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Republican Party Backs Away from Pro-Life Stance in New Platform

CMS Admin — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 13:42:00 +0000

The new Republican National Convention platform endorsed by Donald Trump is missing the strong pro-life stance evangelicals have come to expect from the GOP.

Instead of calling for a concerted national push to curtail abortion, as the official party platform has done for the past 40 years, the new document removes that language and deems the matter best left to individual states to decide.

Even evangelical leaders who had been split over Trump have joined together in a chorus of criticism and disappointment.

“A moment when the abortion industry has been knocked on its heels is no time to shrink from a full-throated commitment to protecting preborn lives,” Brent Leatherwood, president of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC)’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, told Politico.

He wrote for Religion News Service that Republicans’ actions suggest they see abortion as “too politically fraught and prefer to run from a defense of the sanctity of life altogether.”

Clint Pressley, a North Carolina megachurch pastor who has recently been elected SBC president, wrote on social media that he is “disheartened” by national Republicans.

“The GOP platform may be subject to change, but God’s word is not,” he said. “Southern Baptists ‘contend for the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural death’ and will insist that elected officials do the same.”

The change in the proposed Republican platform reflects a shift toward Trump’s stance on the issue. He’s carved out a middle-of-the-road approach while on the campaign trail, saying the issue should be left to the discretion of the states. During the recent presidential debate, he also voiced support for the Supreme Court’s decision upholding access to the abortion drug mifepristone.

The life issue has been viewed by some on the right as an electoral liability since the high court overturned Roe v. Wade, which conferred a constitutional right to an abortion, in its 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. Congressional Republicans have also distanced themselves from support for a national abortion ban, according to NOTUS reporter Haley Byrd Wilt.

The new platform document takes a softened approach on many social issues and is less detailed overall on exact policies than previous versions. The platform reflects key campaign issues for Trump, such as addressing inflation, calling for tariffs on trade, and a tough stance on immigration that, while light on specifics, calls for mass deportations.

In 2020, Republicans chose not to write a new party platform, merely carrying over the 2016 platform. For the past two campaign cycles, the platform devoted over 700 words to abortion and the life issue. It endorsed the “sanctity of human life,” weighed in on policy specifics such as congressional legislation and court decisions, and pledged that the GOP would seek a federal abortion ban that limited the procedure after 20 weeks gestation.

In contrast, the considerably pared-down platform for 2024 gives the issue 110 words. The new platform argues that the 14th Amendment, which says that states may not deprive any person the right to life, liberty, or property without due process, means “the states are, therefore, free to pass laws protecting those rights.”

The document goes on to voice opposition to “late term abortion”—the only time the word abortion is used—and says the Republican Party will support policies that support mothers and prenatal care, as well as access to birth control and in vitro fertilization (IVF).

“This is pro-choice language, in keeping with Trump’s pro-choice position. The sleight of hand is that it seems to claim the 14th Amendment applies to the unborn. But if the GOP believes that’s true, then the federal government, not just the states, has a duty to protect life,” wrote Joe Carter, in a piece for The Gospel Coalition. “The platform does no such thing. It gives broad support for IVF (even when it causes the death of a child) and only lists opposition to late-term abortion.”

On Monday, the platform committee approved the new document behind closed doors in an 84–18 vote. The New York Times also reported that Trump was laser focused on watering down the language on abortion.

Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, who was a member of the platform committee, called the process “choreographed” in a statement and said it allowed for “no amendments to be discussed and voted upon.”

He said that delegates had to vote on the platform the same day they received it, without sufficient review time, and were only afforded a few minutes for discussion before the vote was taken.

Perkins is among a group on the platform committee that submitted a minority report arguing for stronger language on the abortion issue. The report calls for the addition of a “human life amendment,” arguing for language that better reflects the long-standing GOP position on abortion.

Family Research Council is also part of a recently launched initiative called the Platform Integrity Project, which seeks to preserve a strong stance on the “pro-life, pro-family, and pro-freedom” elements of the GOP platform.

It’s unclear whether delegates like Perkins will have a chance to address the issue at next week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where the platform will be adopted.

