I’ve read their websites, watched their vulgar marches, perused their op/eds and letters-to-the editor, all the while shaking my head.  Why do these people go about pleading their cause in such self-defeating ways?

As a matter of fact, four years ago I wrote an op/ed published by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Tips for Pro-Choice Advocates. Yes, I was so annoyed by their ineptitude, I wrote an article giving them advice.

(If you’re interested in background to that article, and curious to see whether or not my tactic was risky, go to the Issues, Etc. archive for an audio  interview.)

I mention this because a very recent, brief Barack Obama abortion ad  Barack Obama abortion ad is in the works. After a “nurse-practitioner” intro, an announcer concludes, “As president, John McCain will make abortion illegal.”

Whoa. Those are red-hot words.

Phil Lawler, over at Catholic World News, pours on some much needed cold water:

“As president, John McCain will make abortion illegal,” an announcer says on a new Obama campaign spot.

That simple declarative sentence is misleading– indeed it is obviously intended to mislead.

While he opposes legal abortion, McCain has given absolutely no indication that he would attempt to outlaw the practice.

President Bush, whose pro-life credentials are at least as strong as McCain’s has not attempted to legalize a ban on abortion.

Why not? Because Congress would not pass an abortion ban, and even if by some miracle the majority in Congress did support a measure making abortion illegal, the Supreme Court (as currently composed) would overturn it.

Like it or not, this simple, declarative sentence is undeniably true: “As president, John McCain will not make abortion illegal.”

Obama knows that. His campaign staff knows that. His ad tells the public otherwise.

So why does this presidential candidate known for his intelligence, precision and “nuance” — aka hair-splitting — allow himself to state, “I am Barack Obama and I approve this message”?

The Episcopal School for Ministry and the Diocese of Missouri will hold the third annual Making Disciples conference on Saturday, September 13, at Christ Church Cathedral. The conference will feature the Rev. Mark A. McIntosh, Ph.D., on the theme of “Discerning God’s Delight: A Theological Life of Spiritual Discernment.” More information, including registration details, fees, and deadlines, is available on the Dicoese’s website.

The Rev. Dr. McIntosh is an Episcopal priest, scholar, and a longtime theology professor at Loyola University. His numerous books and articles include Christology from Within and Mystical Theology: The Integrity of Spirituality and Theology. As that subtitle indicates,bringing the spheres of spirituality and theology back into contact with one another is a major concern of his.

A review of Mystical Theology calls it”one of the most sustained, systematic and impressive attempts at uniting spirituality and dogma, and demonstrating the necessity of this union, that I have encountered.” Another review asserts that

McIntosh aptly shows that the mystical tradition, which has received comparatively little attention by modern theologians, can and must be an important source for postmodern thinkers. Those who are concerned to address the role of Christian theology in the postmodern age will find this book an important contribution.

I haven’t read his work yet (looks like I’ve got another book or two to add to the stack on my nightstand!) but his approach sounds intriguing. If anyone out there has read McIntosh’s work or heard him lecture it would be great to hear from you.  And I hope to see some of our Civil Religion community at the conference.

I find it interesting to see what issues are considered Humanist. The IHEU seems to focus on human rights in general, the rights of nonbelievers in countries where open nonbelief is illegal, and international promotion of science.

The site has a recent interview with the new Deputy Prime Minister of Nepal, which in its transition to a republic is also transitioning to a secular state. What does that mean? On the good side, it means doing away with the caste system and the “untouchables.” On the questionable side, the DPM says that reading classic religious texts “pollutes the minds of the young.” I don’t know a lot about Nepal, but this seems like a good example of a pendulum swing from a religious to an anti-religious state, which hopefully will settle somewhere in the middle, respecting what is still helpful in the religious traditions of Nepal while leaving behind what it’s outgrown.

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:1-13)

Children with special needs inspire a special love.

To the families of special-needs children all across this country, I have a message: For years, you sought to make America a more welcoming place for your sons and daughters.

I pledge to you that if we are elected, you will have a friend and advocate in the White House……

I’d like to share with you this recent post by Greg Epstein, Humanist Chaplain of Harvard University, who wonders when religious humanists will be invited to take part in “interfaith” events such as the one that opened the Democratic National Convention last week.

I missed the opening of the Republican National Convention, but I’m sure they also had an “interfaith” moment or two. Anyone happen to see any religious humanists represented there?

We now know Sarah Palin is a member of Feminists for Life  and thanks to Mollie over at GetReligion we learn that the Barracuda is a Believer.

Mollie also has complaints — surprise — about reporters being quick to attack Ms. Palin and getting their stories wrong.

And also getting it wrong, lefty bloggers are going after Palin’s daughter….

