Chapter Two
If trees were tall and grasses short,
As in some crazy tale,
If here and there a sea were blue
Beyond the breaking pale,
If a fixed fire hung in the air
To warm me one day through,
If deep green hair grew on great hills,
I know what I should do.
In dark I lie: dreaming that there
Are great eyes cold or kind,
And twisted streets and silent doors,
And living men behind.
Let storm-clouds come: better an hour,
And leave to weep and fight,
Than all the ages I have ruled
The empires of the night.
I think that if they gave me leave
Within the world to stand,
I would be good through all the day
I spent in fairyland.
They should not hear a word from me
Of selfishness or scorn,
If only I could find the door,
If only I were born.
G. K. Chesterton
(ca. 1897)
Over the years, the media have reported the issue of abortion much in the way they would report a pitched battle. The pro-life lobby "taking on", "challenging", or otherwise entering into mortal combat with the pro-choice campaigners.
And for thirty years those tags have been universally accepted as shorthand summaries of the beliefs of each side.
Yet seldom in history could a group have adopted for themselves a greater misnomer than that chosen by the so-called advocates of choice.
Choice for them means choice to kill, to terminate, to abort. It seems to have barely occurred to them that implicit in the notion of choice is the fact that there is an alternative.
It was as a result of that somewhat shallow and barren level of debate that I decided in 1997 to tackle the pro-choice lobby head-on.
Choice, after all, must mean precisely that. The choice of life as well as death, the choice of fertility as well as sterility, the choice of hope as well as despair.
And so it was that I made an offer to women facing crisis pregnancies. I asked them to remember something that the "pro-choice" camp would rather they had forgotten. I asked them to remember that they did have a choice, and that the Church was there to help them make the right choice.
I said: "I issue an open invitation to any woman, any family, any couple who may be facing the possibility of an unwanted pregnancy. I strenuously urge any person in that situation, of any ethnic background, of any faith, from anywhere, to come to the Archdiocese of Glasgow for assistance.
- Whatever worries or cares you may have ... we will help you.
- If you need pregnancy testing or counselling ... we will help you.
- If you want help to cope with raising the baby on your own ... we will help you.
- If you want to discuss adoption of your unborn child ... we will help you.
- If you need financial assistance, or help with equipment for your baby and feel financial pressures will force you to have an abortion ... we will help you.
- If you cannot face your family, or if pressure in your local area is making you consider abortion, come to us, we will help find you somewhere to have your baby surrounded by support and encouragement. We will help you.
- And finally, if you have had an abortion. If you are torn apart with guilt, if your relationship has split up because of abortion, if you are suffering from post-abortion stress - come to us, we will help you.
- Today I urge anyone in that situation ... Let us help you to avoid making one of the biggest mistakes of your life."
The word I have chosen to emphasise throughout this time has been "choice". It is the key, I think, to moving the abortion debate onto a new level.
For too long the abortion issue has become gridlocked in a kind of rhetorical war of attrition, with both sides using words in an attempt to wear down the determination or the conscience of opponents.
Yet few people, until now, have analysed the "pro-life" and "pro-choice" tags with courage, thus allowing the pro-choice myth to continue unchallenged.
The future of the pro-life struggle will involve us in a readiness to enter into dialogue not only with the proponents of what we might call the "culture of death" - but with its victims. The young women who turn to the abortionist's clinic because they feel they have no alternative.
We are unlikely to win hearts and minds by hurling insults. Far more likely are we to have an effect if we open our hearts, our minds and our pockets to those in genuine need.
And that is what has happened.
In year one spontaneous donations of £200,000 have been sent to me. I made no appeal for help, no collections have been taken, no request for funds has been made. That money has been used to provide practical assistance to young women from near and far - assistance which has led over 100 of them to change their minds about abortion, and choose life rather than death for their unborn child.
And so we will continue to offer our help as a Church to those of our children - and others - who need it. Catholics traditionally refer to the Church as "Holy Mother Church". And that title is deeply significant.
It sums up very well one of the Church's most profound roles - to be, in the words of Pope John XXIII in Mater et Magistra - mother and teacher.
But mother first, then teacher.
His successor, Pope Paul VI shrewdly observed that today's world is more ready to listen to the language of example than the language of the sermon. And if the reaction to our pro-life initiative is anything to go by, Pope Paul was absolutely right.
A chord seems to have been struck. People have responded magnificently because the Church was prepared to do what the Church does best - show love and concern for her children.
The advocates of more abortion have had little to say about the essence of our initiative. Certainly some have carped about the Church's ability to cope; but few have dared say that the offer to help women in distress should not have been made.
Why not?
Because, quite simply, when you have spent your life on protest marches, walking beneath banners calling for freedom of choice, it is very difficult to criticise a scheme which offers just what you have been asking for.
For our opponents, their words have come back to haunt them. For a woman's right to choose must also involve the option of choosing life.
