Monthly Archives: May 2022

Where do babies come from? We understand if a number of parents have difficulty answering this question when their kids ask them. That is why we have the education system. But what do you do when educators, academics, intellectuals and media have difficulty answering basic questions? Where does Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb come from? Open the doors of Gyanvapi mosque and let everyone see.

No, you cant look inside Gyanvapi mosque. There is this or that plea pending in the Supreme Court, and various other courts, to stop the videography. Then there is the supposed idea of India, something called places of worship act, this act or that act. If the Church could come back and have that argument with Galileo all over again, they would certainly appreciate our zeal to make facts illegal. You cannot ban history on the basis of ideology.

But we have been trying exactly that. In the seven decades since independence, we have served ourselves with an invented version of history that can only be seen as an insult to the intelligence of the reader. No, the Muslim emperors never destroyed any temples. Except when they did, which could only be for political reasons or economic reasons or military reasons, and never for religious reasons. Even if those emperors gave themselves titles such as destroyer of idols, or killer of infidels, and inscribed these on their swords. They had no clue about what they were doing when they described themselves in their own words. We have to interpret their thoughts for them.

Some of the most obvious lies were indeed taken back, such as the Aryan Invasion Theory. But these were replaced by new, more viciously clever ones. The term migration might sound inoffensive. But that is until you find out that they use it as a catch-all expression that includes everyone who came to India from anywhere for any reason, even Mahmud Ghazni. This is not the only place where they use weasel words. The Qutab Minar and the adjoining mosque were built by using portions of 27 Hindu and Jain temples in the area. Go to Hampi and you will find a plaque that warns you explicitly that some people see the 1565 Battle of Talikota in which the Deccan Sultans destroyed the Vijayanagara Empire as a religious conflict. But it wasnt. It was the result of political changes in the Deccan. Imagine the panic over secularism.

On the other end, in order to make up for these political changes between Hindus and Muslims, they have to invent religious wars between Hindus themselves. Again, the weasel words come in handy. Almost anything could be called a conflict between Vaishnavas and Shaivas. Go to any place of historic significance in India and you will realise that our historians have a real problem saying the word Hindu. It is always either Vaishnava or Shaiva. In the most extreme and now most fashionable version of this lie, Hinduism is a religion that was invented in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in order to oppress the backward castes. Who led this conspiracy? Apparently, it was Mahatma Gandhi. Yes, the academic left is crazy and out of control; and always has been.

How do we know that they are lying to us? For one, there is common sense. And also that sometimes the mask slips, and we catch them in the act. For instance, there is a scholar who tried to include in her official university syllabus that there was some connection between Modi, Hindutva and the rioters at the US Capitol on Jan 6, 2021. She did this based on social media rumours. This incident did not affect her standing one bit in the community of historians. She remains to this day a celebrated scholar on the reign of Aurangazeb. If they could falsify events that happened before our very eyes, imagine what they did with Mughal history, or that of ancient India.

I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves, Michelle Obama famously said at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. It caused an uproar at the time. Could it be that the White House, the US Capitol and other cherished symbols of American democracy have slave labour built into them? Then, the historians intervened and said that the answer was yes. The symbolic significance of an African American president now occupying the most prestigious address in America, a mansion once built by slaves, had to be celebrated.

That is how it is supposed to be, all around the world. History is full of bitter facts, but we do not run away from them. We do not try to suppress them by means of court orders. How would an American like to hear that George Washington was a slave owner? But he was, and in fact, Washington happened to treat his slaves with rather exceptional cruelty, even for his time. And America today is still working through that difficult history. African Americans are being allowed to express their pain and work through it. This is how it is around the world now. They are challenging the Great White Man narrative of history.

In India, we have what should be called the Great Muslim Conqueror version of history. In this narrative, the Hindus are always too passive, squabbling among themselves, and deserving of subjugation, until the great Muslim conqueror comes along, providing unity, strength, greatness and even social justice. Why are the Hindus of India being denied the privilege of re-examining this narrative? Why are we not allowed to talk about the pain caused by centuries of humiliation, the destruction of temples, the humiliation of the jizya tax, and ultimately the forced partition of India?

In India, we have what should be called the Great Muslim Conqueror version of history. In this narrative, the Hindus are always too passive, squabbling among themselves, and deserving of subjugation, until the great Muslim conqueror comes along.