In past years, Republican activists have been able to shape the party’s platform in ways that at times deviated from the presumptive nominee’s own statements. But that process has changed during the Trump years. The Wall Street Journal reported that, this year, Trump edited the document prior to its presentation to the platform committee.

Some pro-life activists refrained from criticizing the new platform. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement that “it is important that the GOP reaffirmed its commitment to protect unborn life today through the 14th Amendment. … The Republican Party remains strongly pro-life at the national level.”

The platform also dropped language condemning the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision that legalized same-sex marriage and omitted references to “traditional marriage.”

It instead addresses transgender issues at several points: “We will keep men out of women’s sports, ban taxpayer funding for sex change surgeries, and stop taxpayer-funded schools from promoting gender transition, reverse Biden’s radical rewrite of Title IX education regulations, and restore protections for women and girls,” the document reads.

“Any effort to weaken the Republican Party’s commitment to life and marriage would be a mistake,” Missouri GOP Sen. Josh Hawley said.

“On abortion, many states are becoming a black hole for the most vulnerable. Donald Trump won the 2016 election on the GOP’s most pro-life platform in US history. It’s both bad politics and wrong morally to weaken the party’s commitment to the most vulnerable,” Aaron Baer, president of the Ohio-based Center for Christian Virtue, told CT.

“For all those consoling themselves that the GOP is still better than the alternative on abortion, keep in mind that being a little less pro-choice than the Democrats is not a pro-life position,” Southern Baptist Theological Seminary professor Denny Burk commented.

In an article for World, Burk wrote that “pro-lifers understood the deal they were making in 2016 when they turned out to vote for the Republican candidate,” referencing Trump’s pledge to appoint justices that would overturn Roe v. Wade.

“But now it looks as if Trump is altering the deal for his possible second term—a deal that has eviscerated the pro-life plank of the Republican Party platform,” Burk wrote.

The economy tends to be the top priority for American voters, though many pastors list a candidate's position on abortion and religious freedom as top factors in their vote.

Some social conservatives see the change as frustrating to the point where they’re considering withdrawing their support for Trump altogether.

“Dear GOP, I’ve said for years that I won’t vote for any politician, or support any party, that doesn’t stand fully against abortion from conception until birth. That’s not going to change in 2024,” Greg Gilbert, pastor of Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, said on the social platform X. “How many voters like me are you comfortable losing?”

The post Republican Party Backs Away from Pro-Life Stance in New Platform appeared first on Christianity Today.

Play Those Chocolate Sprinkles, Rend Collective!

Kate Lucky — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 11:00:00 +0000

Rend Collective is known for its joy.

The Northern Irish folk band has spent much of the past decade on tour—singing worship songs with charming accents, playing eclectic instruments, and sharing its relentless commitment to celebration. By the end of each concert, Rend Collective’s crowds are encouraged. And covered in confetti.

But joy within the group had started to wane, especially since the coronavirus pandemic. A year ago, the band was facing a decision about its future.

Last autumn “could have been a moment where Rend Collective could have decided to dissolve,” the band’s lead singer and founding member, Chris Llewellyn, told Christianity Today during an interview in downtown Nashville.

At the time, Llewellyn was emerging from a painful season of doubt. He’d been asking deep theological questions while contending with grief after his son’s autism diagnosis. He’d also finally acknowledged his long-running depression instead of trying to “wrestle it to the ground.”

Llewellyn explored his questions about faith in a September 2023 solo album titled Honest. It was his first public foray into songwriting outside of Rend Collective, and far more personal than most of his prior work.

After Honest, Llewellyn considered what kind of music he wanted to make going forward. Adding to the uncertainty, Gareth Gilkeson, Llewellyn’s primary cowriter and a founding member of Rend Collective, would soon be stepping away from the band.

Llewellyn wondered, “Is this the natural end of things?”

Now 39, Llewellyn has spent most of his adult life in Rend Collective. He began attending Rend back when it was a Bible study for young adults in his Northern Irish hometown of Bangor. The group was named after a call for sincere repentance in the Old Testament Book of Joel: ‘Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God’ (2:13). After the band sprang up from that study, he helped lead it to international success with songs like “Build Your Kingdom Here,” “My Lighthouse,” and “Counting Every Blessing.”

