<mediadc-video-embed data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1655211817571,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"0000017a-8cb2-d416-ad7a-beb7278f0000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1655211817571,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"0000017a-8cb2-d416-ad7a-beb7278f0000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"rawHtml":"
var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ "div": "Brid_51681501", "obj": {"id":"27789","width":"16","height":"9","video":"1006251"} }); ","_id":"00000181-624f-d405-a3e7-f3eff4230000","_type":"2f5a8339-a89a-3738-9cd2-3ddf0c8da574"}”>Video EmbedVice President Kamala Harris met with religious leaders last week to address “protecting reproductive rights” and the “epidemic of hate that is gripping our nation.”
“We need faith in each other, in our nation, and in our future,” she said in her address. “And so that’s why we are coming together today with a goal of instilling in folks a belief that gives them a sense of hope and optimism in themselves, in their community, and our future.”
As some pointed out afterward, her comments were conspicuously free of the words “God” or “abortion.”
While the criticism is fair, Harris is, unfortunately, doing exactly as she intends to do — paying lip service to “faith leaders” in hopes of getting them on board with the pro-abortion rights agenda and exciting confidence in a future in which women are free to choose whether or not they kill their children. Religious leaders are just another interest group. Don’t look at supporting abortion as “giving up core beliefs,” she told them, but as affirming a women’s ability to make a decision for herself without government intervention.
Harris’s attempt to straddle the line by affirming the necessity of faith and rejecting everything that comes with it misses the mark. If Harris was concerned about an “epidemic of hate,” she would acknowledge the God her speech ignores.
“Faith in each other,” or humanism, provides no convincing reason to respect political opponents. Harris said there is “so much more in common than what separates us,” but that is a difficult statement to justify from a secular perspective. Division is an inevitable conclusion to America’s widespread identity crisis, a result of rejecting God in public life. Embittered battles between factions occur because identity has been stripped and replaced with political causes, sexual preferences, skin color, economic backgrounds, and affinity groups. People believe violence is justifiable because their very identities, not only their favorite causes, are threatened.
Francis Schaeffer, the Christian philosopher who wrote frequently on the toxic influence of humanism on society during the 1960s and 1970s, often emphasized the necessity of God in affirming human dignity.
“We cannot deal with people like human beings, we cannot deal with them on the high level of true humanity, unless we really know their origin — who they are,” he writes in Escape from Reason. “God tells man who he is. God tells us that He created man in His image. So man is something wonderful.”
Our nation’s discourse can only be restored by the Christian doctrine of Imago Dei, recognizing that humans are inherently valuable because they are made in the image of God. Only through the Imago Dei is it true that we have more in common than we have different.
“Faith in each other” falls short. It does not make us wonderful, no matter how hard we wish for it. It does not lead us to esteem others as greater than ourselves. It does not give humans the dignity of being made in God’s image or the hope of an eternal purpose.
Without knowing who humans are, it’s impossible to know how to treat them. Many seek out purpose in other ways, hence dozens of recent attacks and protests on pro-life pregnancy clinics, churches, and Supreme Court justices. The man who attempted to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh reportedly thought it would “give his life purpose.” Women who seek out abortions often believe it will help them secure a more meaningful future, removing what they see as an obstacle to a successful career or education. The sanctity of human life is, in all cases, a shockingly low priority.
Greater theological clarity would have made Harris’s feeble call for “hope and optimism” in ourselves a resounding call for hope in God, by consequence producing improved discourse with political opponents. God’s treatment of man, in first creating him wonderful and then, once fallen into sin, providing a means of restoration through the atoning death of Christ on the cross, is a model for treating each other.
As C.S. Lewis wrote on man’s identity, “There are no ordinary people.”
“You have never talked to a mere mortal,” he wrote in The Weight of Glory. “Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”
In light of this, Lewis continued, we should “conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.”
Katelynn Richardson is a summer 2022 Washington Examiner fellow.