The partition was in many ways like the American Civil War, only a thousand times worse. Nearly three million people perished. And unlike the American Civil War where the slave owners lost, the Indian Islamists succeeded in setting up their own apartheid state. All across America, the success of the American Civil War is celebrated. Statues of Confederate generals, who fought on the side of slave owners, are being torn down even today. In India, we cannot even remove a portrait of Jinnah from Aligarh Muslim University, for the sake of sentiments. Whose sentiments? Remember the outcry last year when the Modi government tried to declare August 14 as a day of remembrance for the horrors of partition. Let alone re-examine, we are not even allowed to remember history.

Remember the outcry last year when the Modi government tried to declare August 14 as a day of remembrance for the horrors of partition. Let alone re-examine, we are not even allowed to remember history.

I must have been in the fourth or fifth grade when I heard about Savarkar. The mention of his name was accompanied by the information that he wrote mercy petitions to the British government. This is not surprising. In our public discourse, the name Savarkar has become inextricably linked with mercy petition. It is repeated ad nauseum by the media, historians and politicians.

But it was only a few years ago that I learned about how Nehru signed a bond in 1923 to get himself out of Nabha jail in Punjab. This was after his father tapped his connections with the Viceroy who got in touch with the local king of Nabha. Nehru promised never to return to the princely state, and he was freed. He had spent just under two weeks in jail in what he said were harsh conditions. One cannot but wonder how Nehru would have fared in an infamous prison such as Andaman Cellular Jail. And how come the British never sent the great freedom fighter to Kalapani?

But most of all, one would wonder why this embarrassing episode in the life of Indias first Prime Minister is so little known. The answer is simple. Those in charge of our history were fond of Nehru (or like the Communists, were beholden to him) but despised Savarkar. History has always been political. It has always been about how the present looks at the past. And when people change their minds, the way they look at the past also changes.

History has always been political. It has always been about how the present looks at the past. And when people change their minds, the way they look at the past also changes.

Dont rewrite history, has been the rallying cry of liberals ever since India made a choice in the 2014 General Election. This suits them very well because they wrote the existing version of it. Facts always remain facts. But which facts make it to public knowledge always depends on who is writing history. For instance, they always tell you that Golwalkar praised Hitler in the 1930s. They never tell you that the Soviet Union was a military ally of Nazi Germany for the first two years of the Second World War. Did they tell you that the Catholic Church was a supporter of Mussolini? Or that the Catholic Church helped Nazis escape from Germany after the war was over? This included the most infamous Nazis such as Adolf Eichmann, one of the main organizers of the holocaust.

Or would they tell you that the New York Times, the great fountainhead of liberalism, was at the forefront of covering up the holocaust? Yes, the Berlin correspondent of the New York Times in the 1930s was a Nazi sympathiser named Guido Enderis. This uncomfortable fact does not seem to come up very much, whether in India or abroad. So while the military allies of Hitler (the Communists), his political allies (the Catholic Church) and his media allies (the New York Times) got their records wiped clean, the so-called Hindutva forces are left carrying the blame for Nazism!

One of the most interesting examples of this came up a few years ago when Indians on social media began objecting to the use of the term swastika for the hated Nazi emblem. It turns out that Hitler had never used the term himself. But when it was time to translate the original German term hakenkreuz, the historians decided that simply calling it a hooked cross in English would be too difficult for people around the world to understand. So they decided to use swastika instead. Who says Sanskrit is a dead language?

Nazism owes nothing to any part of the Western tradition, be it German or not, Catholic or Protestant, Christian, Greek or Roman, wrote Hannah Arendt, one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century and an icon of the left. So the West has wiped its own slate clean when it comes to the origins of Nazism. However, you can find Hannah Arendts famous work The Banality of Evil quoted by numerous mainstream left-wing outlets to suggest comparisons between Modis India and Hitlers Germany. And we are supposed to trust these people to give a fair account of Indian history.

In the US, the New York Times is currently leading a high prestige effort known as the 1619 Project. Why the year 1619? Because it was in 1620 that the pilgrims from the Mayflower landed at Plymouth rock and set up their colony in Massachusetts. This is the origin myth of the United States as taught to millions of American schoolchildren. An all-white group of audacious sea-farers from England, who make a voyage across the ocean to begin a new life in a land where they will have liberty, justice and freedom.

