David Frum, former speech writer for George W. Bush, wonders aloud: When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality? The German weekly Der Spiegel carries this article in its English-language edition: A Club of Liars, Demagogues and Ignoramuses. Even if this is rhetorical overkill, the Republican Party’s range of would-be presidential nominees is rather less than impressive. Those who were skeptical of Obama’s deliberate cultivation of messianic expectations in 2008 hoped he would face a credible opponent in 2012. But thus far the GOP has yet to deliver and shows no signs of doing so any time soon.

It is long past time to repeal the internal party reforms of the early 1970s. It used to be said that any boy could become president. Even if we update the gender reference, we should not be happy with such a possibility. Do we really want just anyone to be the CEO of earth’s remaining superpower? I sure don’t. When I was a child, delegates to a party’s convention actually chose its candidate for president. Party leaders in state, federal, and local politics did their best to put forward a candidate they believed was qualified for the position and had a good chance to beat his opponent. Yes, there were smoke-filled rooms. Yes, there was wheeling and dealing. Yes, the occasional Warren G. Harding would somehow make it past the filtering process. Nevertheless, obvious incompetents were generally weeded out before they got too far.

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By Robert Schwarzwalder and Julia Kiewit

We recently published an On the Square article faulting some Evangelical Christian organizations for not objecting to the proposed federal “contraceptive mandate” that would force all health insurance plans to include abortifacient drugs.

Our comments were inaccurate: the National Association of Evangelicals and the Council of Evangelical Colleges and Universities have, in fact, sent letters to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) protesting the insufficiency of the conscience protections provided in the new rules. Various Evangelical publications have carried articles about the same.  We acknowledge and deeply regret the factual error we made in asserting that these groups have been silent when, in fact, they have addressed this issue thoughtfully.

The NAE has also joined in numerous amici briefs on important religious liberty cases, has joined in several groups working to defend religious liberty overseas, and has discussed other matters of significance to Evangelicals with leading policymakers.

Christians are charged with “preserving the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3).  In not doing out homework—in not contacting those we complained were silent—we failed to fulfill this charge.

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As Ross Douthat warned last week in the New York Times, this is a grave hour for the Copts of Egypt, as it is for Christians all across the Middle East. Their numbers have been diminishing for decades, as they have been squeezed between the malignant policies of foreign powers and a resurgent, exclusivist Islamism.

Indeed, these latter two forces have more often than not found themselves on the same side, as in the U.S.-Saudi alliance, which is one of the region’s oldest and most solid. Apart from their common economic interests, the alliance between Uncle Sam and the most backward, totalitarian regime this side of the Taliban can be explained by the presence of a perceived common enemy: secular Arab nationalism, of which the Egyptian uprising is simply the latest example.

Contrary to what Douthat suggests, Arab nationalist uprisings are by no means a principal threat to Middle Eastern Christians, and the Egyptian spring is far from responsible for the worsening of the Copts’ plight. He rightly points out that modern mass movements of popular, national self-determination have often come at the price of ethnic exclusivity and purification. But what he fails to mention is that, in the case of the Arabs, this process has typically not excluded Christians; on the contrary, it was, throughout the twentieth century, practically a Christian idea.

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In response to a recent Department of Health & Human Services mandate, Christopher Tollefson offers a fine starting point for understanding the difference between genuine healthcare and the use of contraceptives: i.e., healthcare has to do with treatments and “preventive services” that guard against illness; and that the inability to engage in sexual intercourse without fear of conceiving a child does not count as such.

A popular response to this position—and one that causes no small amount of confusion for even the most clear-thinking individuals—is that the ability to act freely with regard to one’s natural sexual desires is in fact a matter of health, since proper sexual expression is one vital aspect of a person’s overall well-being. Moreover, this case contains both psychological as well as physical components, making it all the more appealing. Access to contraceptives enables women (and men) to maintain psychological and physical balance, many would say, since it removes the possibility of potentially devastating consequences (i.e., pregnancy) from an otherwise beneficial and natural type of human interaction. In short, sex is unavoidable, and necessary for our health; and the possible physical and psychological side effects of sex resulting in pregnancy require that we have subsidized access to contraceptives and sterilization procedures.

