Nonsense and heresy

The religious right bamboozled American Christians into caring about abortion and same-sex marriage. Thus sayeth James Talarico, who wants to be the Democratic Senate nominee for Texas.

By current opinion, Democrats think they might finally win one in Texas, especially if Republicans nominate the scandal-ridden Ken Paxton. But that means Democrats would have to avoid an unelectable pick of their own—Talarico’s primary rival, Jasmine Crockett. With the race looking close and primary day approaching, Talarico got a boost from an interview with Stephen Colbert, which went viral after Colbert and Talarico lied about it being censored by the Trump administration. The ploy to gin up attention worked, and Talarico’s campaign claimed to have raised $2.5 million in 24 hours.

Talarico’s campaign also highlighted his liberal Christianity, exemplified in his claim that “For 50 years, the religious right convinced our fellow Christians that the most important issues were abortion and gay marriage—two issues that aren't mentioned in the Bible.” True Christianity, he suggested, is manifest in liberalism. Democrats think this is good outreach to religious voters. Perhaps. But it is nonsense. Worse, it is heresy.

The nonsense is obvious. Of course same-sex marriage isn’t mentioned in the Bible; no one had thought of it yet—except maybe the Emperor Nero, who, according to Suetonius, had a mock wedding ceremony with his favorite castrated sex slave, who reportedly looked like Nero’s dead wife (whom Nero might have killed). Hardly an auspicious example. Meanwhile, only a fool would believe that Scripture’s consistent condemnation of homosexuality does not include same-sex marriage.

Likewise, abortion is clearly covered by the commandment against murder as well as the commands to love our neighbors and to care for the vulnerable and dependent. This is why Christians opposed abortion from the start, as demonstrated by the Didache, an early church text specifically forbidding abortion.

Supporting abortion doesn’t just violate the commandments of Christ—it denies Christ. Justifying abortion requires rejecting the clear meaning of the Incarnation. We know this from the Gospel of Luke, who was, appropriately, a physician. Luke’s account repeatedly shows that human beings in the womb are human persons. For example, the same Greek word used for John the Baptist in utero is later used for the baby Jesus after His birth. We also see that John, as the angel foretold, was filled with the Holy Spirit even in the womb.

Above all we see that Jesus was God Incarnate even as an embryo. When Mary visited Elizabeth, the fetal John the Baptist rejoiced at the advent of the embryonic Jesus. Luke’s detailed timeline allows us to know that this happened when John was around the current age of fetal viability, while Jesus was still in the first weeks of development—He likely did not even have a heartbeat yet.

In this first encounter between John and Jesus, we see that, while in utero, they were already persons contiguous with their adult selves. They had already begun their missions in the world; as a fetus John testified to Jesus, who was Lord even as a tiny embryo.

The divine mystery of the Incarnation did not begin with Jesus’ birth. Jesus was fully God and fully man in Mary’s womb. And because, as the book of Hebrews teaches us, Jesus’ humanity was like ours in every way but sin, we too must be fully human in the womb. Thus, to deny the human personhood of the unborn is also to implicitly deny the truth of the Incarnation.

Contra Talarico’s glib claims, faithful American Christians have prioritized same-sex marriage and abortion not because the religious right pulled off some sort of Jedi mind trick, but because those issues implicate matters foundational to Christianity. Christians may disagree on matters from taxes to immigration to healthcare, but supporting same-sex marriage and abortion is sinful and heretical. Even if voting for a candidate who supports such things were justified as choosing a lesser evil, that would only excuse voters, not the politician who champions these evils.

And they are evils. Same-sex marriage attacks Christian anthropology—our understanding of God’s created order. Marriage is rooted in God’s creation of us as male and female. Marriage as the faithful union of husband and wife is not only foundational to civilization and human flourishing in this world, it is also a symbol of our union with Christ in the world to come. Redefining marriage away from God’s design is rebellion against God and human nature.

And supporting abortion is a rejection of all of Christian ethics. It turns the primal human relationships of mother, father, and child away from love and instead makes them a deadly battleground of selfishness. And the evil of abortion is ultimately rooted in a denial of Christ. To reject the biblical truth that the unborn are human persons is also to deny the truth of the Incarnation.