Culture Friday: Debating life and death

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday the 13th of September, 2024.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

It’s time for Culture Friday, and joining us now is Andrew Walker. He’s a professor of Christian Ethics and Public Theology and managing editor of WORLD Opinions.

Andrew, good to catch up. Glad you’re here. Good morning!

ANDREW WALKER: Nick and Myrna, great to be with you.

EICHER: So the other night y’all had a group of students at the Boyce College and Southern Seminary campus where you teach, all gathered to watch the presidential debate. Describe the atmosphere, Andrew. Lots of laughter? Lots of groaning? What’d you hear?

WALKER: Yeah, yeah, there was a little bit of all of that, if I were being honest. No, it was a really fun situation. Dr Mohler called an audible and announced we were going to have kind of an impromptu presidential debate watch party. He announced it in chapel on Tuesday morning, and on Tuesday night, the event occurred, and he asked me and several other faculty to join him after the event for a panel discussion. And, you know, I'm a seminary professor. I don't typically teach college students very often, and so I I'm not often aware of, like, whether they're dialed into this conversation or much at all.

And so, I was like, you know, I'm gonna do this, but am I gonna go to Heritage Hall and there's gonna be 20 people there, and they're all the political science majors, and no one else cares? And so, I walked in, and it was literally standing room only, which I could never have anticipated, which sends the signal to me that something about Gen Z might have more political oomph to it than you know, what a lot of people might believe. And so what I was really encouraged by was the liveliness of the crowd. There were the USA chants prior to the start of the debate, necessary heckling, necessarily laughing and booing. But it was a really, it was a really, really fun, encouraging time.

EICHER: So, should we get into the particulars? I mean, there was quite a lot of time spent talking about the abortion issue, former President Trump really didn’t want to talk about it, Vice President Harris did. And therefore they did talk about it, the moderators making sure of that.

Terrible work, by the way, a masterclass on why there’s very little trust remaining in the mainstream news media.

But Andrew, on abortion what should we learn from the abortion dialogue and the time spent talking about it?

WALKER: Oh, well, there's so much to say right here. I think, first and foremost, I mean, you alluded to it. There was egregious moderating going on. At one point, former President Trump talks about how late term abortions are legal in the country, and that some children born from failed abortions are allowed to die, and he got fact checked by ABC news correspondents, and that was absolutely egregious. And then when Kamala Harris says no laws that you're describing were actually on the books, she didn't get fact checked. So there was complete, I think, partiality at the level of the moderating around this topic that was, again, very, very egregious.

But as far as the issues are concerned and the positions staked out, I think that both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are wrong on abortion, but they're not wrong in the same degree. You know, Donald Trump is ostensibly where it sounds like most of America is where in the early stages of a pregnancy, basically people are pro choice. But he has been, I think, actually, surprisingly clear about the graphic nature of late term abortion. If you recall from the debate on Tuesday night, he actually referred to these late term abortions as executions. And that's incredibly stark language, and it necessarily puts Kamala Harris and the Democrats on the defensive, having to downplay the reality of what their policies actually do allow for, even though that they will say that they don't.

And I think what was a really stunning revelation was when she was asked by one of the moderators, are there any restrictions on abortion that you would be okay with? And she doesn't answer the question because she knows her own running mate, Tim Walz has advocated for some of the most egregious abortion policies in the United States. And so again, both parties are seemingly wrong on this subject, or at least both parties’ standard bearers are wrong, but they're not wrong in the same measure.

EICHER: But can’t we say the late-term abortion question is a little bit of a red herring, though? That was more an issue when the Roe versus Wade legal regime was in place, showing how extreme it had gotten and that the question was beyond the reach of the democratic process. That’s no longer the case. Now it’s squarely in the democratic process at the state level. The pro-life side is losing, and it seems what we got was the wrong argument. So does that, as an ethicist, doesn’t that concern you, that the right questions aren’t making it into the debate?

WALKER: Yeah, well, no, it certainly concerns me. And I think this is where the Christian worldview needs to be brought to bear, because if you are okay with abortion at the earliest stages of a pregnancy, but you're not okay with abortion at later stages in pregnancy, you've in your mind, developed some arbitrary line in the sand. That is, again, it's an arbitrary line, because once you begin putting into principle the idea that it's permissible to take life at eight weeks in the womb, why would it then be wrong in principle, to take life at 38 weeks inside the womb? Because regardless of the age, the level of development, the degree of dependency, the child is the same child at all stages of their development.

