"Religious Right": Not about being Right about Religion
- Peter Gaughan
- May 5, 2022
- 7 min read
It's not my place to comment Roe v. Wade being under its most direct attack in my lifetime. There are people who are smarter and better spoken than I am speaking out against this horrendous attack on women and people with uteruses. Many of the people speaking out are speaking with voices too often silenced or crowded out. So suffice it to say, a right to one's bodily autonomy is truly an unalienable right, it is foundational to one's dignity, and the denial of that right is an explicit and disgusting demonstration of hatred. I am proud to add my voice to the chorus of those outraged and will do my part to lift the voices we all desperately need to listen to in this moment.
This recent devastating news has brought broader thoughts of the "religious right" and "evangelicals" to the forefront of my mind. I didn't study domestic politics as much as an undergraduate and what I did study was very focused on law and jurisprudence, so I am definitely not an expert. In that same vein, I am not a religious scholar.
But, there is a funky piece of history that sticks with me. The fervor with which modern evangelical Republicans and the "Religious Right" oppose abortion is not consistent with the most accepted interpretations of Christian texts, nor is it consistent with the history of the American Evangelical tradition.
Again, I am not a religious scholar nor am I Christian or Jewish, so I of coursed turned to Christian and Jewish scholars. Specifically the National Council of Jewish Women and the academics/journalists Katha Pollitt and Rund Abdelfatah.
It is observed by Pollitt that there is no direct mention of abortion in either the New or Old Testament. This is despite there being records of intentionally induced abortions from as early as 1550 BCE in Egypt. So the procedure certainly existed at the time of writing the Old Testament (between 1200 and 150 BCE) and the New Testament (between 50 and 100 AD), but both texts remain silent on the issue.
The Old Testament doesn't hold back when it comes to policing women's bodies. It includes harsh punishments and thorough discussions of childbirth, infertility, menstruation, infidelity, and more. While this isn't a commentary on the repression of women within the Abrahamic faiths, it is worth noting. Because why would the documents' authors spend so much time discussing these topics but then ignore abortion entirely if it was God's will to abolish it?
When God had a second chance to proclaim Their will upon the saved peoples, They once again failed to address it directly in the New Testament. So, where is the religious basis for being anti-abortion?
We return to the Old Testament, specifically Exodus 21:22–23. The verse, according to Bible Gateway (I am a bad descendent of Irish Catholics and realize I don't actually own a Bible so we are trusting the internet here), is:
"If people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life..."
So, this verse has been referenced as the justification by Christians of many denominations for opposing abortion. The argument being that the verse identifies a distinction between the life of the mother and the life of the fetus and that should injury befall the fetus, a punishment is required.
And this is where I defer to the National Council of Jewish Women. Within the Jewish faith there is a deep tradition of analysis, argument, and dissection of Jewish Law. Because the Old Testament is comprised of parts of the Tanakh, much of the law established in the Old Testament has been through centuries of Jewish debate and interpretation. This includes the above-mentioned verses from Exodus.
So, according to a published guide by the National Council of Jewish Women (linked below), Exodus 21:22–23 is misapplied when applied to abortion bans. They explain that the best rabbinical interpretation of this verse is not a reference to the fetus but to the mother. The verse is explaining that should someone induce a miscarriage but no other harm were to befall the mother, then the perpetrator must pay fine. But should serious harm befall the mother, then the perpetrator should be put to death.
The NCJW explains that it is commonly understood that the verse does not claim the perpetrators have committed murder and that the fetus is not a person. Instead the verse is more concerned with the safety and health of the pregnant person. With this in mind, it is the shared belief amongst many denominations of Judaism that abortion is healthcare and is required when the health of the mother is at risk.
In fact, the NCJW goes further to explain that the fetus is not seen as distinct from the pregnant person's body. The baby is not alive until it takes its first breath of oxygen which allows the soul to enter is body, so the whole notion of "life at conception" is not based on Old or New Testament verse.
With that context, we return to the question, where is the religious basis for being anti-abortion? Simply put, there doesn't appear to be any. And we can see this more explicitly in the history of American Evangelicals.
The Southern Baptist Conference in 1971, 1974, and 1976 passed resolutions that promoted the idea that women had a right to access abortion under certain circumstances and that the government should refrain from over regulating abortion access. At this time, Evangelicals and the up-and-coming "Religious Right" saw abortion as a Catholic issue, not theirs.
