CHRISTIAN SILENCE

We are all familiar with the old rule:  “Your actions speak so loud I can’t hear your words.”  Sometimes, however, that rule has a somewhat different twist.  Sometimes, silence becomes a form of action which drowns out the feeble words of those whose silence is so loud.

It is thus today with Christians dismayed by the effective abandonment by the Republican National Party of forty years’ explicit  commitment to the preservation of the unborn.  Some will argue that the Republican Platform retains the general essence of that commitment but that is a rationalization created to soothe the feelings of the influential pro-life portion of the party.  Indeed, one must read deeply into the platform, past the vaunted “Twenty points,” to find a reference to the preservation of life.

President Trump has repeated his commitment to the limitation of abortion but the absence of any forceful and explicit commitment by the Republican Party Platform gives all candidates room to wiggle, to obfuscate, and to mislead voters as to their own true commitment.  One troubling part of the Platform drafting and adopting was the nearly complete exclusion of those who have, in past years, been allowed to exert substantial influence over the drafting of the pro-life plank.  The silencing of those voices should trouble any Republican who cares about the unborn.

And into this void one might have expected forceful voices from the Christian Right, from the Republicans who have, single-handedly been responsible for the massive changes in attitudes among Americans; who provided the impetus that caused President Trump to appoint his three Supreme Court justices for which appointments he takes so much credit.  But there is mostly silence.  Crickets.  It is as if they have concluded that issue is dead; that they have nothing to say; that it is a done deal.  That attitude, adopted in 1974 following the Roe ruling would have meant that the pro-life movement would never have begun; that minds would not have been changed; that Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett to say nothing of Justices Thomas, Alito, and Chief Justice Roberts would likely not have been nominated and confirmed.

Bottom line – Christians – wake up! Find your voices!  Shout and yell that the unborn are still important and that a national abortion right is wrong.  qui tacet consentire videtur [silence implies consent] remains true and the Republican National Party as well as the Democrats will, inevitably, conclude from Christian silence that they approve.  May it never be!

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