Thinking about Rend Collective’s future while driving late last year, he found himself unintentionally writing yet another worship song. That moment reminded him of his purpose.

“No. This is what you do,” Llewellyn remembered deciding. “The only two options are you’re either going to do this for no audience, or you’re going to do this as your job still. It’s not that you’re ever going to stop doing this.”

That drive resulted in one of Rend Collective’s new songs, “What I Was Made For”—the first new music the band has released in more than two years. Its lyrics recognize the purpose of every human being, to worship and glorify God.

“What I Was Made For” appears on the group’s new album, simply titled FOLK! The project has been both a hopeful rebirth for the band and a return to its roots, with all of the earnestness, joy, and stringed instruments that drew in early fans.

It also drips with matured Christian faith. The joy and hope of FOLK! aren’t shallow or unconsidered. They’re the kind that come in the morning, after a night of weeping (or many nights of weeping).

Llewellyn’s pain is apparent across the album. Yet his words of worship and simple professions of faith are all the sweeter—and all the more genuine and encouraging—for acknowledging it.

He told CT that voicing his doubts in last year’s solo album allowed him to write these new songs. It was almost “like running the faucet and getting all of the dirty water out,” he said.

“I did my worst doubting there—a prayer life with vocabulary that is unprintable—but that’s where the confidence comes,” he said. “Just sitting on the other side of it and being like, well, that’s by no means resolved—all of the questions still hang there—but I just think God is good.”

The fact that God is still there after all of that, he told CT, has given him confidence in God’s character. “It’s relaxed into a place of knowing that God’s got this, that he likes me, and this relationship is going to survive, whatever comes,” he said.

The album’s first song, “Abide in Me,” is a tender, intimate portrait of that relationship. Written from Christ’s perspective, it calls his followers to “build a home here inside my love” and to rest in his sovereignty and grace.

Another song on the album, “Better Than I Ever Thought,” evokes imagery from the parable of the prodigal son.

“I love the particular turn of phrase that the father sees the son from a long way off,” Llewellyn said. For him, that detail speaks to God’s watchfulness. One lyric in the song prompted some pushback: “Never guessed you were desperate for me to come home.”

Rend Collective’s record label flagged that line to Llewellyn, arguing that God isn’t desperate.

“I was like, ‘I think he is,’” Llewellyn recalled.

The writing process for “Better Than I Ever Thought,” as well as others on the record, was a drastic shift for Rend Collective.

“Prior to this, we’ve never had a song that wasn’t cowritten to some degree,” Llewellyn told CT. But now, “we’ve worked out that sometimes when somebody writes something, letting their story be their story is actually the most powerful thing you can do.”

Llewellyn and his bandmates see FOLK! as a success already, simply for that commitment to authenticity.

Cowriter Stephen Mitchell, 31, said FOLK! came about because Rend Collective “stopped striving.”

“Let’s just do what we want to do with the music, and if it works commercially, successfully, then awesome,” said Mitchell, who has been in the group since 2013. “If it doesn’t, then we’re at least being authentic to what we want to do.”

“Holy Trouble,” another song on the album, is one of his favorites. It is an anthem about Christ’s radical compassion, heart for the oppressed, and embodiment of perfect justice—and a prayer for the Holy Spirit to accomplish the same through the modern church.

Llewellyn and Mitchell are proud that their new music doesn’t rely on samples—snippets or components of a song that an artist records separately and then splices together later. Most of FOLK! was recorded around one microphone, with the instruments played at the same time.

“If there is a weird sound of a little crinkly percussion thing, it’s because somebody crinkled something in the room,” Llewellyn said. “We made the decision that we were going to do it the hard way: ‘Set up that mic. Bring that saltshaker over here. Okay, you do the saltshaker. I’ll slap the wall.’ It’s all like that.”

“Silver Or Gold”—jokingly known to Llewellyn and Mitchell as “Irish Pirates” because of the song’s forceful vocals—“is very much people hitting guitars, people hitting the wall,” Llewellyn said.

