Island Breezes drew my attention to a column by Kathleen Parker about oogedy boogedy pro-lifers.
Oogedy boogedy is a word that Parker uses to qualify those pro-lifers whose religion infuses their every word and action. The idea is that is their religion is so overt, so sacharrin, so in-your-face, it's suffocating.
I understand where she's going with that.
On my blog, I don't use that many religious arguments to uphold the rights of unborn children. It's not that I don't think that they're valid-- not at all. It's just that I think that pro-life beliefs are accessible to everyone. All you must do to believe in fetal rights is that the fetus is a human being, and that killing all innocent human beings is wrong.
It's as simple as that. Although a belief in God and religious values helps, it's not a prerequisite. One simply needs to believe in the inherent right to life and the equality of all human beings.
It's a perfectly secular belief.
I would never discount any pro-life efforts. I believe that most tactics are useful in the right context. However, I think that is in incumbent on the pro-life movement to be all things to all people. That means to be able to speak the culture's language and challenge it in a way that is intelligible to it. Many pro-lifers are incapable of doing that. Of course they mean well, but for whatever reason, they're just not hip on any level-- culturally, intellectually, technologically, politically, etc. And that does put the pro-life movement at a disadvantage.
And so I think efforts like ProWomanProLife are very helpful.
However, I have some misgivings about emphasizing the secular too ardently.
There are many people who want to get rid of the overtly religious. I admit that some religious people-- let's face it, it's mostly Fundamentalist Evangelicals-- rub me the wrong way.
Growing up in Quebec, before the age of the internet, I never really knew anyone like that. The idea that people go door to door to peddle the Gospel, or stand on the street corner and talk about Jesus Christ is like something out of television. I didn't think that people really did that. When I discovered the internet and the big wide world out there, it was shocking to me.
It goes against the way I was raised. You don't go around starting conversations about Jesus Christ and salvation. You don't make a show of your religion. You don't pepper your sentences with Praise the Lord and talk about sin and "the Bible says" etc. That's just weird.
Notwithstanding the fact that people like that can rub me the wrong way, they are often the most ardent and the most audacious of activists. They do not fear calling a spade a spade.
Politically speaking, that's not always the smartest thing to do.
But sometimes you have to do things that are not politically in your best interest.
Sometimes, the over-groomed, smiley, happy-clappy, Bible-thumping Christians get on my nerves and seem a little fake, a little holier-than-thou,a little unsophisticated, but I embrace them. They may not have the right apologetics or the right strategy, but they often have the right values. And that's what matters.
And what I fear is that by trying to distance themselves from the "oogedy boogedy", it plays into the hands of secularists and those whose political vested interests are pro-abortion.
I fear that there is a circle of Republicans who are so entrenched in what is known as the "cocktail party crowd" that they think they're a little too good for fundamentalist Christians. "The Bible says" is just a little too gauche for them. They're trying to keep up their intellectual and cultural snobbery.
And dismissing this segment of the Republican population is a way to play down the abortion issue.
I think that pro-lifers should be politically astute. I think they should learn to play the political game, to be "wise as serpents and innocent as doves" and to be "all things to all people" to paraphrase St. Paul. I believe this is how pro-lifers will make political progress.
That doesn't mean we should throw the less politically astute Christians under the bus.
Perhaps this discomfort with overt religion is more of a sign of the culture's-- or the elite's-- disdain for traditional Christianity. Oogedy Boogedy wouldn't be an issue if the culture accepted traditional values. The Tammy Faye Bakker feel of some segments of conservative Christianity is just anathem to a Catholic like me, but it's not spooky to me because I share the values of many conservative Christians.
The oogedy boogedy of some conservative Christians is just an excuse to attack them, and by extension, their values.
I would simply say that the best way to advance the pro-life cause is to simply tell people straight: if you want to win, you have to play the game properly. Those are the facts. You have to be all things to all people. That may mean adjusting your demeanour to your audience. That's not religious prejudice. That's just the cold hard truth. If pro-life Christians won't accept that fact, we can't abandon them; but we can't exactly blame anyone else, either.
