UNITED STATES - The great American worldview test — the 2012 election

---

by Albert Mohler

Thu Sep 06 3:45 AM EST

American presidential elections are the world’s most public display of the democratic process. The global media follow the American elections with a fervor that is easily understood — what happens in an American presidential election matters all over the world. Our presidential campaigns are political pageants and electoral dynamos. But, as any honest thoughtful observer will understand, our elections are also great worldview exercises. We reveal our worldview by our vote.

This is particularly true of the 2012 election. The presidential nominees of the two major parties represent two very different worldviews and visions. President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney have adopted policy positions that place them in direct conflict, and the platforms of their respective parties reveal two radically different renderings of reality.

Years ago, Governor George Wallace of Alabama remarked with disdain that there is not “a dime’s worth of difference” between the Democrats and the Republicans. In a sense, he was at least partly right. A look back at the platforms of the two parties in the 1950s and 1960s reveals little division over many of the issues that now frame our national debate. Some of today’s issues were simply missing, of course, given the fact that they were not even part of the national conversation. But on issues of the economy, foreign policy, the function of government, and a host of other issues, the parties held positions that were far closer than is the case today. Divisive issues such as the war in Vietnam would be addressed with different policy proposals, but the platforms of the two parties reflected a shared moral and political framework — a truth that would shock many Americans today.

All that changed with the social and political divisions that came with the 1968 and 1972 elections, when the Democratic Party experienced its great transformation concerning a host of social issues. The 1980 election saw the Republicans experience their own transformation, with social issues such as abortion rising to major attention in the party platform.

Fast forward to 2012, and the distance between the two parties is breathtaking. The nation’s political polarization is clearly evident in the radical distinctions between the Republican and Democratic platforms. But this polarization is not merely political. It is fundamentally moral and ideological. These two platforms present two contradictory understandings of realities as basic as human life, liberty, and the institution of marriage.

Though the two parties have taken opposing positions on many of these issues for years, the radical nature of this current polarization is new.

(Click “like” if you want to end abortion! )

The parties differ about matters such as health care and the environment, the power of public employee unions, Medicare, and foreign policy. But those differences, real and consequential, pale in contrast with the positions taken by the parties concerning the issues of abortion and same-sex marriage.

In 2012, the Democratic Party becomes the first major political party in the United States to call for the legalization of same-sex marriage. “We support marriage equality and support the movement to secure equal treatment under the law for same-sex couples,” states the platform. This follows President Obama’s announcement earlier this year that his “evolving” position on same-sex marriage now reached the point that he would openly call for same-sex couples to be given the legal right to marry.

The velocity of the Democratic Party’s shift concerning same-sex marriage was on full display on the stage of the 2012 Democratic National Convention, when former President Bill Clinton nominated President Obama for re-election. In 1996, President Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) into law after a massive bi-partisan majority in Congress approved the legislation. That act established that the United States government would recognize only the union of a man and a woman as marriage, and that no state would be required to recognize a same-sex union performed in any other state.

Just 16 years later, the Democratic president who signed that act into law nominated a Democratic president who is working for its repeal. President Obama has ordered his Attorney General not to defend DOMA in the Federal courts. He and his party now openly call for what that federal statute — still bearing the full force of law — prohibits.

The Republican platform stated: “We affirm our support for a Constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.” Thus, the Republican platform calls for nothing less than a Constitutional amendment to prevent what the Democratic platform demands the law to affirm. That Constitutional amendment, Republicans argue, is made necessary by the very fact that the Democratic President will not defend DOMA.

On the issue of abortion, the Republican platform states, “we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed.” The Democratic platform states: “The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to make decisions regarding her pregnancy, including a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay. We oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.”

The worldview clash could hardly be more dramatic. The Republicans frame the issue in terms of the unborn child’s “fundamental individual right to life.” The Democrats frame the issue as “a woman’s right to make decisions” — including the explicit right to decide to kill the baby in her womb. These are two contradictory moral claims.

One party claims that no abortions should be legal and the other claims that all abortions should be legal. Each party is driven by their own moral logic. The Republicans are driven by the belief that, at every point of development, every individual human being is sacred and has a fundamental right to life. The Democrats are driven by the belief that the woman’s unfettered right to choose an abortion is paramount, and that a woman can demand an abortion at any time for any reason — or for no reason. As their language states, “We oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.” The most revealing words there are “any” and “all.”

Both parties hold these positions because they are, in truth, the inevitable consequences of basic worldview assumptions. These assumptions include belief that marriage is essential to human flourishing and cannot be redefined without bringing on human disaster, contrasted with the belief that the liberation of humanity from oppression and prejudice requires the redefinition of marriage. In the background are contradictory assumptions about human sexuality, sexual morality, moral authority, individual autonomy, and the ends to which human beings are to aim their lives.

