Three Questions I Have Now That the Gosnell Trial is Over

The Gosnell Trial has ended, with Dr. Gosnell receiving a life sentence for killing three new-born babies (and for some frightening medical malpractice). It's a horrible ordeal; never before have I actually avoided those links that say "WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT," but, for once, I decided there were pictures I didn't want to see.

So, I'm left with a few things on my mind.


When Does a Baby Receive Human Rights?

I realize that my Liberal friends hate this argument, but I can't shake it: why is it legal to put an infant do death in utero, but not a few minutes after it's born? Isn't it the same child? I would prefer that we adopt a policy of believing that all life is precious.


Why Don't Parents Exercise Other Options?

I've never understood this. Gosnell was known for performing abortions for women who were desperate - sometimes doing the operation for free. Some saw this as an act of charity and called him a hero.

It's true that some people are unable to raise a child, and unplanned pregnancies are extremely difficult, but that doesn't mean that abortion is the "only choice." Many children, like me, were adopted as babies due to similar circumstances. When the mother's life is not in danger, why should we consider ending the baby's life?


Why Was Gosnell able to do This?

Gosnell had been at this for a long time - since the 90s. He ran a practice that disregarded the health of mothers while claiming he was doing them a favor. Anyone looking at his record would have been horrified to be on his operating table, and he should have been shut down long before his arrest, but he was able to continue his practice because the authorities in Philadelphia did not do their jobs. In 2011, it was discovered that 14 abortion clinics in Philadelphia had not been visited by the health department in fifteen years. Here's what they found when they resumed those inspections:

"...not performing or documenting monitoring of blood pressure, pulse and oxygen levels...not examining tissue from all first-trimester abortions, as required, to see if the women were pregnant...equipment was found that was well past expiration date...also found was an unlabeled bag of blue pills and practices that raised patient confidentiality concerns."

And Gosnell's place was the worst of the bunch.

I'll be asking myself these questions for a long time. I think all human life is precious, and I don't understand why we can be so cavalier about doing this.

Some American Constitutions are Christian Documents

In my last post, I made the case that the United States Constitution is clearly not a Christian document.  The framers of the government and the document in 1787-1789 purposefully crafted this sort of document, complete with the disestablishment of all churches and the promise of religious freedom.

But that was for the nation, and for the national Congress.  The story of the state constitutions is a very different story.  From the 1770s through the 1790s, leaders in every state (not every leader) came together to craft state constitutions which in some way, aimed at creating specifically Christian societies.  Here are some of the ways they did this:

Established Churches
The state constitutions of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, and New Hampshire all established a particular religious denomination as the official religion of the state.  Essentially (although the laws could get very convoluted), this meant that if you were a resident of the state, part of your taxes went toward supporting this denomination.  The State of Massachusetts was the last state to finally disestablish the state-supported church.  It did this in 1833, more than forty years after the ratification of the Constitution and the First Amendment.

Limited Religious Freedom and Toleration
Every state which did not officially establish a Christian denomination still limited freedom and toleration in some way.  Pennsylvania required that all citizens believe in God.  North Carolina's "Declaration of Rights" promised freedom of religion, so long as it was "to worship Almighty God" (This article pointed out an attempt a few weeks ago in North Carolina to return to something like this, and the Washington Post's poor coverage of it).  The 1777 Constitution of South Carolina stated that all people would be "freely tolerated," as long as they "acknowledge that there is one God, and a future state of rewards and punishments, and that God is publicly to be worshiped."

Religious Tests for Public Office
While the U.S. Constitution specifically barred religious tests, many states specifically required them.  Almost every state required that elected officials profess a belief in the God of Christianity.  Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Vermont required officials to believe in the divine inspiration of the Old and New Testaments.  North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, New Jersey, and New Hampshire required members of the state legislature, judges, and governors to be Protestants.  Ironically, most of these constitutions contained the promise that "no further religious test" would ever be required of anyone - except, of course, for the religious test they just had to take.

Religious Tests for Voting
Some states even required religious tests for citizens who wanted to vote.  Pennsylvania only granted civil rights like voting to those who acknowledged "the being of a God."  South Carolina required a belief in God and in "the future states of rewards and punishments."  And don't forget, in most every place, voting was already restricted to property-owning white males.