The New York Times wants to challenge this narrative. In their view, the real history of the United States should begin in 1619, when the first African slaves were brought to work in the colony of Virginia. The outcome of this research project is to prepare a blueprint for schools across the country. Thus, the new history of the United States will put racial injustice at the center of everything.

What if we Hindus asked for something similar? What if we wanted atrocities committed by Muslim empires to be placed at the core of modern Indian history? That would make us communal and fascist. But why?

You cannot miss the obvious here. The common thread between the New York Times, the Obamas and everyone else around the world who has a license to revisit history is that of liberal privilege. There are groups of young radicals all across North America (and in Britain) right now who are bringing down statues of colonists, confederate generals, or anyone they see as an imperialist. Would similar actions by Hindus be acceptable? We know that Christopher Columbus set sail in 1492. What if Indian Hindus wanted to demolish something built by an oppressor say from 1526? Would they be okay with it?

We know the answer is no. Does anyone remember the outcry when a statue of Lenin was destroyed in Agartala after the BJP won the 2018 election in Tripura? The two-tier system when it comes to dealing with history and historical figures is clear. Those with liberal privilege can do anything. For everyone else, there is the idea of India.

The Hindu-Muslim binary in India cannot just be looked at in isolation. There is a larger story of injustice here, which has been unfolding across the world for millennia. It is the suppression of indigenous, so-called pagan faiths, by Abrahamic religions such as Christianity or Islam. The Hindu religion is one among numerous faith traditions that used to be common across the ancient world, from the ancient Egyptians, to the Greeks, the Romans, even the Aztecs of Central America and the aboriginal people of Australia. The Hindus worship forces of nature, the masculine and the feminine, the seasons and trees and rivers that give life to this land. But one by one, these cultures fell, and were wiped out by the onslaught of Christianity or Islam.

This is a rebirth. Around the world, the remnants of indigenous faiths have been standing up to reclaim their place in history. In Canada, in the United States, in Australia, they are looking for the graves of children stolen by the church and held for conversion to Christianity. The skeletons are tumbling out of the closet, almost literally. From national monuments to workplaces in modern cities, they are acknowledging how the land of the ancient nations was annexed, and the people subjugated. This applies even to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, where the faces of Americas greatest presidents are carved in solid rock on the mountainside.

The conversion of people from indigenous faiths to Abrahamic religions, whether by direct or indirect means, has always been a form of imperialism. But for some reason, the Hindus of India are expected not to know and never to talk about the symbols of subjugation built upon their land. They are not even allowed to set their eyes upon them, not see what is inside, let alone document or make videos of anything.

For all the ways in which Hindus are insulted and mocked for asking questions, there is one last arrow in the quiver. Believe what the liberals tell you, or you must be from Whatsapp University. Yes, we are, so what?

In fact, the so-called Whatsapp University is like a black market for information. It exists because we know that the official channels are heavily censored by the liberal elite. You would have never told me about Nehru signing that bond to get out of Nabha jail. so I picked it up on the black market. Show me what exactly I did wrong.

Much like your heavily censored official channels, the black market sometimes gets things wrong. For instance, I have a feeling that the search for a Hindu temple inside the Taj Mahal is likely misguided. But thats okay. Remember the prestigious 1619 project by the New York Times? They got a whole lot wrong as well, such as saying that the American revolution was a war to protect slavery. They corrected it and picked themselves up. So stop dismissing everything you dont like as Whatsapp University and let the Great Muslim Conqueror theory of Indian history be challenged in the mainstream. The exaggerations and half-truths found on social media will die a natural death.

Heres to history! It will remain alive only when we are allowed to constantly re-examine everything. Keep asking questions.

Abhishek Banerjee is an author and columnist. He tweets @AbhishBanerj. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.

Read all the Latest News , Breaking News and IPL 2022 Live Updates here.

Read more from the original source:

Why Indians Should Be Allowed to Question the 'Great Muslim Conqueror' Theory of History - News18

As Ramadan, Passover and Easter coincided and violent clashes broke out in Jerusalems Temple Mount/Al-Aqsa compound, the only surprise was that they didnt spark a full-scale war.