The assumptions framing the abortion positions of the two parties include the belief that every human life is sacred and to be protected at every point of development contrasted with the belief that a human life takes on greater worth and right to live as the development continues, but is tentative at least until the moment of live birth. The belief that the baby is itself the most urgent moral unit is contrasted with the belief that the woman and her right to control her own reproductive destiny is paramount. Behind these beliefs stand convictions and assumptions about human dignity, the worth of human life, the responsibility of the society to every human life, the purpose and end of human reproduction, and nothing less than the meaning of both life and death.

We are not looking at minor matters of political difference. We are staring into the abyss of comprehensive moral conflict. Christian voters can escape neither the consequences of their vote, nor the fact that our most basic convictions will be revealed in the voting booth come November. Christians cannot face these questions without the knowledge that God is the Giver of life, who made every human life in his image. We cannot consider this election without the knowledge that our Creator has given us the covenant of marriage as the union of one man and one woman as the demonstration of his glory and the promise of human flourishing.

Americans will elect a president in November, but our vote will reveal far more than our political preference. The 2012 election is a worldview exercise of unprecedented contrasts — an unavoidable test of our most basic convictions. The electoral map will reveal more than an election winner. It will reveal who Americans really are and what we really believe.

I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com.

Reprinted with permission from AlbertMohler.com.

Copyright © 2012 LifeSiteNews.com, Inc. All rights reserved.

United States: Romney pledges to protect ‘sanctity of life,’ marriage in GOP acceptance speech

Fri Aug 31, 2012 11:12 EST

by John Jalsevac

TAMPA, August 31, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney delivered his acceptance speech at the GOP convention Thursday night, laying out his vision for a Romney presidency.

“Mr. Chairman, delegates. I accept your nomination for president of the United States of America,” Romney said. “I do so with humility, deeply moved by the trust you have placed in me. It is a great honor. It is an even greater responsibility.”

In a speech focusing mainly on the country’s economic quandary and his own life history, Romney inserted a reference to social issues, pledging to protect life and marriage if made president.

“As president, I will protect the sanctity of life. I will honor the institution of marriage.”

In a reference to the HHS mandate, he said, “And I will guarantee America’s first liberty: the freedom of religion.”

Click ‘like’ if you want to END ABORTION!

Romney also touted his wife’s role as the mother of five boys, saying that even as he was working building his business, “I knew that her job as a mom was harder than mine. And I knew without question, that her job as a mom was a lot more important than mine.”

Earlier this year, a Democratic advisor provoked a media firestorm after criticizing Ann Romney’s decision to be a stay-at-home. Hilary Rosen told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that Mrs. Romney, “has actually never worked a day in her life,” echoing a similar charge Teresa Heinz Kerry made against Laura Bush in 2004.

Mrs. Romney rose to her own defense, tweeting, “I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work.”

In last night’s speech Romney also renewed his pledge to repeal and replace Obama’s health care reform law, conventionally known as “ObamaCare,” a law that has been heavily criticized by pro-life leaders for funding abortion.

United States - Survey reveals increasing hostility towards religion

 

By Michelle Bauman

Washington D.C., Aug 20, 2012 / 05:31 pm (CNA).- A report examining court cases from recent years has found that hostility towards religion has grown to unprecedented levels in the United States.

The newly-updated Survey of Religious Hostility in America serves as “a testament to the radical shift in our culture’s worldview” on religion, said Kelly Shackelford, president of Liberty Institute, and Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council.

On Aug. 20, Shackelford and Perkins announced the release of the updated analysis, describing “more than 600 recent examples of religious hostility” in the U.S., most occurring in the last decade.

The survey arose out of Shackelford’s 2004 testimony before the U.S. Senate on the rise in religious hostility in the U.S. Some members of the Senate claimed that the examples given were “simply isolated incidents.” In response, the report was developed, documenting the “very real problem” that the issue poses.

The updated survey reveals that eight years later, “hostility against religious liberty has reached an all-time high,” said Perkins and Shackelford.

The report observed a “new front” of attacks against churches and religious ministries in recent years.

Five years ago, it said, it would have been “unthinkable” for the federal government to claim that it could “tell churches and synagogues which pastors and rabbis it can hire and fire.”

Yet this was the argument made by the U.S. Department of Justice in the recent Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC case, in which the federal government fought against the “ministerial exception” that allows churches to select their leaders without government interference, it said.

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled against the Justice Department and defended ministerial exception in January.

The survey also documented an “explosion” within the last decade of “cases involving local governments discriminating against churches, particularly in the local governments’ use of zoning laws and granting of permits.”

