"...most hard core anti-abortion people I know are also involved in crisis pregnancy centers and other such things to help struggling young mothers. It plays into what urbanites want to think about those culture war rubes out there in the provinces."
It's disappointing to me that some Christians I've talked, seemingly taking the legacy media's word about things, also think that pro-life people are just "pro-birth" and don't do anything to help mothers. I'd love to be wrong, but I don't think the NYT is going to be publishing any "feel good" stories about mothers going to crisis pregnancy centers, deciding to keep their child, and now celebrating that. I guess I can look - legacy media must be talking about these centers to some extent since I recall seeing that the AP updated their guidelines to refer to them as "anti-abortion centers."
Over time, I have reflected upon how in my younger years (aptly described as striver years - an ambitious kid from a farm in rural North Dakota, going to an Ivy League school, wanting to be liked, wanting to do something great) I would frequently play this rhetorical game when conversations drifted into the most visibly hot-button cultural debates about sexuality, abortion, etc.
At the time, I would have said, "You have to make arguments that appeal to and honor the good things in the other side's worldview." And conveniently, at the time, I believed such a strategy of catering to someone else's worldview was not just effective, but noble. "Faithful presence" for a wannabe elite.
I may be dating myself as older, but I remember encountering the Third Way idea in the 1970s, as I was learning that Christian faith was neither conservative or liberal but potentially something better. I thought the term could refer not to a halfway point between left and right, but to a transcendant answer to challenges that left and right argued about in terms of remedy. One example would be Tom Morales' work with immigrants, helping them find jobs, growing out of his Christian faith. Another could be Oaks Academy finding answers to education challenges. The hope I heard in the term was that the Scriptures faithfully applied can give us solutions to social problems that transcended some of the left-right political debate. I even remember a British evangelical magazine called Third Way that seemed to aim in this direction.
This reminds me of a book I read in a comparative religion class involving the classic tale of the blind men and the elephant. We the readers (and the king in the story) are supposed to feel superior that the blind men can each only grasp one part of the “ultimate truth” while we are the unblindfolded ones that are able to see “the truth”. The message was to be humble: none of us can grasp something for what it really is. Saying “I have a third way” shouldn’t mean moral superiority, but simply adding another option to the table. I do see some people pride themselves on “staying above the fray” though.
And the statement "she often feels that her only choice is between and abortion or overwhelming struggle as a mom" isn't even true, though it might have been at one time. Since 2008, every state in the union has some kind of Safe Haven law, and thus there's another, non-fatal-to-anyone alternative.
Agreed that third way rhetoric is often used for the purposes you suggest. I guess now that you live in a small city it's easier to take exception to things people in big cities say :)
I believe that Watkin's notion of diagonalization is not so much finding a third way between two extremes but rather that two (and only two) opposing realities must be held together in tension.
Well noted. The problem I see is that Pastors and Elders think they are looking at the problem in a sophisticated way by using "Chrsitian Critical Theory" where they can demonstrate that both sides are grabbing hold of only one side of the truth and that Chrsitianity offers a subversive fulfillment of both.
The problem is that they never settle on what that third way is in a tanglbel propsal as to how someone would have to take a stand and argue for something that would end up offending some policy decision.
It also tends to ignor the foundaiton from which a political party is arguing for its policy. It's quaint to say that Democrats "care about women" while Republicans "care about unborn hcildren" but what is the underlying standard for what "care" is. A Liberal Democratic approach, for instance, centers "care" in the undefined idea of maximal personal liberty to choose for onesself and never judges what that decision is. There is no sense of constraint as to what true liberty requires.
This is great stuff.
"...most hard core anti-abortion people I know are also involved in crisis pregnancy centers and other such things to help struggling young mothers. It plays into what urbanites want to think about those culture war rubes out there in the provinces."
It's disappointing to me that some Christians I've talked, seemingly taking the legacy media's word about things, also think that pro-life people are just "pro-birth" and don't do anything to help mothers. I'd love to be wrong, but I don't think the NYT is going to be publishing any "feel good" stories about mothers going to crisis pregnancy centers, deciding to keep their child, and now celebrating that. I guess I can look - legacy media must be talking about these centers to some extent since I recall seeing that the AP updated their guidelines to refer to them as "anti-abortion centers."
Over time, I have reflected upon how in my younger years (aptly described as striver years - an ambitious kid from a farm in rural North Dakota, going to an Ivy League school, wanting to be liked, wanting to do something great) I would frequently play this rhetorical game when conversations drifted into the most visibly hot-button cultural debates about sexuality, abortion, etc.
At the time, I would have said, "You have to make arguments that appeal to and honor the good things in the other side's worldview." And conveniently, at the time, I believed such a strategy of catering to someone else's worldview was not just effective, but noble. "Faithful presence" for a wannabe elite.
Where was your farm? I was born in Bismarck. My father grew up on a farm in Berthold, ND. My mother was from St. John, ND.
Starkweather - family still farming!
Thanks for this analysis, Aaron.
I may be dating myself as older, but I remember encountering the Third Way idea in the 1970s, as I was learning that Christian faith was neither conservative or liberal but potentially something better. I thought the term could refer not to a halfway point between left and right, but to a transcendant answer to challenges that left and right argued about in terms of remedy. One example would be Tom Morales' work with immigrants, helping them find jobs, growing out of his Christian faith. Another could be Oaks Academy finding answers to education challenges. The hope I heard in the term was that the Scriptures faithfully applied can give us solutions to social problems that transcended some of the left-right political debate. I even remember a British evangelical magazine called Third Way that seemed to aim in this direction.
https://wng.org/articles/corporate-compassion-1617301531
But your analysis helps me see that the use of the term has changed quite a bit.
This reminds me of a book I read in a comparative religion class involving the classic tale of the blind men and the elephant. We the readers (and the king in the story) are supposed to feel superior that the blind men can each only grasp one part of the “ultimate truth” while we are the unblindfolded ones that are able to see “the truth”. The message was to be humble: none of us can grasp something for what it really is. Saying “I have a third way” shouldn’t mean moral superiority, but simply adding another option to the table. I do see some people pride themselves on “staying above the fray” though.
This is really good analysis, Aaron.
And the statement "she often feels that her only choice is between and abortion or overwhelming struggle as a mom" isn't even true, though it might have been at one time. Since 2008, every state in the union has some kind of Safe Haven law, and thus there's another, non-fatal-to-anyone alternative.
Agreed that third way rhetoric is often used for the purposes you suggest. I guess now that you live in a small city it's easier to take exception to things people in big cities say :)
I believe that Watkin's notion of diagonalization is not so much finding a third way between two extremes but rather that two (and only two) opposing realities must be held together in tension.
Well noted. The problem I see is that Pastors and Elders think they are looking at the problem in a sophisticated way by using "Chrsitian Critical Theory" where they can demonstrate that both sides are grabbing hold of only one side of the truth and that Chrsitianity offers a subversive fulfillment of both.
The problem is that they never settle on what that third way is in a tanglbel propsal as to how someone would have to take a stand and argue for something that would end up offending some policy decision.
It also tends to ignor the foundaiton from which a political party is arguing for its policy. It's quaint to say that Democrats "care about women" while Republicans "care about unborn hcildren" but what is the underlying standard for what "care" is. A Liberal Democratic approach, for instance, centers "care" in the undefined idea of maximal personal liberty to choose for onesself and never judges what that decision is. There is no sense of constraint as to what true liberty requires.