The band’s members also used small boxes of chocolate sprinkles “quite a bit” as percussion after discovering them while on tour in Europe.

The album’s final song, “Reap That Joy,” is especially “chocolate forward,” according to Llewellyn.

That song draws from his and his wife’s grief over their son’s autism diagnosis, as well as the hope they’ve found in the years since. It weaves gardening metaphors throughout, a love letter to his wife’s recent obsession with plants.

“Resurrection is one of the things that would be impossible for me not to believe in, because it’s happening on a microscale,” he said of the song. “It’s just woven into the pattern of how things work.”

Rend Collective’s own resurrection won’t stop with this album. A single, “Fight of My Life,” is set to be released in January, and the band is planning a special release for St. Patrick’s Day, as well as a follow-up album to complete FOLK!

“I don’t think Rend will ever have a period where it lies fallow for two years again,” Llewellyn said.

Mitchell feels the same way. “I just refuse to believe that the best days are behind me or the best days for the band are behind us,” he said. “We’re just getting started again.”

There’s an Irish drinking toast, he added at the end of the interview: “May the best day of your past be the worst day of your future.”

Llewellyn, inspired, couldn’t help himself. He was already making new plans. “I’d write that song right now,” he told Mitchell as they stood to leave.

Haley Byrd Wilt is a reporter at NOTUS, a nonprofit publication from The Allbritton Journalism Institute.

The post Play Those Chocolate Sprinkles, Rend Collective! appeared first on Christianity Today.

Mike Johnson Defies GOP to Heed Evangelical Pleas for Ukraine Aid

CMS Admin — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 08:44:00 +0000

When deciding whether to protect his place in leadership as House speaker or go against his party to do what he believed was right, Mike Johnson turned to prayer.

After weeks of hearing intelligence briefings and pleas from fellow Christians, Johnson ultimately sided with his convictions rather than conceding to the Republican Party’s isolationist wing. He backed a $95 billion foreign aid package that, despite the opposition of 112 GOP legislators, overwhelmingly passed the House of Representatives last weekend.

Like many of his fellow Republicans, Johnson had initially opposed further aid to Ukraine, voting against it prior to becoming speaker and waiting months to move forward with an aid package after the Senate approved its version in February.

He “went through a transformation,” according to one GOP colleague, House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Michael McCaul. The shift may have come in part due to the influence of Ukrainian evangelicals, fellow Christian leaders, and his personal faith.

“He got down on his knees, and he prayed for guidance and said, ‘Look, tell me. What is the right thing to do here?’” the Texas congressman told NOTUS’s Haley Byrd Wilt. The next day, Johnson said to McCaul, “I want to be on the right side of history.”

The House vote on the Ukraine provisions, around $61 billion, was 311 to 112; a majority of Johnson’s colleagues voted against the measure, while aid to Israel and Taiwan had broader support. The Senate cleared the package Tuesday in a bipartisan 79–18 vote. Now the measure heads to President Joe Biden’s desk.

Ukrainian leadership had grown more vocal about depleted weapons two years into the war with Russia, and Christian leaders had asked Johnson to move forward with authorizing further aid.

In addition to hearing intelligence briefings from national security advisors, the Louisiana congressman met with Ukrainian Christians, who detailed the horrors in the war-torn country. Pavlo Unguryan told the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) that in speaking last week with Johnson, he painted the war as a spiritual struggle.

Another Christian, Serhii Haidarzhy, spoke to Johnson through an interpreter and shared how his wife and his four-month-old son Timofee had been killed due to a Russian drone strike.

Johnson reportedly embraced Haidarzhy and prayed for him, according to CBN.

During a press call earlier in the month, a group of evangelicals—including Patriot Voices chairman Rick Santorum, Faith and Freedom Coalition’s founder Ralph Reed, and Sandy Hagee Parker, chairwoman of Christians United for Israel—urged the speaker to offer support for Ukraine and Israel.

A group of influential Baptist leaders also wrote to Johnson to highlight the plight of Ukrainian Christians, saying, “We believe that God has put you in this position ‘for such a time as this.’”

