Culture Friday: Abortion accusation

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It's the 7th day of October, 2022.

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 Culture Friday!

Joining us now is Andrew Walker. He’s a professor of Christian ethics and apologetics at Southern Seminary and managing editor of WORLD Opinions.

Now, Andrew is traveling today and he doesn’t have his usual broadcasting gear with him, so I’ll apologize in advance for the sound quality, we’re making do with earbuds and an iPad, so the quality of the conversation is going to have to suffice. I’m just glad you could be with us today. Good morning, Andrew.

ANDREW WALKER, GUEST: Nick, Myrna it's always good to be with you.

BROWN: We’re a month out from the midterm elections and the mud-slinging is in full force.

A recent report alleges Georgia’s U.S. Senate candidate, Herschel Walker paid for a girlfriend’s abortion in 2009. Walker, who is pro-life calls the reports a “flat-out” lie.

Now, we already know where his opponent, Senator Raphael Warnock stands because he publicly refers to himself as a pro-choice pastor. Republicans are reportedly standing behind Walker. Let’s listen to these clips from conservative radio host, Dana Loesch:

AUDIO: How many times have I said four very important words - these four words, winning is a virtue… so I don’t care if Hershel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles. I want control of the senate.

Andrew, you call this undignified conservatism. What do you mean by that? And what would be a more Christ-like response?

WALKER: Yeah, thanks for asking about this, this was really a complicated issue.

What we want to begin with first is the understanding that these are allegations at this point. And we need to kind of let the facts play out. Regarding Dana Loesch’s particular point, what I find problematic with what she said is that she is pursuing a “winning at all costs” mentality. She is, ethically-speaking, striking at a very utilitarian and consequentialist way of thinking about politics.

Now, on the one hand, we do have to admit that voting is somewhat consequential in terms of how we do our analysis and find that our vote is always going to have an outcome affecting X, Y, or Z. That doesn’t mean, though, that we excuse, or paper over, or look the other way when there are legitimate offenses and legitimate wrongs. Again, we don’t know what Herschel Walker has done for sure. Let’s imagine for the sake of our conversation that it's true. In this particular situation we can hope, perhaps, that— over a span of time— he’s had a change of heart on this issue. And moreover, we can hope— and we should, and we must— as Christians to hold all people to account and call them to repentance where there is wrongdoing regardless of party identification.

But coming back to Dana Loesch’s comments, I think it’s just this kind of pragmatic, “win at all costs” point-of-view that I don't think we as Christians can reconcile with our calling to be committed to principles and not just to winning at all costs. And moreover, when she presents the idea that winning is a virtue… I don’t think that that’s a Christian virtue. And I do teach ethics for a living, and I don’t actually see winning as a virtue in the ethics tradition. So I think she's actually speaking from a degree of ignorance with that position as well.

EICHER: I want to follow up on something you said a moment ago, you said, let’s assume the story’s true.

That would mean his very vigorous denials would be false and we have Republicans circling the wagons around Walker. Are they acting unethically if that’s the case?

WALKER: Again, that’s the whole problem of the current moment that we’re in: No one has access to incontrovertible proof one way or the other. But I think this is just another demonstration of how complex voting really is. Let’s imagine that it is true that Herschel Walker is lying: That is morally reprehensible. Is that morally disqualifying from him being able to be a senator? I think that’s a question that a lot of people are going to have to wrestle with. Because when it comes down to choosing a candidate, you’re only left with two options. And you’re often left with less than perfect options.

What I think we want to be very up-front and clear about is that if there is evidence of wrongdoing, we don’t ignore it and pass over it and act like it’s not a big deal. It’s important that we are saying to ourselves: Listen, we're dealing with the facts on the ground as we have them right now. It’s really messy, it’s really uncomfortable, we need to get to the bottom of the truth. And if Herschel Walker has committed errors and has paid for abortions and is lying, then I think that needs to be something that voters will have to take into consideration the next time around.