G. K. Chesterton said, "Tolerance is the virtue of the man without conviction". Having decided that the pursuit of truth is too difficult, tolerance of a plurality of truths becomes a more achievable target. Tolerance ends up taking the place of truth; but simply being inoffensive and privatising the pursuit of truth is not the stuff of which politics or life should be made.
"Pro-Life means a fundamental affirmation of the value of all human beings created in God's image. It is the basis on which we argue for the dignity and respect of human life and the motivation for resisting all actions which marginalise or destroy the gift and quality of life."
At a time when civic dissolution demands a re-evaluation of the importance of society's ethics and the coherence and continuity of a stable civic order, religious beliefs have increasingly been under attack.
Recent demonstrations - including the celebration of blasphemous mock-masses during Pope John Paul's visit to Germany, and the death threat made against him before a visit to France, illustrate the bitter hatred which liberals can harbour. Anti-Church has become the anti-semitism of the liberal. In Germany, as has happened elsewhere, their wrath was triggered by the reiteration of orthodox Christian beliefs and age-old Church teaching. As we will see, evangelical Christians have been paying a price too.
What would have been more surprising is if the Pope had not upheld orthodox teaching.
Modern Persecution
Modern secular culture does not tolerate religious dogmatism. As a result, many Christians have responded with appeasement and accommodation. Sceptics assume that talk of persecution of religious believers in Britain and the European democracies is a bad case of paranoia.
Persecution of the Church in Marxist and Islamic societies is well-documented and far more obvious.
Vast numbers of Christians were murdered during Stalin's purges and during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Estimates of numbers vary, but James and Marti Hefley in By Their Blood (World Evangelical Fellowship) say that, "More have been martyred in this century than in all the previous centuries combined. World Mission Digest puts the figure at 100 million killed for their faith in the last 100 years.
In Egypt, for instance, the Copts face systematic annihilation while their co-religionists elsewhere in the region, the ancient Syrian Orthodox Church and Chaldean Catholic Church, have already been decimated. In Iran and Saudi-Arabia, in Vietnam and China, and in many other parts of the world, Christians continue to be imprisoned and to die for their faith in appallingly large numbers. Organisations such as the Jubilee Campaign, based at St. John's, Wonersh, near Guildford, have systematically documented and reported these excesses.
Harder to quantify is the more subtle and sophisticated carpet-slippers persecution of believers and their beliefs. It is this hidden agenda which I will attempt to probe. These next pages examine the position in Britain and Europe, in America, and at the United Nations.
The sharpest common points of conflict appear to be over bioethical issues, family questions and education. In addition, there is disquiet over the role of the media in distorting the debate and acting in a partial and discriminatory manner.
Although there may be conflict over other questions - for example British planning law has been used to try and curb worship in a private home in Stockport - bioethical issues are the real battleground and the cause of covert persecution.
The New Dispensation: Political Correctness
The secularisation of British public life has gone on unabated since the end of World War Two. Each of the political parties (despite their tap-roots into Judaeo-Christian beliefs) first dismissed and then ridiculed religious belief as a foundation for political thought.
At a superficial level, in some political quarters, religious belief has been enjoying a renaissance with some. Church-going has become more popular: Christian belief in the sanctity of human life has not. It may represent a better beginning than it first appears. Only time will tell.
Secularisation of society has made it increasingly difficult for the believer to succeed in politics - at least to succeed without surrendering some important aspects of belief.
Parties themselves have at times come to resemble para-churches, with quasi-Messianic charismatic leaders, and even the ritual and camaraderie associated with the Church. Some of their members use their parties as a secularised substitute for a church or religion.
Emulating the less tolerant epochs of church history, political parties have also developed an intellectual inquisition which tells its members how to think, how to speak (in sound-bites), and in some cases how to dress. It represents the triumph of style over content and has bred an intolerant political correctness. Members of Parliament end up issuing synchronised press statements, tabling authorised questions and motions, never speaking or voting out of turn. It is a pale imitation of truly representative politics - where principles and conscience come first. We have created a Parliament of Daleks - whose only function is to obey.
Stand for Truth
The core requirement of being politically correct - 'PC' - is to believe that you should not say or do anything that some group might find offensive. It is an insistence that you conform to certain stereotypes - and one of its first casualties has been an honest and open debate. An independent frame of mind or a determination to question the new orthodoxies automatically makes you a maverick, out-of-step, old-fashioned, detached, reactionary or even bigoted. Ben Jonson once said: "Stand for truth; it's enough". Truth is the last thing they want to hear in politically correct circles.
In many instances, political correctness may have begun with a good impulse: a concern with the dignity of women, a loathing of racial hatred, a hatred of discrimination - but it can degenerate remarkably quickly into being ridiculous and even intolerant. In politics, being politically incorrect can lead to de-selection, victimisation and narrowness in thought and action.
There are few areas of British life which remain untouched by this pernicious phenomenon.