The growing presence of Jews visiting the compound drew Palestinian protests, the police crackdown fed Palestinian fears of an Israeli "plot" to take over al Aqsa; and the Islamist Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, issued a call for attacks on Israelis and a potential religious war. Late on Independence Day, two Palestinian attackers took him at his word, killing three ultra-Orthodox Israelis in the city of Elad.

After decades of scrutinizing how the people of this region think, its easy to conclude that religious fervor towers over claims to land, power, resources, nation and narrative, in its raw capacity to escalate conflict and block peace.

>>Qatar Is Hamas' Patron. Its 'Moderate' Rebranding Is a Dangerous Delusion|For Israeli and Palestinian Extremists, Jerusalem's Holiest Site Is Just an Excuse

In the Israeli-Palestinian context, religious movements are prime actors stoking and sparking escalation: From Hamas or Islamic Jihad rockets fired into Israel, to radical Jewish settler attacks on Palestinians and relentless settlement expansion over decades.

But precisely because of their centrality to society and politics on both sides, there can be no peace without at least the partial acquiescence of religious communities. Why is religion such a force for incitement and violence? Even when religious communities are not actively violent, does their religious identity inevitably dictate hardline, militant political attitudes? Is there any way out of the religion-hardliner deadlock?

A key reason for religions toxic impact is that many believers narratives are tribal and exclusive we alone are the chosen group, and our claims alone are correct. Most importantly, the divine religious mission is often framed as a matter of life or death.

On the Israeli Jewish religious right, Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda HaCohen Kook, among the most influential figures of the religious settlement movement from 1967 to today, sanctified the notion of "giving ones life for the land," explains Ofer Zalzberg of the Herbert Kelman Institute, something Israels current prime minister Naftali Bennett has advocated himself in the past.

Some take the concept literally: After a Palestinian attacker killed yeshiva student Yehuda Dimentman near a West Bank settlement, one of his angry peers at the former settlement of Homesh told me: "The most moral response in the world [to the murder] is for Jews to settle the land of Israel. Anyone who doesnt realize that has a disease."

Palestinian religious extremist groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad support killing and attacking civilians, and themselves too, if needed. The original 1988 Hamas charter explains the groups aspirations: "Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes." Palestinian Islamic Jihad likewise sanctifies both the land of Palestine and the use of violence against Israelis; it "pioneered" the use of suicide attacks against Israelis.

Notably, for both sides, the cause is so holy, it even justifies violating each religions own principles: Jewish women settlers violate taboos on touching men in tussles with soldiers; the Quran forbids suicide.

Beyond activists and extremists, surveys find definitively that the unwavering connection between religious devotion and everyday hardline attitudes holds for the general public as well.

Among Jewish Israelis, the direct correlation between levels of religious observance and political self-definition is stark and unyielding in all polling, over decades. In a poll for Btselem in 2021, 88 percent of Orthodox (or "national religious") Jews reported that they were right-wing, compared to only 38 percent of secular Jews.

The right-left axis in Israel represents first and foremost the conflict. In a joint Israeli-Palestinian survey from 2020, 70 percent of Orthodox Jews opposed the general notion of a two state solution; two-thirds of secular Jews supported it.

Palestinians show similar trends, though the gaps are not as large and occasionally inconsistent. In that 2020 joint survey, 39 percent of religious Palestinians supported the two-state solution compared to 53 percent of the non-religious. Over 40 percent of religious Palestinians supported armed struggle against Israel, ten points more than others. Over 40 percent of religious respondents intended to vote for Hamas, but just 18 percent of "somewhat" religious respondents.

Among Palestinians, about half the population considers itself "religious" (compared to "somewhat" or "not" religious); among Jews the Orthodox and national religious are fewer, close to one-quarter. But self-defined "traditionalists" are also heavily right-wing, adding up to more than half of Jews in total whose political attitudes are highly correlated with religion.

These trends are real; and often the liberal response is to write religious people off as fundamentalist peace spoilers; the more of them, the darker the future.

The moderate voices

Yet the varieties of religious interpretation and the diverse roles religion can play in society in practice, erode the simple picture that devotion inevitably or exclusively exacerbates conflict.