So What?
All of this information puts the national, constitutional calls for the free exercise of religion and disestablishment of churches in the 1780s in a fascinating context.  Some American leaders in the 1780s were stalwart on the issues of disestablishment and the separation of church and state in the national Constitution because they were such strong proponents of religious freedom.

But many leaders were bent on clarifying the language of the Constitution on religion not because they wanted a nation or government without church influence, but because they wanted the national government to be limited in its religious power.  With that settled, they could return to their states, and state constitutions, in order to exert precisely that power.

So Christians, as you have conversations about the issues surrounding the role of religion in our constitutions, laws, or history, keep in mind that these are historically complex issues.  You should seek answers, and you should take stands.  But you should base it on the varied history of the role religion in American life and laws, not based on a God-and-country caricature of it.


Helpful Links
Constitutions
You can find the early constitutions of all the states, territories, and nation in the multivolume book "The Federal and State Constitutions," freely available on Google Books.  Click here for a link to one of these volumes.

Books and Articles
David Sehat, The Myth of American Religious Freedom
John Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?
Thomas Kidd, God Of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution
Benjamin Park, "North Carolina's 'Official Religion': The Convoluted History of American States and Established Religions

On the Distinction between Analytic and Continental Philosophy

            For those outside of the discipline, the distinction between analytic and continental philosophy may seem trivial. After all, both traditions explore many of the same philosophical problems and often examine the same primary texts. But while the two each strive to clarify our knowledge of the world and our human nature, they carry out these projects with the aid of different intellectual toolsets. In applying these different tools to the same questions, analytic and continental philosophers yield distinct types of knowledge. As we’ll learn, one tradition tends to complement the other, but in some cases the subject matter dictates a specific approach that favors either analytic or continental methods.

Continental Philosophy

            The older of the two traditions, continental philosophy incorporates the philosophical subfields of metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, ethics and aesthetics. The majority of its practitioners reside in continental Europe, where during the late 18^th century Immanuel Kant inaugurated the tradition that became known as German Idealism. His Critique of Pure Reason attempted to provide a solution to the skeptical empiricism of David Hume and founded a school of epistemology that remains influential today.

            Kant and his intellectual successor Hegel indulged in highly abstract metaphysical speculation about the fundamental foundations of our knowledge of the world. They attempted to construct all-encompassing systems that subsumed disparate fields of philosophy under one meta-narrative, and their scope was comprehensive in that they believed philosophy could function as the explanatory cornerstone of human experience.

            In the 19^th century, continental philosophers responded to the apparent disparity between the advances of science and philosophy by rejecting the ambitious extravagancies of Kant and Hegel. Thinkers such as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche scoffed at the notion that philosophy could neatly embody the principles of every field of learning and became suspicious of systematic attempts to formalize human experience. Out of their influence emerged the existentialism of Sartre and Camus in the early 20^th century.

            While the priorities of continental philosophy changed over time, much of its style and basic tools remained intact. Works by the early German Idealists and Kierkegaard and Nietzsche share stylistic traits that distinguish them from analytic philosophy. Both engage in prose that sacrifices formal rigor in an effort to convey abstract meaning. Much of 19^th and 20^th century continental philosophy reads more like literature than philosophy, at least by analytic standards, and it's true that the continental thinkers are typically more dynamic stylistically than analytic philosophers. For the continental philosophers, language does not function as a rigid set of symbols conveying strict denotations, but rather as a malleable instrument by which to explore the boundaries of human comprehension.

Analytic Philosophy

            Against this perception, the analytic philosophers of the United Kingdom and the United States attempt to limit their usage of language to demonstrably logical statements about the world. Originating in the early 20^th century with works by Bertrand Russell, G.E. More and Ludwig Wittgenstein the analytic school of philosophy views the abstract indulgences of the continental tradition as complicating our knowledge of things by introducing confusing language that is ultimately devoid of meaning.

