most pro-abortion president in the history of the United States. Catholics tend to be more liberal on economic issues than evangelicals, which is why many of them voted for Obama. Evangelicals oppose economic liberalism, because they oppose government taking tax money from workers in order to provide services for other people aren’t trying to be self-sufficient. Evangelicals oppose increasing the dependence of individuals on a secular government. Evangelicals don’t want a secular government to take money from individuals and then use it to push secular leftist ideas like global warming, Darwinism and sex education in government run institutions, e.g. – public schools, public broadcasting, etc. Evangelicals trust individuals to care for the poor, and they don’t want to make it too easy for people to make reckless decisions and then get a check in the mail or a free abortion.

What causes this difference between Catholics and evangelicals? Evangelicals believe in salvation through grace ALONE through faith ALONE in Christ ALONE. Evangelicals put the emphasis on what you believe – it has to be true in order to please God. Catholics, just like Mormons, Jews and other religions, emphasize good works as a requirement for salvation. Many Catholics also support inclusivism, which is the view that you can be saved in other religions like Judaism and Islam. This means that for these Catholics, specific Christian doctrines are not essential for salvation, so long as you have sincerity and good works. On the other hand, evangelicals are exclusivists who emphasize the need for each person to arrive at true beliefs about God in order to be saved, and good works are just natural outworkings of their beliefs.

Evangelicals emphasize the responsibility of the individual to discover truth with their Bibles, reasoning, science and history. This belief in individual responsibility carries over into their approach to charity. Evangelicals believe individuals are responsible for deciding what to do about charity – you earn your own money and then you choose yourself how to share with others. But the responsibility to give away money wisely is an individual responsibility – you share your money in a way that is consistent with your beliefs. Evangelicals don’t generally accept the idea of handing money off to someone else and letting them decide what to do with it. We think that everything is our responsibility, starting with Bible study and theology, and going on through to economics and politics.

And this emphasis on individuals over big government has this effect:

(Source)

Note that this chart puts evangelicals together with born-again Christians. But evangelical Christians differ from born-again Christians, because they are firm on exclusive salvation and evangelism. Evangelicals like to study so that they can discuss their beliefs in public, using reasons and evidence to persuade others. A born-again Christian does not have that same emphasis on study and persuasion, because they don’t focus on evangelism. So, if you separate out the born-agains from that 26%, number for Obama support, then you are likely to get a much lower number for evangelicals who support Obama. We don’t like health care mandates covering abortion. Evangelicals are used to having to puzzle things out for themselves – so they puzzled out what Obama believed and then they voted against him.

Polemics

Can a person disagree without being hateful or inciting violence?

17 Comments

Ari is an Orthodox Jewish blogger who writes at Jennifer Roback Morse’s Ruth Blog. Ari and Dr. J often write in defense of traditional marriage. As a result of that, they often get a number of pro-same-sex-marriage commenters who claim that mere disagreement with same-sex marriage is basically a hate crime. Well, Ari doesn’t think that pro-SSM people should freak out at him for believing in traditional marriage, and he doesn’t think that he is committing a hate crime. In fact, he would really like it if the pro-SSM people took his disagreement with same-sex marriage as… disagreement with same-sex marriage – instead of calling him names and attacking his character.

Now, let me ask you a question. If you were Ari, and you wanted to explain why disagreement is NOT hateful, and why disagreement with people is NOT dangerous and DOES NOT lead to violence, what would you do?

Well, Ari knows very well that conservative evangelicals like me disagree with him on whether Jesus is the only way, and that we think that having correct beliefs about who Jesus was and what his death accomplished are required in order for a person to be found worthy to be raised to eternal life with God in the general resurrection at the end of the age. So what he decided to do, in a fairly respectful way, is to explain how he feels about the evangelical Christians who 1) disagree with him on theology, 2) think that he should change his mind, and 3) try to persuade him that he should accept their view.

Here is an excerpt, but you WILL read the whole thing. (I have removed the name of the person he links to as an example of Protestant views)

Ari writes:

How does it make me feel?  Honestly, my most notable reaction is amusement.  Am I offended?  Maybe a little.  But if I am at all offended, not very much.  I could see how a soul more sensitive than I am would be deeply offended.  (I would tell such a soul to get over it).

