c. scott andreas

I recently listened to an interview with Benedictine nun Sister Joan Chittister on religion and politics in the Bush Administration. She’s a social psychologist with a Ph.D. and 11 honorary degrees and a prolific writer. Here is a brief excerpt:

I do [feel called by God], but I don’t feel called by God to impose my life on yours. I believe that I’m called by God to keep God a constant question in the human heart. I believe that anything that uses God as an instrument of oppression on other people is not of God.

To have a religious voice in the public arena is very faithful to the founding fathers. Therefore, no single church or tradition that weighs and measures everybody else’s attitudes, standards, or moral decisions…But when you take a religious voice and turn it into a religion in the center of the system, there’s something wrong with that.

When you begin to use that kind of religious criteria and translate it into law, into God’s call for Armageddon — why are we in Iraq now? God apparently wants us there? Not my Jesus. If those are the criteria, we’re going to be in a lot of other countries for “religious reasons” in another 12 months.

Bill Moyers: Depending on the sources, there’ve been 37,000 civilians killed in Iraq — many say perhaps 100,000. Why is abortion a higher moral issue with many American Christians than the invasion of Iraq and the loss of life there?

Sister Joan: I’d like to ask you that question. I’m absolutely certain that some women we’re killing over there are pregnant women. Now what do you do?

Just because you’re opposed to abortion does not mean you’re pro-life. Just because you want a child born does not mean you want a child fed, a child educated, a child housed…That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth.

We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of “Pro-Life” is.

Listen to the interview here if you like. Let’s start this conversation.