Even the interaction of politics and religion does not always drive extremism. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the towering charismatic founder of Israels Mizrahi ultra-Orthodox party Shas, held that Jewish law permitted Israels withdrawal from Sinai in his early years. Yosef sought to distinguish his community from the more hawkish Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox political positions. Shas avoided opposing the Oslo Accords, prioritizing a Jewish majority within Israel rather than extended territorial sovereignty; and in the late 1990s, the partys fortunes soared. Shas later drifted far to the right; interestingly, its vote share also sank compared to its peak.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, another leading religious Jewish figure, Rabbi Yehuda Amital, helped establish the "Jewish state and democratic state" movement, later a political party (Meimad) committed to moderate views on the conflict and partnership with the peace camp.

Amital served in Peres government after Rabins assassination and Meimad partnered with Labor in the 1999 elections. Meimad disappeared as a political party, but, says Zalzberg, Amitals moderate spirit has grassroots influence, as one of the leaders of the Har Etzion yeshiva for over 30 years, with its thousands of graduates.

Similarly, Israelis are learning that the term "Muslim Brotherhood" can no longer be reflexively associated with violent Islamist extremism. Hamas is one offshoot, but historically, the Islamic Movement in Israel is another. The movements party offshoot Raam sits in Israels governing coalition; party leader Mansour Abbas broke a colossal psychological and political barrier to help form the current government, and became the new face of moderate Islamism for Israeli Jews.

Abbas is steely despite daily abuse from Netanyahus henchmen in the opposition. Against intense pressure from his base due to the recent violence at al-Aqsa, he carefully "suspended" his participation in the coalition, rather than smashing it (yet). He fiercely criticizes Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians, instead calling for "reconciliation and partnership based on the values of religion and belief in God ["Elokim"]."

Finally, before blaming religion or hoping rare moderate religious voices win the day, religion must also be understood as one factor within larger political forces.

"Its not the [religious] text, its the context," Mustafa Abu Sway said in a phone interview, downplaying the impact of sacred texts in favor of political circumstances driving escalation. Abu Sway is scholar of Islam at al Quds University and at the al Aqsa Mosque. For the last decade, he has given sermons at al-Aqsa almost daily and more during Ramadan, adding sermons in English for foreign Muslim visitors.

"What defines the [Muslim Palestinian] reaction is not what we [religious leaders] say," he told me, after visiting those injured in the Al-Aqsa clashes, but what "people see for themselvesa level of brutality that was unprecedented." Religion may exacerbate hardline attitudes, but a robust and effective peace process has been shown clearly to reduce those attitudes in survey research, he noted correctly.

Still, the moderate manifestations hint at openings for prising religion away from militant attitudes. And some are trying.

Cracks in the wall?

Alick Isaacs is a scholar of Jewish and western religious thought; Rabbi Amital was a major influence on him. Together with Professor Avinoam Rosenak and Sharon Leshem Zinger, they co-founded Siah Shalom Talking Peace. He told me the groups motivation was straightforward: "If we dont manage to listen to and engage with constituencies that have opposed the peace proposals in the past, its not possible to achieve peace in the future."

The group facilitates dynamic workshops with religious and secular Israelis and Palestinians, including those whodeeply opposed the peace efforts in the past, meeting both within each society, and between Israelis and Palestinians. The aim is to avoid selling liberal notions of peace to religious people, but to accept their religious perspectives as a starting point, to develop conceptions of peace that can be more commensurate with their religious worldview.

For religious Muslim participants, for example, Isaacs explained, the aim is "not how to find Islamic justifications for a liberal peace model, but what is an Islamic vision of peace between Israelis and Palestinians. It turns the question on its head."

To outside observers, such an open-ended people-to-people approach can seem painfully incremental at a time when big-scale political progress and results are so urgently needed. But mapping the obstacles also sheds light on long-term dilemmas that eventually must be confronted.

The clash between liberal peace and religious conservatism is a profound example of such dilemmas. Siah Shalom found that liberal values are integral to both the logic and solutions for a two-state solution and peace a linkage that deters many religious people committed to conservative lives and societies.

Of Haredi participants, Isaacs observes: One of the purposes of their leadership is to resist or slow down changes.

By contrast, when asked how Islam can support peace, Abu Sway answered that the right political agreement is the starting point, rather than religious interpretations: "If [an agreement] supports human rights, historical rights, if its very clear, we see the implementation, I think that should be enough."