In one case, a Texas law required all seminaries to receive “state approval of their curriculum, board members, and professors.”

Furthermore, the report documented increasing attacks on religious freedom in the public sphere, pushing “the boundaries of religious hostility” to new limits.

In one instance, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs banned funerals at national cemeteries from including religious content, even if the grieving family wanted the ceremony to include references to God.

In addition, multiple challenges have been brought against veterans’ memorials containing crosses and displays of the Ten Commandments at state courthouses and capitols.

The survey observed the shift in attitude towards these monuments, pointing out that even a decade ago, veterans’ memorials in the shape of a cross “were widely accepted as fitting symbols of the sacrifices made by so many for this country.”

It also noted several cases challenging prayer to open legislative assemblies, despite the fact that Congress has opened with prayer since the nation’s beginning.

One case showed how senior citizens at an elderly center in Balch Springs, Texas, were told that they could not pray over their meals because “religion is banned in public buildings.” City officials told the senior citizens that praying over government-funded food violated the “separation of church and state” and might result in the meals being taken away from them.

The report also noted the “alarming frequency” of attacks on religious liberty within schools. These cases, which often involve school officials preventing parents, teachers or students from speaking about their faith, are frequently the result of “misinformation” and threats of lawsuits from “secularist organizations,” it said.

In one case, a federal judge threatened a high school valedictorian with “incarceration” if she did not remove references to Jesus from her graduation speech. In another, a student was asked “what Easter meant to her” and told that she could not say “Jesus.”

Another instance documented a public school district in Greenville, Texas, which told a woman that she could only have an assistant principal position if she took her children out of a private Christian school.

The survey also found multiple instances of schools banning Christmas cards and gifts with religious content.

Although these cases indicate a significant increase in religious hostility in the U.S., the report’s authors said, those who stand up for religious freedom “are winning” in court.

“As dark as this survey is, there is much light,” they noted.

United States - Hispanic Catholics could play 'definitive' role in election

WASHINGTON D.C., August 25 (CNA) .- Political changes in recent years could mean that Catholics play an important role in the upcoming presidential election, but in a new way, say political analysts.

Dr. John Kenneth White, a political scientist at The Catholic University of America, explained that Hispanics – many of whom are Catholic – could be a “definitive group” in deciding the 2012 presidential election.

The 2012 election is unique, he told CNA on Aug. 23, noting that not only are both contenders for Vice President Catholic, but that neither candidate from either major U.S. party is a white Protestant.

The unprecedented situation has led to an unexpected amount of attention on Catholics, he said.

However, he explained, “it’s very hard to talk about the Catholic vote in generic terms” because the vote of Catholics is “incredibly diversified.”

White observed that in 1960s, Catholic self-identification was high and the faithful largely voted as a single bloc.

In recent elections, however, the Catholic vote has looked more like the national vote, he said.

Catholic identity has decreased, he added, and it is “not necessarily the first identity people bring with them into the ballot box.”

Rather, Catholics tend to think of themselves by their race, gender and other distinguishing factors, he said. The voting habits of the faithful can therefore be better analyzed by carving out groups based on factors such as Mass attendance and ethnicity.

A blog post issued by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate agreed with this observation, adding that membership in a union, unemployment and military service also factor into the way that Catholics cast their ballots.

An Aug. 3 blog post on the research center’s website noted that while Catholics have made up approximately 25 percent of the total electorate in recent elections, they make up about 19 percent of the total voting age population in the 16 states that remain the most competitive this year.

Catholics account for “the largest share of the voting age population” in the competitive states of New Mexico, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and they could also be a significant “swing vote” in Florida, Nevada and Ohio, it said.

While polls indicate that Catholics are split in their candidate preference, it is difficult to make predictions about the election so far out, especially since both national conventions and the candidates’ debates could still be key in swaying voters, the blog post noted.

However, it suggested, “the votes of those without a religious affiliation may be more decisive to the election outcome” than those of Catholics.

Nevertheless, White believes that both national campaigns are actively trying to court the Catholic electorate.

“They both see the Catholic vote as being important,” he said.

Republican candidate Mitt Romney recently announced that Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York would be offering the final benediction at the Republican National Convention on Aug. 30.

The announcement drew national attention, particularly since Cardinal Dolan – who leads the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops – has been a vocal opponent of the Obama administration’s contraception mandate, which requires employers to offer health insurance plans that cover contraception, sterilization and early abortion-inducing drugs.

White believes that the controversial mandate, which has drawn strong criticism from Church leaders, will have an impact on the vote of Catholics, “especially among frequent Church attendees.”

