The Progressive Death Cult
The overturning of Wade vs Roe, the 1973 legal ruling that made abortion a Constitutional right in the USA, by the Supreme Court of the USA, has made massive waves on both side of the Atlantic. We will be feeling its ripple effects for years to come. The judgement has not made abortion illegal, as some think, but returned the question of what the law should be to the hands of the individual states. In some states the right to abortions will be severely restricted, in others they may well be further broadened, that will be for the elected members of those States to decide for their own judiciary. The question of abortion has been the hot topic of the culture wars that have waged in the US for decades, more than feminism or gay rights, it has been a touchstone, a shibboleth, of the conservative Christian / progressive liberal divide. One might think that the return of legal powers to the people in democratic legislatures would be a way of drawing poison from the wound, far from it, the situation seems even more inflamed. Recent days have seen mass demonstrations, pro-life centres and churches attacked, Bibles ripped up or used as toilet paper and the worst threats and abuse hurled at the judges who made the decision. Things have moved a long way since Bill Clinton said abortion should be ‘safe, legal and rare’ or Joe Biden describing it as ‘always a tragedy.’ For the young radical progressive, abortion up to (and beyond?) birth has become a hill to die on.
‘All gods require sacrifice but few require the
ripping of a child from its mother’s womb.’
That the focus of the anger of the radical Left has been the Christian faith is to be expected. It is from the Christian faith that the right to life of the unborn child has been drawn. That unborn child, it is argued, is as much made in the image of God as its mother, its father or – as previous generations framed it – the black African slave. And because it is made in the image of God the foetus is endowed with rights and dignities that should be respected. The attack on the Christian understanding of life is doubly so because large parts of the church still maintain that homosexual relationships are inherently wrong, that marriage is a life-long covenant of union between one man and one woman and that the sex which one has from conception is immutable. These three Christian teachings, stand in opposition to progressive liberal beliefs that sexuality, sexual practice and ‘gender’ are equal to traditional Christian practice and entirely down to the freewill choice of the autonomous individual (or contradictorily, are biological imperatives, or both.)
Much has been written about the philosophical roots of the progressive liberal movement that has captured so much of today’s thinking in the West. Of its roots in Marxism and socialism, ironically it’s even deeper roots in the rights of the individual that flow from Christian thinking. There is a simple way however to judge between the Christian way and the progressive liberal way, what is their fruit?
All of the Christian teaching regarding sexuality, sex, marriage, abortion and a host of other rights related issues can be derived from just 72 words from the Biblical book of Genesis:
Genesis 1: 26 - 28
‘Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness…
27 So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number;…’
Genesis 2: 24
24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.’
In these few words the christian learns that mankind is not accidental but created, is created in the likeness of their creator (with all the attributes of freedom, reason, imagination, emotion and many other things that entails), is created male and female, is created equal (both between male and female and across all humanity), is blessed with increase (i.e. children), that the male and female are intended for union with each other and that union is achieved within an exclusive relationship. All of these things speak of life and fruitfulness, we are intended for physical and psychological fulness and fruitfulness.
Contrast that to the beliefs of the progressive liberal. Typically that person will be an atheist, not believing that the world in general and humanity in particular is created but that it and we are the by-product of the laws of physics and natural selection – there is therefore no higher power and no immutable worth to the individual. Secondly, and flowing logically from it, the typical progressive liberal will place ‘self’ a the centre of their world view. This is not to say that they will be irredeemably selfish themselves but that the self is the only alternative point of reference when considering ethical and moral questions – what is best, what is right, is what best serves the individual. This is the philosophy of humanism. With self at the centre, self-fulfilment becomes the ultimate quest and goal. ‘Self-identity’, the belief that only the self can properly define itself is the logical conclusion of this position, notwithstanding that self defining self can be nothing more than a circular activity. Naturally this extends to matters of sex, sexuality and ‘gender’. If the self feels an itch it must be scratched, if it feels desire for someone it must be fulfilled, if it feels its ‘gender’ is mis-placed it must mutilate itself to conform to that feeling; LGBTQIA2S+ … for every self an identity. All of these desires and practices have one thing in common, where they veer from the male / female union they are sterile and lifeless.
With this belief in the centrality of self goes all semblance of union or equality, without an outside or higher point of reference the self of one comes into conflict with all other equally valid selves. The most powerful self is the successful self. Most importantly for the issue of abortion, the self of the mother is the powerful self and therefore her best is deemed the right. The less powerful self of the unborn child (or in modern parlance, the undeveloped personhood) has lesser right, a lesser right that in this case means no right, not even to life. The challenge of the christian conservative to LGBTQ+ people and the practice of abortion is thus a challenge to the centrality of self and the ethical and moral worldview of the progressive liberal. That is why you will see people in great crowds screaming for the right to kill unborn children or to have sex however and whenever with whatever, it goes to the very core of their being and everything they hold dear about their selves. Progressive liberalism promotes the autonomous self and absolute freedom but it is literally a death cult, promoting sterility of sexual practice and the death of the fruit of sex in the name of self-fulfilment. That is also why the Christian is taught to deny himself and lay down his life, his self; self-regard, self-worship is not the answer, self-sacrifice is – that is the path of fruitfulness and life.
Life and death are set before you this day, choose life.