Abu Sway considered how religious interpretations of the hudna a long term truce can support peace for an unlimited period of time; the concept has come to stand for an Islamic theological tradition with the intention of ending violence. Abu Sway also supports inter-group encounters, but is wary of regarding them as a panacea. "I love inter-faith dialogue," he says, adding, "but I am aware of its limitations."

Zalzberg concurs that the language and debates about peace grounded in liberal universalist principles, international law, rights and equality may critically conflict with conservative religious reasoning. Shas Rabbi Yosef, says Zalzberg, justified moderate views regarding peace based on the sanctity of Jewish lives, not on universal liberal values. Religious Jews may "worry that one issue [advancing conflict resolution] brings with it a whole package of [liberal] values and they wont be able to pick just one."

There is no simple answer for the clash between liberal universalist notions of rights, and religious prioritization of theological values. But ignoring these constituents is no answer, nor is it realistic to expect them to adopt a liberal worldview wholesale.

After all, neither Palestinian nor Israeli religious hardliners have a monopoly on rigid or sanctified thinking. Israel has its own ritualized and mythologized secular civil religion: At 14:02 this Independence Day, Israels air force flew over Hebron and the hardcore settlement of Kiryat Arba for the first time, in a ritual as nationalist, expansionist and coercive as the religious beliefs secular people regularly blame.

Indeed, there is a strong argument that the direction of causality should be reversed: that the regions most militant religious forces took the political center stage mainly following the 1967 war. In this framing, the occupation and conflict drives religious extremism, rather than the other way around.

Whatever its genesis, religious thinking exacerbates the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but secular liberals advancing peace cant afford to dismiss the openings that exist to include the communities committed to it. Political compromise cannot satisfy the extremists, but the effort to get there must include willing portion of the religious opposition, or at least convince them to refrain from spoiling the effort.

Dahlia Scheindlin is a political scientist and public opinion expert, and a policy fellow at The Century Foundation.Twitter:@dahliasc

Go here to see the original:

Can God solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? - Haaretz

By Richard D. Land, Christian Post Executive Editor | Tuesday, May 17, 2022Unsplash/ Natalie Chaney

Life is full of surprises, some pleasant, some not. I was reminded of this recently as I witnessed a pro-life controversy and debate revolving around an attack on the pro-life movements incrementalist approach in fighting to protect our unborn citizens by Southern Baptist self-described absolutists who assert that one must demand a ban on virtually all abortions with no exceptions, or one is compromising with evil.

To understand my shock at this development, you need to understand that the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is my spiritual home. I was enrolled in the cradle roll as an infant in a local Southern Baptist church. I was led to the Lord Jesus as my Savior and Lord at age 6 through a backyard Child Evangelism Good News Club sponsored by that church. I was nurtured and discipled in the faith, called to preach, and trained for ministry in a Southern Baptist context.

For those within the Southern Baptist family, you will know what I am saying when I tell you that I was a sunbeam, a Royal Ambassador (the Baptist alternative to the Boy Scouts), had several years of perfect attendance pins in Sunday School and spent many summers attending mosquito-infested youth camps Southern Baptists maintained along the Texas Gulf Coast. For good measure, I met and married my wife of 51 years (a Southern Baptist ministers daughter) while we were seminary students.

I am profoundly grateful for that rich spiritual and cultural heritage that honored the Bible as truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter and a deep commitment to the fulfillment of the Great Commission to evangelize at home and across the world.

The SBC has been unapologetically and vigorously pro-life ever since the Conservative Resurgence began in 1979. I was privileged to contribute to that pro-life effort, having been active in the pro-life cause since before the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, advocating for the pro-life cause while a seminary student (1969-1972) in states such as Massachusetts and California (under Reagan before he became pro-life), which in the late 1960s passed very liberal abortion laws.

Imagine my shock that a scathing critique of the pro-life movements incrementalist strategy as a sinful compromise of biblical principles would arise within Southern Baptist life originated by the SBCs passage of a very problematic resolution On Abolishing Abortion at its 2021 annual meeting in Nashville.