Ever the gentleman, Joe Biden reacts to his V.P. counterpart by making a sexist remark…. Biden reminds me once again that perhaps the reason leftist women think men are sexists is that the only ones they know are Democrats…..

And, ho hum,  PP, NOW and NARAL are being their usual apoplectic selves……

And then there’s the $10 million and counting collected by McCain since Friday’s Sarah Palin announcement…..

So: With all this attention on Sarah Palin, are Obama, Biden and Pelosi successfully staying out of the abortion spotlight?

Obama must surely be regretting his still reverberating “above my pay grade” answer to when life begins. That’ll go down in the history books.

And there are signs he’s sorry he said that if either of his daughters makes “a mistake” he doesn’t want them “punished with a baby.”

But he’s still 100% pro-abortion. And he still hasn’t successfully explained that Born Alive vote he made when in the Illinois Senate…..

The Scranton Times, a secular newspaper, tells us Candidate Joe Biden risks being refused Holy Communion:

Scranton native Sen. Joe Biden would likely feel at home any day of the week in Northeast Pennsylvania.

Well, any day except possibly Sunday.

The Most Rev. Joseph F. Martino, bishop of Scranton, has strongly supported refusal of Holy Communion for politicians who campaign for or vote in favor of abortion rights.

When asked whether the Democratic vice presidential candidate would be refused Communion should he tour the region, the diocese held firm to its past statements.

“I will not tolerate any politician who claims to be a faithful Catholic who is not genuinely pro-life,” Bishop Martino said in a pastoral letter Sept. 15, 2005, and reiterated this week.

“No Catholic politician who supports the culture of death should approach Holy Communion,” Bishop Martino said. “I will be truly vigilant on this point.”

And how about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi? The bishops continue to pile on  with Bishop Sheridan (diocese of Colorado Springs), Bishop Aquila (diocese of Fargo) and Bishop Zubik (diocese of Pittsburgh) being the latest to speak out. The list continues to grow.

As the bishops’ list of corrections grows longer, it is joined by an excellent synopsis on the history of Catholic teaching against abortion by columnist Kathleen Parker: Pope Pelosi at the Gate.

Stephen Barr, blogging over at FIRST THINGS, states the seriousness and scandal of Pelosi’s stance:

To all appearances, Pelosi has publicly and pointedly denied a “truth of Catholic doctrine” that is “definitively to be held” (”definitive tenenda”) by “all believers”, and the denial of which renders them “no longer . . . in full communion with the Catholic Church.” Moreover, Pelosi simultaneously proclaims her right to do so because “many Catholics” agree with her. Clearly, this is a scandal in the original sense of the term.

Columnist David Reinhard at The Oregonian gets it right when he says:

 …..This teachable moment for the Catholic Church couldn’t come at a worse moment for Democrats.

As they reach out to working-class Catholics, Pelosi’s remarks highlight the party’s abortion problem.

Its support for unchecked abortion — and a presidential candidate more radical than abortion-rights groups — doesn’t make this easy.

Case in point: Before Pelosi prompted Chaput’s rejoinder, the Denver archbishop had said that Sen. Joe Biden should avoid taking communion because of the Catholic vice presidential pick’s pro-choice stand on abortion…..

So, with Sarah Palin in the spotlight, will abortion-supporting Democrats sigh with relief as they fade into the shadows?

What do you think?

Our thoughts and prayers once again turn to the lower Mississippi delta today as Hurricane Gustave slams into the coast. Too much water in the wrong place and at the wrong time has been the source of devastation throughout history. In 1927, the Mississippi River broke through 145 levees, flooding more land then the entire state of West Virginia. And of course, we only have to go back three years to remember the devastation caused by Katrina.

John Steuart Curry grew up in the Midwest, and witnessed the awesome power of these natural disasters. Painting what he saw, he produced The Mississippi in 1935. What is the worldview of The Mississippi? Even as it leaves some questions unanswered, it does affirm a biblical worldview of creation, fall, and redemption.

First, the painting depicts a recognizable world of water, trees, sky, and people. If this seems unremarkable, consider the time period in which Curry painted. Abstract art was all the rage among the cultural elite. Curry, as a participant in the Regionalist movement of American painting, rejected modernist art theories in favor of a new form of realism. While not a perfect theory of art, Regionalism marked a return to creating a recognizable subject. A bowl of fruit looks like a bowl of fruit, not a jumble of triangles, squares and squiggles.

The Mississippi depicts real people - a father, mother, children - expressing the emotions of the moment. The imago dei, the image of God, is found in their depiction. Humanity has not been abstracted away into nothingness.