So why the flip? The answer, as with most bad things in American history, is racism.
Conservatives saw potential allies in white evangelicals, especially as allies that Reagan and the Republicans of the 70s and 80s could capitalize on. So they got them organized first in opposition to desegregation.
Roe v. Wade was decided in 1971, but a different Supreme Court case motivated white evangelicals to become more connected to politics. The case was Green v. Connolly and it was against a segregated private school that was ran by evangelicals. The plaintiff opposed the fact that the discriminatory school was receiving a tax exemption status under the cover of "religious services" and being a "charitable institution".
The TL;DR of the decision was an institution cannot be "charitable" if it practices racial segregation or discrimination. So the school had to integrate or lose tax exempt status (the school, along with hundreds of other schools affected by the decision, choose to remain segregated and lose its tax exempt status).
It was that decision that pissed off American evangelicals and made them a viable political tool for Republicans, who were gaining traction in the South with their anti-desegregation and nativist views.
This is where we meet one of America's unsung enemies. Paul Weyrich. He was a hyper-conservative religious and political activist. We co-founded the Heritage Foundation and coined the term "moral majority" over the course of his nauseating career.
While not directly related to this story, I can't mention the walking toxic waste pile that is Paul Weyrich without noting that along with being a co-founder at the Heritage Foundation, Weyrich also founded the "Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress". The CSFC was particularly active in Eastern Europe, where Weyrich worked closely with Hungarian Nazi Laszlo Pasztor (by the way I am not doing the dumb internet thing of calling someone you disagree with a Nazi, this man was literally a Nazi and even went to prison for it).
Through the "Moral Majority", the Heritage Foundation, and CSFC (which was also very active in American politics), Weyrich and his team of evangelical leaders created a network of evangelical Churches and community groups. Weyrich correctly identified that this network was more politically engaged now that Green v. Connolly had been decided against them but he also correctly recognized that explicit racism was not going to make a particularly attractive political issue for rank-and-file Christians and Middle Class Americans. So he had a passionate base that he knew would agree with his dogwhistle conservatism, but he had to redirect that passion to a more publicly digestible issue.
This is the roundabout way we get to the "Religious Right" and "Evangelical Republicans" being the most outspoken opponents of abortion. Initially Weyrich redirected evangelical anger at government overreach, "states rights", and changing attitudes on gender roles and gay rights. While these worked, Southern Baptist and evangelical presidential candidate Jimmy Carter showed that evangelicals where still not firmly in the Republican camp.
Carter motivated evangelicals with talk of piousness, moderation, and charity. But as his presidential term proved less than successful, evangelical support wavered. So when the 1978 midterms arrived, Weyrich redirected his attention on an issue he thought he could win. Abortion.
While Roe v. Wade was not a catalyst decision for evangelical opposition, in the years following the decision there was a recorded rise in abortions across the country (it is worth noting here that there is not a ton of evidence to show there was a massive boom in abortions, just less incentive to hide the fact that one had gotten an abortion because it was not longer illegal). This documented rise in abortions had started to make certain evangelical communities uneasy, and it was this uneasiness that Weyrich took advantage of.
Weyrich and his network bombarded evangelical communities with anti-abortion rhetoric and misinformation. They also propped up anti-abortion Republican candidates. This campaign was so effective that by 1979 the "Moral Majority" has organized a formal political activist group for evangelicals and threw its support behind Ronald Reagan for President. And thus began the relationship between Republicans and white evangelicals, and the anti-abortion politics of both Republicans and white evangelicals.
So, what's the takeaway? Honestly, I don't know. Regardless of the origin, abortion has become an intense and rigid religious and political issue.
Still, having a face and history to the tragedy can knock it down a peg, shows its not a centuries old conflict but a decades old misdirection, and a fight still fresh enough that we can still hopefully win it.
Tonight's selection pairs best with a spicy and stomach-upsetting Smoky Mezcal Paloma.
Photo: https://www.chicoer.com/2012/08/30/chico-pastor-elusive-about-meaning-of-vote-for-the-american-sign/ Sources: https://www.ncjw.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Judaism-and-Abortion-FINAL.pdf
https://twitter.com/RavBogard/status/1521669490278285313
"For Jews who can become pregnant, access to abortion services is a religious *requirement*, and has been for thousands of years. Surprised? Let's dig into some of the texts"...