This resolution is not, I believe, indicative of where the vast majority of Southern Baptists are on the issue. Here are the reasons why I believe this to be so. First, the same convention meeting that passed this resolution also overwhelmingly passed a resolution commending the Hyde Amendment, a classic case of incrementalism in that Hyde forbids the use of federal tax funding or state matching Medicaid funds for almost all abortions. Unless the Southern Baptists attending the Convention were schizophrenic, one of the two resolutions is an anomaly.

Second, the On Abolishing Abortion resolution also contradicts numerous pro-life resolutions, all incrementalist, passed by the Convention over the last 40 years, some of which I helped write.

Third, as one who has studied the issues of the sanctity of human life within the SBC (as head of the Conventions public policy agency, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission from 1988 to 2013), it was my business to be as fully aware as possible of the pulse beat of Southern Baptists on the abortion issue.

During those years, with remarkable regularity, approximately 85% to 90% of Southern Baptists when surveyed were broadly speaking pro-life. About 10% wanted no exception for any reason and just under 10% were against virtually any legal restrictions on abortion. About 40% of Southern Baptists wanted exceptions to save the mothers physical life and just under 40% also wanted exceptions for rape, incest, and at least fatal deformity in the fetus.

The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) has a two-fold assignment from the SBC in the public policy arena. As the so-called conscience of the Convention, the ERLC has the freedom in that role to call Southern Baptists to be where we believe they should be on moral issues such as abortion based on our understanding of biblical revelation and the Baptist Faith & Message (the Conventions confession).

During my tenure, the position we called Southern Baptists and other people of faith to embrace was that God is involved whenever conception takes place and that every abortion stops a beating human heart. We argued that the only morally valid reason for taking an unborn babys life was to save the mothers physical life.

The ERLCs second assignment was to make the three branches of the U.S. government, the United Nations, and the public at large aware of where Southern Baptists actually were (as opposed to where we might have desired them to be) when a consensus position on various issues developed among Southern Baptists.

Accordingly, when the ERLC submitted amicus or friend of the court briefs on abortion cases, we informed the Supreme Court that while the great majority of Southern Baptists were opposed to abortion on demand, there was significant disagreement when it came to some of the troublesome exceptions.

Consequently, I signed on to the statement by seven leading Southern Baptist ethicists, Why We Opposed an Anti-Abortion Resolution at the Southern Baptist Convention.

In the interest of clarity and to avoid misunderstanding, allow me to state my personal position on abortion, a position which has not changed from 1969 onward. I believe that life begins at conception (Ps. 139:13-16; Jer. 1:5) and that abortion is always the taking of a human life. I believe the only morally valid reason for aborting a pre-born human being is when the pre-born baby is a direct threat to his or her mothers continued physical existence.

I believe God is involved whenever conception takes place. We may have been a surprise to our parents, but we were not a surprise to God. Each of us was once a child, an infant, and a fetus. None of us was ever a sperm or an egg.

However, since I am not a pacifist, I believe it is morally permissible to protect a human life that is imperiled by taking a human life if that is the only lifesaving option available.

So how do other pro-life Southern Baptist leaders and I answer the charge of the abolitionists that we are compromising with evil by accepting an incremental approach to protecting the unborn and their mothers from abortion?

First, when Roe was issued by the Supreme Court in 1973, the pro-life movement was presented with an imperial judicial fait accompli, striking down virtually all the restrictions on most of the laws in the various states that limited abortion. As Benjamin Wittes, senior fellow at the very liberal Brookings Institution correctly concluded, Roe is a lousy opinion that disenfranchised millions of conservatives on an issue about which they care deeply.

As a consequence, virtually the entire Protestant-Catholic pro-life coalition embraced the incrementalist approach in order to save as many unborn babies as possible.

They did this after the pro-life movement advanced several human life amendments to the Constitution and proposed sweeping legislation that would have dealt a death blow to abortion on demand. The pro-abortion movement defeated those initiatives. In response, the pro-life movement began to try to save as many babies as they could while they attempted to change hearts and minds.

For example, they passed the Hyde Amendment, which forbade tax funding for almost all abortions. The Charlotte Lozier Institute has estimated that Hyde saves approximately 60,000 lives a year (2,409,311 babies) since 1976.

Should the pro-life movement, incrementalists by political necessity rather than preference, have let these babies die because we could not save all the babies by abolishing abortion? Should we have sacrificed these babies on the altar of the abolitionists ethical purity and their more pro-life than thou argumentation?