Having acknowledged the reality of creation, The Mississippi goes further to tell us that something has gone terribly wrong. We see a battle between man and nature, and nature appears to be winning. Dark grays and blues swirl around in violent commotion. You can feel the fear of the family. This is no utopian view of the cosmos, denying the curse of sin. Death stands close at hand, hoping to pull the figures into the darkness of the water.

It is at this very point that modern man finds no answer to the ultimate questions of life. When a meteorologist takes the place of a theologian as the voice of truth about reality, who can explain the fury of the flood? Living in the shadow of the Enlightenment, we throw everything under the microscope, looking for an answer that science cannot give.

Christian scholar Hans Rookmaaker wrote about the rise of secular naturalism as follows: “Science had been the way to acquire insight into the structure of reality, into the way this world is built, to find out the greatness of God’s creation. But now it was elevated by the rationalist into the tool to know all truth, the foundation of all knowledge. But the world was no longer open to a transcendent god. It had become a closed box, and man was caught in that box.”

As Christians, are we to remain conformed to the thinking of the world in this area? I am not suggesting that we can know God’s specific purposes for particular weather events. However, when our frightened children curl up in our arms during a thunderstorm, do words about God ever fall from our lips? Are we content explaining meteorology apart from doxology?

If we read the painting from left to right, what do we see at the end of the sentence? Curry reveals that we are not “alone in the box”, for the father lifts up hands in prayer to God. The Lord who “sits enthroned over the flood” receives a plea for deliverance. The children look up to their father looking up to God.

Will God save the family? We are not told, and perhaps that is not the ultimate issue. Make no mistake, a worse fate than drowning awaits those who sit high and dry, safe and secure in their unbelief. Perhaps the best thing that ever happened to this family is their getting caught up in the storm. Maybe this very event brought the children to consider the frailty of life and the need of a God who saves.

We too should consider such things. As the hymn of Isaac Watts says, “There’s not a plant or flower below but makes your glories known; and clouds arise and tempests blow by order from your throne.”

While reflecting on the message communicated by the biblical worldview in The Mississippi, allow your heart to be full of doxology even when you think about meteorology.

 John Steuart Curry, The Mississippi, 1935, Collection of the St. Louis Art Museum.

One paragraph really hit home. It reads, in part,

The fact is, Americans work hard, devoting a greater percentage of their time to working than people in any other advanced industrial nation. In a typical year, Americans work the equivalent of a week more than the Japanese, three weeks more than the British, six weeks more than the French, and nine weeks more than the Germans.

If we have calculably less free time than people in other nations, do we not also have less freedom? Do we really choose how most of our time is spent? It seems to me that Labor Day is the perfect moment to ask ourselves what gets lost in this endless cycle of working and spending (and working and spending some more) that consumes most American individuals and families. And at least one answer to that question is simply this: heeding the call to Sabbath.

Time is arguably the greatest gift God has given us, in part because it is finite. We have only so much time on this earth, and examining how we spend it is the most accurate and honest way to learn what our priorities are. In the context of Sabbath, we tend to ask questions like: do we give enough of it back to God? Do we remember to tithe our time as well as our material resources?

I’m sure you can think of many ways to give time back to God, and some of them probably involve worthy activities like attending worship services and doing good works. But the concept of Sabbath is actually more radical than that. It is not fulfilled in doing more, but in doing less, or even in not doing.

As the subtitle of my favorite book on the subject puts it, Sabbath is about the need for “rest, renewal, and delight” (Sabbath by Wayne Muller). And I do mean need, not want or desire. We are not physically or spiritually or emotionally designed for constant work and stress. We cannot fully become the creative, loving, generous creatures we were created to be in a life that hardly allows us room to breathe.

This Labor Day I am looking ahead to a full fall schedule: a demanding job, freelance work to help pay the bills, a seminary class, and too many family obligations to list here. When it comes to making time for Sabbath, I rarely practice what I preach. Yet I know that I am better off than much of the world, and that most of my busy-ness is an option. Maybe Labor Day should be like New Year’s day, a time for the making of resolutions. I resolve to spend more time with my family, more time in prayer, more time noticing the miracle of breathing in and out. And I wish the same for all of you.

Why watch?

(1) Rick Warren’s questions are inspired and far-reaching;

(2) The answers from both candidates are quick and telling;

(3) There is no Nurse Ratched looking at a stop watch;

(4) “Above my pay grade” is a phrase that will go down in history.

Christianity Today has a side-by-side comparison of the Republican National Convention platform (draft version at this point) and Democratic National Convention platform, specifically on issues like abortion, faith-based programs, family and marriage, religious liberty, etc. 

You can find it here.

The full DNC platform is here.

The full RNC platform (draft, August 25) is here.

In comparing them, there certainly is a difference between the two.