            Philosophers should, they argue, limit themselves to logically verifiable statements of the world that can provide reliable knowledge. By employing formal predicate logic, analytic thinkers attempt to validate their achievements with a rigor rivaling that of the natural sciences and mathematics. The prevalence of this methodology reached a peak in logical positivism, whose practitioners insisted that all philosophical statements must derive from either empirical observations or analytic tautologies.

            But logical positivism, it turned out, couldn’t meet its own strict criteria for justification and essentially died out by the late 20^th century. There was nothing logically necessary about its rules for valid statements, nor did empirical observation provide warrant for believing those rules to be fundamental. As a result, positivism has all but disappeared.

            Other less dogmatic forms of analytic philosophy are practiced throughout the English-speaking world, and the tradition remains the dominant school of philosophy in Western universities. Analytic philosophers employ formal logic to reveal inconsistencies and errors in arguments that otherwise appear plausible, and have contributed a great deal to our understanding of how language often functions not to communicate objective facts, but to reinforce our prejudices.

           

Application

            To illustrate the relative strengths of the analytic and continental approaches, let’s consider a particular set of philosophical problems. The philosophy of religion is concerned with the philosophical underpinnings of religious claims, such as arguments for the existence of god, god’s attributes, the problem of evil and the existence of the soul. Let’s briefly consider how the analytic and continental traditions handle the question of god’s existence.

            The analytic school employs logic and linguistic analysis to determine whether the claim “god exists” has any significant meaning. Does such a statement consider the actual conditions of the universe, or does it represent an emotional response to subjective experiences that cannot be verified empirically? Christian philosophers in the analytic tradition such as Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne have used logic to argue that such statements are in fact coherent claims about the universe and warrant our consideration.

            Continental philosophers will employ a different approach to the same question. Free from the formal strictures of the analytic school, continental philosophers can indulge in metaphysical speculation to explore the broader implications of the statement “god exists.” How might god’s existence shape our theories of beauty and justice? In questions where formal logic offers little insight, continental approaches reveal stimulating avenues of inquiry. The orthodox theologian and philosopher David Bentley Hart is a contemporary practitioner of continental philosophy of religion.

            This brief overview of the two dominant schools of Western philosophy cannot cover the many subtle distinctions or subfields within each tradition. They are broad disciplines that incorporate diverse approaches, but our characterization clarifies the fundamental differences between them and gives at least a general indication of their respective merits. 

Praying with Billy Joel

For someone who loves 70s singer-songwriters, I am sorely deficient in my knowledge of Billy Joel. I mean, I can sing along to "Piano Man" in a heartbeat, but that's as far as it goes. So when "Only the Good Die Young" came on the radio the other day, I turned it up, hoping to further my Billy Joel education. At first I was disappointed. After the first few lines, I thought I had the song pegged as a an anti-church cliche with a little bit of Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" thrown in:

Come out Virginia, don't let me wait.
You Catholic girls start much too late.
Aw, but sooner or later it comes down to fate.
I might as well be the one.

Well, they showed you a statue, told you to pray.
They built you a temple and locked you away.
Aw, but they never told you the price that you pay
for things that you might have done.
Only the good die young.

But I kept listening, and I'm glad I did, because of this line in the bridge:

You say your mother told you all that I could give you was a reputation
She never cared for me
But did she ever say a prayer for me? 

Wait a second -- did Billy Joel just remind me of an important truth about prayer? I think he did.

According to Wikipedia, Billy Joel has said that "...the point of the song wasn't so much anti-Catholic as pro-lust," but it is also, in its own way, pro-love as well, since praying for someone is a good way to learn how to love them. The song reminded me of this article, in which a man with opposite political views of President Obama learns to love him just through the habit of praying for him. It reminded me of how it only takes a second to pray for that person who overshares personal information in the facebook feed for me to begin to care about that person and their otherwise "TMI" statuses. It reminded me of how I'm a better friend and family member when I remember to pray for the important people in my life. When I do, suddenly my excuses about being too busy to write or call seem silly; when I pray for them, I start to love them better. And as the song suggests, praying for someone is a good way to stop judging them as well. So thanks, Billy Joel, for that lesson -- I better catch up on your body of work just to see what else you have to tell me!