What if I came upon a wrecked school bus that had plunged into a river with 60 children onboard? Since I cant save all of them, should I then do nothing? I think not. I believe God would have me plunge in and save as many as I could, going back again and again as long as there were children to be saved, rather than dithering on the bank, deciding to save none of them because I cant save all of them.

During my tenure as president of the ERLC, I received a phone call from a Southern Baptist pastor (when you are the head of the SBCs ethics commission you sometimes receive these kinds of calls). The pastor was in the Intensive Care Unit of the Emergency Room with the Chairman of his deacons. The deacons wife had been involved in a catastrophic automobile accident and was hovering between life and death in extremely critical condition. She was also pregnant.

The doctors on duty in the hospital were in unanimous agreement that if they were not allowed to take the baby (at 12 weeks gestation, too young to survive outside the womb), then both mother and baby would die because of the strain on the critically injured mothers heart.

The pastor informed me the deacon was asking him, Pastor, I need my wife and my other three children need their mother. Can I give the doctors the go ahead to take the baby? The pastor then asked me, Dr. Land, what do I tell him?

I answered, I do not believe you should tell him he cant. He must seek the Lords guidance and make the decision himself.

Then the pastor asked, What would you do if it were you?

I replied, I would authorize the procedure to take the baby to save the mother of my other children, but I would not judge him if he made a different choice.

Would the abolitionists really argue that the government should tell him he could not make the decision to save his wifes life? I fear they might, and they would be wrong.

Another argument advanced by the abolitionists is to be open to criminally charging pregnant mothers in cases where their child is aborted.

From the beginning of my involvement in the pro-life movement in 1969, we have overwhelmingly perceived mothers as victims, not perpetrators, of abortion. That certainly has been and continues to be my understanding, belief, conviction, and experience.

Over and over again I have heard pro-life advocates passionately argue that in any abortion there are at least two victims the aborted baby and his or her mother.

It is this disagreement over holding the mother legally accountable that has led to the latest controversy on this issue in Southern Baptist life.

Now, there are prominent Southern Baptist leaders who are calling for the defunding of the ERLC because the ERLCs acting president, Brent Leatherwood, signed An Open Letter to State Lawmakers from Americas Leading Pro-life Organizations. This Open Letter, signed by virtually every major pro-life organization in America, states, Women are victims of abortion and require our compassion and support as well as ready access to counseling and social services in the days, weeks, months, and years following an abortion.

The letter then concludes with this statement: As national and state pro-life organizations, representing tens of millions of pro-life men, women, and children across the country, let us be clear: We state unequivocally that we do not support any measure seeking to criminalize or punish women and we stand firmly opposed to include such penalties in legislation.

For the record, if I were still the head of the ERLC, I would have signed this statement. I would have been ashamed of myself if I had not signed it.

This is the document that some SBC leaders are using as the reason to defund the ERLC.

And this is precisely the moment when the SBC and the pro-life movement have never needed the ERLC more as the battle for hearts and minds for the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural death and everywhere in between is going to go to the elected legislatures of all 50 states. The ERLC will be an invaluable resource to Southern Baptists in every state as they seek to defend the unborn and their mothers in all fifty states.

Instead of calling for the ERLCs defunding, we should be calling Southern Baptists everywhere to lift up the ERLC presidential search committee and trustees in prayer that God will lead them to the person God has been preparing since before being knitted and embroidered together in the womb (Jer. 1:5, Ps. 139:13-16) to be the next president of the ERLC, whomever he or she may be.

Dr. Richard Land, BA (Princeton, magna cum laude); D.Phil. (Oxford); Th.M (New Orleans Seminary). Dr. Land served as President of Southern Evangelical Seminary from July 2013 until July 2021. Upon his retirement, he was honored as President Emeritus and he continues to serve as an Adjunct Professor of Theology & Ethics. Dr. Land previously served as President of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (1988-2013) where he was also honored as President Emeritus upon his retirement. Dr. Land has also served as an Executive Editor and columnist for The Christian Post since 2011.

Dr. Land explores many timely and critical topics in his daily radio feature, Bringing Every Thought Captive, and in his weekly column for CP.

Link:

Whats the best way to be pro-life?: A Southern Baptist debate - The Christian Post