This way of thinking, popular as it is, assumes a number of things—not the least of which is the idea that proper sexual expression necessarily entails genital sexual expression with another person (or even at all). But for the purpose of our conversation, here, this perspective also assumes that the preclusion of activities, for whatever reason, that could be healthy is tantamount to an illness, in itself. In other words, per the case at hand, something precluding full sexual expression vis-à-vis genital intercourse with another is seen as an inhibition to health; and it is therefore classed and treated as an illness.

Tollefsen is right when he notes that the recent HHS decision points us in a direction of responding almost exclusively to “patient desires.” And desires, when it comes to grounding sweeping policy decision, are an uncertain thing.

Andrew Haines is a PhD student in philosophy at The Catholic University of America, and president of the Center for Morality in Public Life.

When I speak with supporters of Students for Life, they often ask how many pro-life student groups we have at Catholic universities. Many believe that our nation’s Catholic universities are all pro-life and supportive of our pro-life student groups. However, this is not always case. Everyday, pro-life students face discrimination and resentment from both their peers and administration on these campuses and, some of these campuses are even, shockingly, advocates for abortion.

Reports in recent years prove that we really do need to hold these institutions accountable for speakers, comments, and programs promoted on campus that directly violate the teachings of the Catholic Church and promote abortion.

We can all remember the controversy over President Obama’s 2009 speech at Notre Dame’s graduation and the videos of prayerful protesters, including one of 80-year-old priest being arrested for standing for Life and opposing the university’s decision to invite the most pro-abortion President in our nation’s history to speak.

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By Dr. Eboo Patel, President & Founder, Interfaith Youth Core, and Cassie Meyer, Director of Content, Interfaith Youth Core

In response to Joseph Knippenberg’s recent post, “Diversity and Toleration”, we would like to take a moment both to thank Professor Knippenberg for his thoughtful critique and to clarify the work and methodology of Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC).

In our work and writings, some of which Professor Knippenberg excerpts in his post, we do not mean to suggest that religion and race should be equated, which would dismiss the legitimacy of challenging or disagreeing with one another’s religious beliefs. We also do not mean to imply that religious disagreement is the same thing as racial or religious bigotry.

Instead, we suggest that in the same way that race was one of the great dividers of the twentieth century, religious difference is one of the great dividers of this century. Examples of the potency and the challenge of religious diversity both globally and in the U.S. abound: consider Eliza Griswold’s The Tenth Parallel and Robert Putnam and David Campbell’s American Grace, or the way religion was covered in the midterm elections. Comparing religious diversity to the problems of racial division and bigotry is not to suggest that the latter problems have been “solved” and that we can now move on to the next problem. Rather, we mean to draw attention to the ways that religious diversity is increasingly playing a divisive role in many aspects of society, particularly in public and political discourse, but also in relationships at the community level.

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Some readers will recall that I recently argued in favor of keeping more or less the current federal healthcare insurance plan, provided that it be amended fully to exclude abortion and euthanasia, and to protect conscience. My reason was that heathcare insurance in the private market has shown a long-term tendency toward a culture of death. So we may need to keep healthcare insurance public in order for the pro-life majority in this nation to be able to shape it to protect the vulnerable.

Some of my pro-life friends have disagreed with me, sometimes out of a well-founded fear for their own well-being and that of their dear ones. Basically, they make a strong argument against putting all our eggs in one basket, for if we fail in our pro-life remaking of federal public healthcare insurance, we may well be left without any alternative (because the public plan will probably make escape to the market difficult or impossible). Better to leave a way out for ourselves and some others, they reason, rather than to take a chance on losing a fight to save everyone.

So here’s another idea to consider, one that all pro-lifers (I hope!) could support: Let’s stop thinking only about stopping tax-funding for abortion. Let’s make our goal, instead, to make sure no one is ever forced to subsidize anyone else’s abortion unless they make a deliberate choice to do so. Taxpayers, of course, should not be compelled to underwrite abortion.