And so I think this is an opportunity for us to kind of press for clarity and consistency about okay, if you say you're against late term abortion because of the idea that the child feels pain, okay, well, I'll grant that at the earliest stages of a pregnancy, the child may not feel pain in the same way, but it's still the same child, and we shouldn't be creating public policies that are putting an in principle justification for taking life and taking innocent life.

BROWN: So Andrew, before the debate, you posted, and I’m gonna quote you here: “There’s a realignment happening in ways that I have not seen in my lifetime of closely following politics. I’m still trying to wrap my head around what to call it and how to identify it. But something is in the air.”

So my question is, did you see, did you hear anything from the debate that helped crystallize what you’re feeling?

WALKER: I don't know if I necessarily felt it from the debate per se, but it's just interesting to see the various constituencies that are coalescing around Donald Trump's candidacy, so the rise of the Silicon Valley Tech bro, all of a sudden, is okay with kind of violating social norms in Southern California and coming out in defense of voting for Donald Trump? And I think that is probably more than anything, a level of economic interest at stake, that these individuals understand the burdensome nature of democratic policies and regulations on their businesses.

But I also think when you look at the constituency of the Republican Party, it's hard to find a common thread. I mean, you've got religious conservatives, you've got America first nationalists, you've got populous, you've got economic hawks, you've got foreign policy Hawks. The best thing that I can do to make sense of all of this is there's some type of America-first agenda, and there's some type of what I would call an American greatness or social cohesion agenda on the part of the right. But again, it's made up of very, very disparate factions. And I actually think right now, part of the realignment, Myrna, is that it's not predominantly a left-right division, although the left-right division is absolutely there.

I heard one individual make the observation, and I kind of agree with this, that one of the fundamental breakdown(s) in the various constituencies are the difference between crazy versus normal individuals who kind of just want this pre-2020 America back, because it seems like there's this hinge point in the last decade where 2020, things got really nuts and people are just wanting to go back to pre-2020 days.

And I think there's also, you know, you have kind of a libertarian spark. You have individuals like Elon Musk, who is, I think, more or less a libertarian. He is in the interest of free speech. And I think he just sees—and I think individuals like him see—a growing censorship agenda on the part of the left. And I don't think any of these individuals are trying to buy into the broader social conservative vision that you have on the political right. It's just that they're tired of the social dogmas and the social mores of kind of elite progressivism, and they're tired of it, and they recognize that there is this kind of censorship.

BROWN: Can I follow up real quick? I wonder whether there’s any connection to the fact that we seem to be having a hard time defining what an evangelical is, at least in terms of what an evangelical is supposed to stand for. What does it mean to bring evangelical values into the public square, what’s distinctive about those values?

WALKER: So, actually, I was on CNN this weekend. I did an early Sunday morning hit at 5:10 a.m., that headline hour where everyone is obviously watching. And I got asked the same question. And I got asked the question about kind of the Evangelicals for Harris initiative versus kind of traditional evangelicals who find themselves voting predominantly with the Republican Party. And I got asked why that's the case. And I said, Well, you know, I think at the end of the day, what you see is a breakdown in the party platforms. That the Republican Party is not the Christian party, and their platform is by no means inerrant. But I think when you look at the typical concerns of the conservative, and we can more or less parse those concerns with what we might call those Genesis concerns, the idea of life, the idea of being made male and female, the idea of marriage and family. There is still a little bit of a home in the Republican Party for that constituency versus a democratic constituency that has more or less declared war on the worldview of Genesis chapter one.

So, if you're asking me, what should evangelical Christians be looking out for, is we're looking out for which party is going to actively look out for those Genesis 1 realities, advancing the cause of human nature, human purpose, human freedom, understanding the centrality that if you want to have a healthy society, you have to have people. If you want to have the continuation of society, you have to have marriages and family. And those are bedrock pillars that we can't overlook. And as much as the Democrats and their platform are wrong on this, tragically, it seems like the modern Republican Party is just playing catch up, but at a slower pace.

EICHER: Andrew Walker professor of Christian Ethics and Public Theology … and managing editor of WORLD Opinions. Thanks and have a great weekend.

WALKER: Nick, Myrna, thanks so much.

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