The letter highlighted how, during the war, the Russian army has destroyed Baptist churches and threatened, tortured, and removed pastors from their positions. Signatories included Richard Land, the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC).

Current ERLC president Brent Leatherwood also wrote to the speaker, a fellow Southern Baptist, with concerns about the plight of Ukrainian Christians in Russian-controlled territories.

“Our fellow Baptists have faced particularly intense persecution and have had over 400 churches destroyed by Russian attacks,” he wrote. Leatherwood urged Johnson and Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries to end the paralysis that gripped the House on the issue.

Johnson served as an ERLC trustee for two terms, and Leatherwood has sought to maintain friendly relations with the Louisiana lawmaker.

“He was at my first meeting in Washington as president of the ERLC,” Leatherwood told CT in an interview last year. “He’s obviously got that past, that historical connection with our entity, and I wanted to open a dialogue with him because he is such a prominent Southern Baptist on Capitol Hill.”

“I was struck in that meeting, because here is someone who is devoted to our convention. A number of the issues that he has publicly spoken about are issues that are very important to Southern Baptists. I think that kind of denominational history is very evident in the profile that he carved out as a member of the House of Representatives and now as speaker of the House.”

In February, the Senate passed a national security package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan with similar contours to the current package, but Johnson stalled acting on it in the House for two months.

Though aid for Israel remains strong on the right, supporting embattled nations in Eastern Europe and the Asia-Pacific region is expected to come with a cost.

Johnson acknowledged that it was a tough political decision: “I could make a selfish decision and do something different, but I’m doing here what I believe to be the right thing,” he told reporters last week.

The move angered some Republicans, not least because it took votes from Democrats to get the foreign aid package across the line. There has been a pile-on by some influential voices on the right.

Trump ally Steve Bannon said that Johnson “must go just like Kevin McCarthy,” the former House speaker. Tucker Carlson lambasted the move and described Johnson as “weak” and “susceptible to evil.”

Meanwhile, Johnson’s GOP colleagues on the Hill are considering a motion to vacate, a procedural move to bring up a vote to demote Johnson. So far, they have yet to act on it.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Johnson’s most outspoken critic at the moment, has taken to the airwaves to vow that Johnson’s time as speaker is over.

“People are fed up,” Greene said about the amount of money spent out of Washington. “He’s absolutely working for the Democrats, passing the Biden administration’s agenda. This is a speakership that is completely over with.”

But the criticism has been muted by bipartisan praise.

After the package was passed, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted his gratitude on the social platform X: “I thank everyone who supported our package, this is a solution for protecting life. I personally thank Speaker Mike Johnson and all American hearts who believe, as we do in Ukraine, that Russian evil must not be winning.”

There has also been support in unlikely, and influential, quarters.

Donald Trump has so far declined to join the criticism, which may protect Johnson from dissatisfaction spreading among the majority of House Republicans. Last week, the former president told reporters during a joint press conference with Johnson that “I stand with the speaker,” and, after the House passed Ukraine aid, Trump also rallied to Johnson’s defense.

On Monday, while addressing reporters in the midst of his legal trial, Trump noted that House Republicans have a razor-thin majority. “It’s not like he can go and do whatever he wants to do,” Trump told reporters. “I think he’s a very good person.”

His stance may be to prevent the House from being thrown into another chaotic speaker election in the lead-up to November. The perception—if it grows—that Republicans are unable to govern may hurt their ability to hang onto their slim and unruly majority come November, as some conservatives have pointed out.

In December, Leatherwood had forecasted that the speaker’s faith would play a significant role in his tenure.

“You can have two Baptists in a room and get seven different opinions. It’s very possible, in fact, likely, that there’s not going to be agreement on everything. And that’s just with Baptists,” Leatherwood said.

“But personally, in meeting with [Johnson] and interacting with him last year, I got the sense that this is a faithful Christian who has a history of being engaged in Baptist life and who believes, like I do, that our faith can inform and guide us to good policy that ends up actually serving and benefiting every American.”

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