I spent a good portion of yesterday taking notes on the whole thing.

I agree that there are problems with the formation of a "biblical" balance between the different issues, though I emphasize the biblical aspect rather than the balance part. How a political group allocates its activist energies between issues isn't persay something the Bible directly addresses and so it seems specious to use the term biblical.

This is characteristic of a trait that is common among many protestants:a lack of attention to ecclesiology or how church/ecclesiastical governance is structured.

Clearly, more influence can be garnered if differences between different groups are worked out/reconciled and evangelicals give credence to the recommendations made by the organization. But while I love the emphasis on the need for detailed social, economic, historical, jurisprudential and political analysis to inform the venues of our activism, the interaction between normative visions and factual analysis is quite a bit more complicated than the document describes. We, even as Christians, have conflicting normative visions and disagreement over the factual analysis that need to be worked out. It isn't just about specifying them with greater precision. And, given the vagueness of how the Bible deals with normative visions, the process of specifying them with greater precision is likely to spawn dissension among Christians. At a meeting of the Association of Christian Economists once it was mentioned that we should care about the poor and there was much agreement among all those in attendance. But then, the speaker kept making additional statements amount about what we could do about poverty with greater degrees of precision and the level of unamity among the christian economists in attendance went down as there was more to disagree about.

And so the lack of attention to how what constitutes a biblically-balanced agenda is worked out disturbs me. Its all fair and well to talk about the importance of governance, but issues of governance apply well beyond gov't to private corporations and ecclesiastical institutions as well.

The entire document doesn't address the fact that the democracy of the dollar plays an important role in much governance in the US and abroad. The issue is only brought up in conjunction with developing countries, which would be better-stated as under-developed countries, since we are all developing in the nature of our polities/economies/societies. And, of course, the NAE is by no means completely immune to the influence of interests.

Anyways, I need to write more about this at my own blog.
dlw

A couple of more comments...

The paper acknowledges that critical to policy-debates is information that was not present or understood when the Bible was written.

It doesn't however allow that such may exist for either abortion or homosexuality.

The term human life is used in an interchangeable manner with the unborn. While the article acknowledges the need to be pragmatic, by taking into account entrenched power-groups in its political activism, so long as the stated long-term goal of pro-life activists is to make all elective abortions illegal again, it will be harder to make concrete reforms to abortion laws since pro-choice groups will not want to edge out onto the slippery-slope of returning to the pre-Roe-V-Wade days. It may also be part of a biblically-balanced agenda to support rather economically conservative nominations to the Supreme Court that are in favor of repealing Roe-V-Wade.

Never mind that Roe-V-Wade only guarantees a woman's right to elect an abortion in defined circumstances and so repealing it would only allow all elective abortions to be made illegal at the state level. There's no guarantee they will be made illegal or that if they are made illegal that they will stay illegal. Nick Kristoff has written this past spring about the Portugese experience with abortion. Abortions were made legal again after the press publicized the punishment of people involved with illegal abortions. The same sort of pressures would exist with the US.

And so if we're going to successfully change abortion laws, we have to accept that it is futile to make elective abortions during the first trimester illegal and give up on reversing Roe-V-Wade, which only grants women the right to elect an abortion in defined circumstances, specifically during the first trimester.

I think it is wisest to set it up so that the legal redefinition of when human personhood begins is determined by a national referendum of US citizens, requiring a 75% majority.

That permits change but signals to pro-choicers that they will not be dramatic changes. It also refocuses our energies on changing people's hearts, rather than electing pro-life politicians. This permits us to spend our political capital on other measures that will prevent/discourage abortions and save born lives.

There is a forum on this issue at sojourners.
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=get_connected.forums&mode=display&forum_id=57

Likewise with homosexual marriages, the paper fails to make the case for why legal homosexual marriages would undermine all the good things heterosexual marriages are s'posed to do. The facts surrounding homosexuality are more complicated than either side cares to admit. Although, the best explanation for homosexual orientations at this point is the one based on the hormonal balances formed in one's brain during the fetal stage. That accounts for how when an identical twin has a homosexual orientation, their twin has a less than fifty-percent chance of also having a homosexual orientation. It also allows for the possibility of someone with a homosexual orientation changing as has been corroborated by research as possible, but difficult for most homosexuals and not something that can be forced on anyone.

I debate this issue too often over at TheologyWeb with dispensationalists that are certainly not "evangelical", imo.
http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?t=28259&page=1&pp=16

I don't support legalizing gay-marriages, because I see the term as being perceived by both sides as a matter of social approbation and so I think the issue is bound to raise heat between the different parties and crowd out other issues. I do support allowing for civil-unions for homosexual couples that are committed to long-term relationships, just as I support reforming legal marriages to make divorce less easy than it currently is under the no-fault divorce system. The latter provides concrete rights/benefits for committed gay-couples, whereas homosexual marriages is largely symbolic and so pursuing legal homosexual marriages under the banner of equality is likely to make it more difficult to establish civil unions.

Permitting civil unions for committed gay-couples is a more effective way to take the wind out of the sales of gay-rights activists seeking to make homosexual marriages legal and who often propagate anti-christian messages of biological determinism(my genes make me do it) and sexual libertinism(It shouldn't be wrong to love someone.).
dlw

click on the dlw to see my own comments.

dlw

Steve -- Do you suppose it's possible to have a list that is not hierarchical? Maybe I missed it, but I don't see that NAE document saying, "First the families, then the poor, then the sick..." It seems to be listing various areas of concern and responsibility that should be common to believers.

Since English is a linear language, something has to come first in a list, even if the person making the list believes that all of the things are of equal importance. When I list my children I usually do so chronologically, but it doesn't mean I love my oldest child more than my youngest.

I don't mean to put too much stock in the way the items are "listed" under "Principles of Christian Political Engagement," but a simple statement preceding that section explaining that these areas are all equally valid, or deserve equal billing, or something, would help alleviate the *implied* prioritization that is created through the natural linear nature of the beast. I don't think the "biblically balanced agenda" comment does that adequately, and, as DLW pointed out, that language itself has some inherent issues.

But I'm really not that concerned about it. It's linear. I can deal with it. As much as I think it'd be cool to make things more non-linear, hypertext, blah blah blah, I realize that the NAE is probably not going to re-fashion this document for a Web mindset. And that's OK. Some lead-in text to that section which presents each area as equal would be nice. That's all.

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