As for me, I understand my own point of view.  I’m secure in that point of view, and if [the Protestant] cares to disagree, there is neither anything I can do about it nor anything I would want to do about it.  Were I cornered into a debate with [the Protestant], I know how to advance my point of view and the logical underpinnings of that view… I can say similarly if, instead of [the Protestant], I would be forced into a debate with notable atheist pseudo-rationalists Ricky Dawkins, Danny Dennet or Sammy Harris.

How does he respond to disagreements with Protestants or atheists? He debates them. He doesn’t call them names. He doesn’t claim they are inciting violence. He doesn’t pass laws to silence them. He doesn’t force them to pay fines. He doesn’t put them in jail. He doesn’t seize their children. He doesn’t enact laws to force his views on other people in the schools. He doesn’t pass laws to force private companies to do sensitivity training of all employees. He doesn’t award grants and scholarships on the basis of agreement with him. Etc. He debates people who disagree with him. And if they don’t agree with him, he leaves them alone.

Ari continues:

As you can see, although [the Protestant] has said, in absolutely no uncertain terms, that I am going to hell, I do not see any role for the government to shut him up.  Indeed I would be horrified if the government believed my precious self-esteem to be so important that it would take it upon itself to shut [the Protestant] up for me.

How would Dr. J feel if similarly confronted by [the Protestant]’s cartoon wrath?  I don’t have a clue, but I would be extremely surprised if her reaction was vastly different than my own.  Does [the Protestant] have similar feelings about Dr. J’s Catholic faith?  Why, yes. Yes, he does.

I trust that Dr. J. can defend her point of view to her own satisfaction, and to the satisfaction of those who share her faith.  That I would likely disagree with her defense of her faith (which I don’t share) is irrelevant.  The world’s a big place.  I understand that it contains many people with many other points of view.  I don’t expect others always to agree with me.  Indeed I would be foolish to believe that.  I would be a tyrant if I insisted that force be used to make others agree.

Now, do I think [the Protestant] is a hateful man?  I have no idea.  I have never met him.  But, from reading a bit of his work, it seems to me that [the Protestant] has the best of intentions.  He truly thinks I’m going to go to hell.  He wants to save me from that fate.  I would have to say that this fate, as he describes it, sounds more than a bit unpleasant.  I commend him for his good intentions.  However, I do think he’s wrong.

Should I condemn [the Protestant] for bothering me with his point of view?  No.

Rodney Stark discusses the admirable aspects of the missionizing impulse as follows:

Imagine a society’s discovering a vaccine against a deadly disease that has been ravaging its people and continues to ravage people in neighboring societies, where the cause of the disease is incorrectly attributed to improper diet.  What would be the judgment on the society if it withheld its vaccine on the grounds that it would be ethnocentric to try to instruct members of another culture that their medical ideas are incorrect, and to induce them to adopt the effective treatment?  If one accepts that one has the good fortune to be in possession of the true religion and thereby has access to the most valuable possible rewards, is one not similarly obligated to spread this blessing to those less fortunate?  I see no flaw in the parallel– other than the objection that the religious claims my not be true, which objection misses the phenomenology of obligation.  (One True G-d, Page 35).

So, stop all the whining about “hate.”  Maybe the people who disagree with you don’t really hate you.  Maybe they just disagree.

I could not agree more. I wish I could shout this from the roof-tops! I wish we could all disagree respectfully – clarity, not agreement.

You need to read Ari’s post. It will be on the test. So get your butt over there and read it right now. And leave a comment telling Ari that he is brilliant!

By the way, Ari is my friend on Facebook, and so is Dr. J. I don’t entirely agree with either of them on theology. I think they are both mistaken at least in part. But I also think that they are both excellent morally, and highly effective on issues like marriage and abortion – issues where we are allies. In fact, I would not even put myself on the same scale as either of them if I were considering morality and effectiveness. They are heroes, and I am nobody. (Although you can follow my blog – that would make me somebody). It’s enough for me that they know that I have a different view than theirs, and that I have reasons for believing my view is better than their view. I do not insist that they celebrate all of my views, and I am thankful that they do not use the law to force me to celebrate all of their views. That’s tolerance.

Furthermore, let me say one thing about Hell. Protestants do not believe that the degree of punishment is the same for everyone who chooses to separate themselves from God by rejecting Jesus Christ. The duration is the same (eternity), but the degree of punishment is based on your actual sins. There is no moral equivalence been morally good non-Christians and people like Stalin, and they are not going to be treated equally in the afterlife.