But the Obama campaign is “absolutely” trying to reach out to Catholics as well, in an effort that “takes on many different forms,” White added, explaining that a big part of this is the campaign’s outreach to Hispanic voters, which tend to overlap with Catholics.

And as a “leading minority” in many areas, Hispanics could be “a decisive number” in some swing states, he said.

White thinks the Hispanic vote will be “absolutely critical” in determining the outcome of the election.

“At the end of the day, that vote seems to be a lot more unified,” he said.

United States - Knights of Columbus head to speak on Latino Catholic voting

 

MIAMI, FLA., August 24 (CNA) .- Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, will address a national Catholic Latino group at a Miami church this evening on how Hispanic Catholics can transform American politics for the better.

Anderson will say that Catholics “should work to ensure that future generations of immigrants find a country that supports their values and not one that asks them to surrender their religious values at the border as the price of their admission.”

Is not multiculturalism but its opposite to force immigrants to “surrender values at the border,” he will state.

His speech to the annual conference of the Catholic Association of Latino Leaders will take place the evening of Friday Aug. 24 at 7 p.m. at the Family Center of St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church. The event will gather together more than 100 Hispanic business and civic leaders.

Anderson will speak about the importance of immigration reform and provide advice for judging how to vote in the upcoming election. Politicians’ support for immigration reform, in his view, is not enough to justify a vote for them if they also advocate policies at odds with core Catholic beliefs.

He will advise Hispanic Catholics to consider many issues in voting and to draw a line against voting for a politician who supports policies opposed to core Catholic beliefs. These policies include support for abortion or limits on religious freedom.

The Knights of Columbus is a 1.8 million member Catholic fraternal charity. Since its founding 130 years ago in New Haven, Conn., it has established councils across the world, including in Mexico and Cuba.

The organization co-sponsored with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles the Aug. 5 Guadalupe Celebration in Los Angeles, which gathered together tens of thousands of Catholics to honor Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Anderson has coauthored a bestselling book on the patron saint of the Americas, “Our Lady of Guadalupe: Mother of the Civilization of Love.”

Argentinean bishops call for civil code changes to protect the family

 

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA, August 24 (CNA/EWTN News) .- The Bishops' Conference of Argentina has called on congress to modify a proposed revision of the country's civil code to prevent harm to the family and protect the life of the unborn.

Argentina needs a society “in which stable bonds are fostered and priority is given to the protection of children and the most defenseless,” the bishops said in an Aug. 23 statement.

“We need to recognize and grant legal protection to all human life from the moment of conception, and we need to remember that not everything that is scientifically possible is ethically acceptable.”

The new civil code being debated in the Argentinean Congress would allow abortion, euthanasia and fast-track divorce. Under the new code, unborn babies before a certain stage would not be considered persons, the freezing of embryos for commercial purposes or scientific research would be allowed, and surrogate motherhood would be legitimized, the bishops said.

The emotional bonds of marriage would also be weakened and devalued, they argued.

Every legislative reform has an impact on the culture and daily life of a nation, the bishops noted, warning that the proposed new code embraces a model of the family that is individualistic.

The code is also opposed to gospel and fundamental social values, they added, “such as stability, commitment to others, the sincere gift of self, fidelity, respect for one’s life and those of others, the duties of parents and the rights of children.”

Archbishop Jose Maria Arancedo, president of the Bishops' Conference of Argentina, is slated to participate in an upcoming joint congressional committee debate on the civil code.

Pope urges laity to share Gospel with a world in darkness

 

VATICAN CITY, August 24 (CNA/EWTN News) .- Pope Benedict XVI told a group of lay people this week that the world needs their courageous and credible testimony to bring the hope of the Gospel to all areas of society.

In a message sent to the International Forum of Catholic Action in Iasi, Romania, the Pope reflected on the laity's responsibility to the Church and society, reported Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano.

“Co-responsibility demands a change in mentality, in particularly, about the role of the laity in the Church, who are considered not as ‘collaborators’ with the clergy, but as persons truly ‘co-responsible’ for being and acting of the Church,” he said.

The world needs a “a mature and committed laity,” which “can make its own specific contribution to the ecclesial mission with respect for the ministries and tasks that each one has in the life of the Church and always in cordial communion with the bishops.”

The laity's role is of fundamental importance, especially “in this phase of history,” the Pope stressed, to be interpreted “in the light of the Church’s social Magisterium.”

Lay men and women should also aim to “grow, with the whole Church,” he noted, “in the co-responsibility of offering humanity a future of hope and with the courage to formulate demanding proposals.”

Recalling the “long and fruitful history” of Catholic laity as “courageous witnesses of Christ,” the Pope invited the participants in the Forum to renew their commitment “to walking on the way of holiness, keeping up an intense life of prayer, encouraging and respecting personal ways of faith.”