EICHER: Alright, big story from Australia and we had a WORLD Opinions piece on this by Albert Mohler. The story has to do with a business executive in Australia who took the reins of a very popular Australian Rules Football Club and found himself after just one day in the corner office, losing that job because of his affiliation with his conservative Anglican church. He was chairman of the church’s governing board, so not just an occasional attender—couldn’t really deny it. Although, discouragingly, he did try to distance himself. I won’t go into it, because my question is different. Suffice it to say, it’s an important read and I’ll have a link in today’s transcript.

But Andrew, you’ve heard John Stonestreet on this program talk about the need to develop a “theology of getting fired.” This seems absolutely on point. So as a professor of Christian ethics, Andrew, could you flesh out this point? What is a “theology of getting fired”? What does it look like, sound like, feel like?

WALKER: Sure, that's a great question. I think we need to have a “theology of getting fired”. And I think we need to have a theology of perhaps someday getting ready to go to jail— but for the right reasons. But that's perhaps another conversation for another time. I think a “theology of getting fired”, is for us to recognize that if we are going to hold true to what we believe is true to Scripture and true according to nature, there are going to be consequences to that. And it means that we should not just roll over and play dead and embrace suffering and embrace martyrdom or persecution unnecessarily; I think that you should actually pursue whatever measures you have at your disposal to fight back against these types of situations. To understand that there could come a time where your ability to exercise recourse has reached its last resort— a really difficult situation which perhaps results in you losing your job— we have to come back to promises in Scripture that Christ cares for the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, and that the Father will care for his children. I think that's kind of the top-level theological principle, and I also think it means that we're going to have to be really creative and entrepreneurial, thinking about how the body of Christ can support individuals in situations like this.

I've got a friend of mine who's a businessman, and I've suggested to him that there basically be a Christian GoFundMe type of apparatus that Christians can rally around when individuals like this are confronted with a choice between their job and their soul. And on those same lines, I think we might have to approach a time where churches have to fit a sort of Benevolent Fund in their budgets, to aid if someone is having problems meeting their electric bill or getting their groceries paid for. I think churches need to be thinking about how to serve people who find themselves in jobs that they cannot, in good conscience, continue to participate in.

Just really quickly, I had a friend contact me and say that one of his deacons was the HR director at his corporation, and now he's being confronted with all of these really difficult situations. And my friend said, “what is the future for this person in this role?” And I said honestly, and tragically, that the ability for Christians to occupy positions like being the head of an HR department is going to get increasingly difficult as the scrutiny heightens regarding matters of conscience protections and religious liberty.

BROWN: So, Andrew, I want to ask you about another story that’s been in the news, very tragic. This 22-year-old woman killed in Iranian police custody, arrested for incorrectly wearing her hijab in public. Police deny wrongdoing, but witnesses say she was beaten within the police van. You haven’t heard a whole lot from Western feminists. There’s a marked silence. What do you make of that silence? And what should our response be as Christians?

WALKER: Well frankly, it means that you actually don't have a truly principled account of feminism in our country.

I have a lot of my own skepticisms and concerns around the label of something like feminism. You would think that if feminism were being consistent, it would be looking out for the interests of all women regardless of culture, regardless of context. But this was where political correctness and the restrictions on criticizing religion butt up against feminism’s claim to protect all women equally, and it's inconsistent.

This was another one of these examples where you have to have a principled foundation upon which to build if you're going to have a coherent worldview. And we see this in the transgender issue as well.

Feminism means that there is a static, stable category of woman. The transgender issue explodes that paradigm into dust, and says that womanhood is really just a matter of psychology and identity. And so I think this is where the biblical worldview actually has something profound to offer. It's a coherent account of femininity and appreciation of womanhood, not subjected to either unsound philosophy or political correctness run amok.

BROWN: Andrew Walker is professor of Christian ethics and apologetics at Southern Seminary and managing editor of WORLD Opinions. Thanks, Andrew!

WALKER: Thank you.

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