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The following article was written by James M. Kushiner, executive editor of Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity.

Several years ago, the National Council of Churches identified “ten non-partisan, biblically based guidelines” for voters: war/conflict, urban decay/poverty, foreign policy, economic justice, racial justice, environmental justice, immigration, health care, and criminal justice. They made no mention of “gay marriage” or sanctity of life issues such as abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, or euthanasia.

A contrasting editorial in a conservative Christian magazine chose six areas of “urgent concern” to voters: religious freedom around the world, Middle East peace, expanding access to health care, fighting AIDS wisely, pro-life Supreme Court appointees, and defending marriage.

So how should one proceed? Since no candidate is better on all the items, some would suggest we are morally free to vote for candidates who are strong on several of them while bad on several others. Which items are which doesn’t matter, since they are all offered, without prioritization, as biblical values. The Christian conscience is free to choose what it likes in this moral and ethical cafeteria.

But the Christian tradition, rooted in Holy Scripture, shows clearly that two of the six are in a class of their own: They are timeless and foundational matters. The others are not. The sanctity of human life and the sanctity of marriage are primary and fundamental biblical “values.” Genesis teaches this and Christ confirms it.

The Sanctity of Human Life

In Genesis, while all other life is “brought forth” by the earth, God forms man directly. His very flesh bears the fingerprints of the Creator, and his soul is given from the breath of God. Man is a special God-made being, in his very flesh.

Can a Christian citizen, then, ignore what the election of any candidate will mean for the trafficking in human flesh: killing embryos for stem cells, cloning human beings for stem-cell research, creating embryos for the purpose of obtaining “donor” organs? Is this issue really on the same level as a candidate’s views of the Middle East?

The Sanctity of Marriage

While all life reproduces “after its kind,” man’s procreative mandate is unique. God creates woman for man and brings the two together under His hand and blesses the union, a one-flesh union that in Christian theology is more than biological; it reflects a deeper mystery of Christ and the Church.

While “traditional marriage”—one man, one woman—is not the consistent Old Testament practice, Christ makes it clear that it was God’s intention “from the beginning.” And all homosexual activity is condemned in both the Old and New Testaments. St. Paul in Romans 1 writes that homosexual practice is a sign of the deepest idolatry. Christian citizens today are being asked to take the extraordinary step of approving something that is strongly and unequivocally condemned in Scripture.

Ends and Means

On the issues of advancing religious freedom across the globe, fostering peace in the Middle East, expanding health-care coverage, and fighting AIDS, politicians differ not about the ends we are seeking, but about the best or most effective means to those ends. There is room for reasonable disagreement here. People (including Christians) of goodwill can come down differently on these issues without compromising any moral principle.

But on the life issues and marriage, the differences are about ends, not merely means. Christians of goodwill cannot reasonably differ about the obligation of law and government to protect innocent human life against abortion and embryo-destructive biomedical research, or the need to protect marriage by opposing its redefinition.

Furthermore, Christians’ freedom to express their views in both the pulpit and the public square about the morality of “gay marriages” and homosexual acts (and to teach their children accordingly) hangs in the balance as sexual innovators and activist judges promote “hate speech” laws that would penalize the expression of Christian opinion.

If we are serious about a just and humane society, we must defend marriage and human life above all, both in public and in private. All other matters are secondary. A society in which vulnerable human life is not protected and in which marriage is made irrelevant will only multiply human miseries and thus become less able to provide for the freedom, peace, and health of others.

Footnotes:

1 The piece from which this was drawn appeared originally in James M. Kushiner, “First Things First,” Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity Website (October, 2004), http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=17-08-003-e.

Neil Postman (1931 – 2003) was one of the finest secular prophets of the twentieth century. Associated with New York University for over four decades, he is best known in the Christian community for his analysis of the effects of television in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death.1 His decades-long revolt against the supremacist claims of technology remains a vital corrective in contemporary culture. In his book entitled The Disappearance of Childhood, he offers a painful lament at the destruction of childhood through the ‘total disclosure’ of information to children. He concludes the book with a poignant question and answer:

Is the individual powerless to resist what is happening?

“The answer to this, in my opinion, is “No.” But, as with all resistance, there is a price to pay. Specifically, resistance entails conceiving of parenting as an act of rebellion against American culture. For example, for parents merely to remain married is itself an act of disobedience and an insult to the spirit of a throwaway culture in which continuity has little value. It is also at least ninety percent un-American to remain in close proximity to one’s extended family so that children can experience, daily, the meaning of kinship and the value of deference and responsibility to elders. Similarly, to insist that one’s children learn the discipline of delayed gratification, or modesty in their sexuality, or self-restraint in manners, language, and style is to place oneself in opposition to almost every social trend. Even further, to ensure that one’s children work hard at becoming literate is extraordinarily time-consuming and even expensive. But most rebellious of all is the attempt to control the media’s access to one’s children. There are, in fact, two ways to do this. The first is to limit the amount of exposure children have to media. The second is to monitor carefully what they are exposed to, and to provide them with a continuously running critique of the themes and values of the media’s content. Both are very difficult to do and require a level of attention that most parents are not prepared to give to child-rearing.

Nonetheless, there are parents who are committed to doing all of these things, who are in effect defying the directives of their culture. Such parents are not only helping their children to have a childhood but are, at the same time, creating a sort of intellectual elite. Certainly in the short run the children who grow up in such homes will, as adults, be much favored by business, the professions, and the media themselves. What can we say of the long run? Only this: Those parents who resist the spirit of the age will contribute to what might be called the Monastery Effect, for they will help to keep alive a humane tradition. It is not conceivable that our culture will forget that it needs children. But it is halfway toward forgetting that children need childhood. Those who insist on remembering shall perform a noble service.2″

Footnotes:

1 Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Penguin, 1986).

2 Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood (1982; repr., New York: Vintage, 1994), 152-153.