It begins with the very words we use. The language of Chaucer and Shakespeare is debased into the language of the Islington wine-bar. Inelegant expressions begin to pepper our speech. In local government, instead of addressing "Madam Chairman" or "Mr Chairman", the holder of the office becomes an inanimate "Chair". A slip of the tongue and the incorrect offender is guilty of heightism, sexism, racism, ageism - and any number of other 'isms'. If he is really unlucky, the offender might simultaneously manage them all at once!
Law and Double Standards
Legislators are no better. You can be on the side of animals but not humans. In 1986, laws were enacted protecting animal embryos and even larvae from experiments, while four years later they gave the go-ahead for destructive experiments on the human embryo.
One of these days, some politically correct seals will march on Downing Street with placards demanding laws to save the human race. Maybe we will see the illogicality and the paradox of the positions which we take.
Unmanning of Men
Political correctness has demeaned women and unmanned men. We no longer value women as women, but as sexless persons. We define people by their sexuality, not by who they are, or what they are. It is politically incorrect to mention the role of a mother or a father. Men themselves are to be virtually eliminated - apart from the humiliating payment they might receive at a fertility clinic to provide their sperm. No-one seems to care that 800,000 children no longer have contact with their fathers and that men have no say when an an abortionist takes the life of their child.
This increasingly gender-driven and negative view of the value of the human being is accompanied by the flaccid languauge of rights. This language is shorn of personal responsibilities, duties or obligations. Political correctness believes in one thing above all else: that personal choice is paramount. Everything has the same value; your choice for you is what is right for you.
What is wrong with political correctness is that it does not look at the fundamental values of society. It is often just the best cause to catch your eye on the rack at the local health shop. It does not have a defining philosophy. Its adherents are frightened to exercise moral leadership for fear that the public will sit on them. It will be big into the latest, trendiest causes and will dress itself in the smartest and sharpest Italian suits - but where is the passion, where is the courage, where is the truth?
In Truth, the Ballad of Good Counsel, Chaucer gives advice upon which today's politicians might reflect:
Act well thyself who can,
Counsel others;
And truth shall deliver,
Thee no dread.
Put another way, it is not Political Correctness which is needed but an altogether different PC - Political Courage.
Political Courage
The perfectly good original impulse of being opposed to racial hatred or homophobia leads to the absurd idea that it is good to remain silent about your own convictions if they are not held by the majority. Political correctness allows each group to define tolerance in its own terms and for itself.
G. K. Chesterton said, "Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions". Having decided that the pursuit of truth is too difficult, tolerance of a plurality of truths becomes a more easily achievable target. Tolerance ends up taking the place of truth; but simply being inoffensive and privatising the pursuit of truth is not the stuff of which politics or life should be made.
The Enlightenment conceived truth as sourceless, as existing 'out there', and accessible to the reasonable inquirer; but even Enlightenment thinkers did not see this shift as endangering the core beliefs of their own tradition. John Locke, (The Reasonableness of Christianity, 1695, ed. I. T. Ramsay, Stanford University Press, 1958) assumed that a reasonable inquirer would come to affirm the truths of the Christian faith and that there was total compatibility between objective truth and biblical truth. Notwithstanding this, the pursuit of truth in the post-Enlightenment period was detached from the traditions of the community, and in being democratised, was made to stand on its own. In addition, the cult of individualism gave each player the right to shape truth on their own terms.
Political correctness, multiculturalism, diversity and tolerance may all seem perfectly benign concepts, but when they lead to the near-criminalisation of thought and belief, they are exposed as a sham. The situation is compounded by the relativism that insists that all beliefs and values are equally legitimate and that it is impossible to judge between them.
A List Called EMILY
Within political parties, this spawns organisations such as the Labour Party's Emily's List. Objective: to encourage more women to enter politics. Politically correct and ostensibly a perfectly reasonable objective! In practice it is achieved by giving money (the acronym 'EMILY' means Early Money Is Like Yeast) to those women it selects as suitable. The one politically correct commitment which they must give is to support abortion laws. This rules out women with orthodox religious beliefs.
Emily's List candidates won numerous seats at the 1997 General Election. The very first constituency to be visited by Tony Blair during the campaign was Gloucester - a seat being contested by an Emily's List candidate. Emily's List remains active within the Labour Party, although an industrial tribunal ruled Labour's women-only shortlists to be illegal after a number of candidates had already been selected using this procedure. Labour's then Shadow Minister for Women, Janet Anderson MP (a former full-time campaigner for Sunday trading), in an interview with The Daily Telegraph (1 October 1996) said, "We will try and get around the ruling". She also made the extraordinary assertion that a Labour Government would cultivate a more promiscuous society: "Under Labour, women will become more promiscuous. That's an election pledge", she said - although she did subsequently claim it had been a joke.
Click here for Chapter Two (Continued)
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Rev. Joel Edwards
General Director, the Evangelical Alliance