But our fellow citizens should also not have to pay for abortions via required insurance fees, regardless of whether those fees are demanded by federal law or simply by the rules of private insurers. Only individuals who choose to pay an additional insurance rider for abortion coverage (costing at least some minimal amount) should ever have abortion in their healthcare insurance plans. That way, no one opposed to abortion will ever end up helping to pay for it.

And here’s a bonus: By insisting that people ask for abortion coverage in advance, we promote calm and cool moral deliberation about abortion, i.e truly thoughtful choice, rather than (as now) letting them run away from thinking about abortion until they face a crisis pregnancy and then often no longer have the peace of mind to reason the matter through and choose well.

The above legislation seems to me useful regardless of what happens to “Obamacare”. It might be called “The Freedom of Choice in Abortion Insurance” act.

Richard Stith is professor of law at Valparaiso University School of Law and the author most recently of The Legal Validation of Sexual Relationships (Wm. S. Hein & Co.).

By Charles A. Donovan

President Obama apparently has a soft spot in his heart for religious liberty. And the New York Times editorial board is not pleased. The president last week issued a much-awaited executive order setting government-wide policy on community-based and religious nonprofits that receive federal grants. The executive order is meant to act on the recommendations of the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

That panel’s recommendations cover many topics arising in the context of federal financing of religious nonprofits, which receive and spend about one third of the money donated to U.S. charities in any given year. But the focus of concern for Barry Lynn and other advocates of stringent, if not to say hostile, separation of church and state was the promise candidate Obama made in July 2008 to bar publicly funded, religious nonprofits from hiring on the basis of religion. Lynn and his cohorts label such hiring preferences “discrimination” and want them outlawed.

The promise was clear enough—a few words in a speech by candidate Obama that touched on the value of the work done by faith-motivated charities but pledged that an Obama administration would block discrimination “against the people” such charities hire. Once in office, however, President Obama and his faith office advisers took their time, much to Lynn and others’ chagrin, about banning the religious hiring protections. The outside groups formed the Coalition Against Religious Discrimination (CARD) and dogged Obama with letters and public statements about keeping his word.

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I appreciate Jim Capretta’s response to my First Things article, and especially his emphasis on the legitimacy of disagreement among pro-life people. (I tried very hard to avert the tragedy of mutual ostracism around Democrats for Life, to no avail. Let us hope that such own-goals can be avoided in the future.)

Let me start off by admitting that I am a reformed socialist. I used to think that compassion required the redistribution of luck by the government. I changed my mind and now think that holding the state (or any agency) accountable for most of the endemic misfortunes in life would create far greater misery and resentment than it would avoid. We should not come to think, as socialists tend to argue, that almost every deficit in our lives is at least indirectly due to a failure of state action. None of us are now unhappy because we have no wings with which to fly. But if we thought (or even suspected) a government agency that rationed wings to be responsible for our plight, we would be weighted down with resentment. Far better to limit the responsibilities of government and to facilitate the freely given generosity of priivately organized churches and other charities.

Still, there are advantages to “state action.” Where state action is involved, community decisions can be legally addressed and limited. If abortion and euthanasia are returned completely to the private market, given our widely pro-death courts and culture, I fear that they could easily continue to creep into our psyches without a good way to combat them. Only legal prohibitions would sometimes remain as a possibility. But the Supreme Court has made prohibitions nearly impossible with regard to abortion and, in any event, I am not sure prohibition is always the best way to seek cultural change, at least in our libertaran society. Better, perhaps, to teach the wrongfulness of abortion via its exclusion from public funding, and even better, via government campaigns against it along the lines of the anti-smoking campaign.

However, I do agree that we should never be willing to give up “exit” in order to get more “voice.” I would like us to fight the good fight for life in the public square with regard to health insurance. But if we lose, if death remains the favored option in our public health insurance plan, I want to remain free to purchase pro-life insurance with my own dime. We must be careful to resist the totalitarian pretensions of those who would pull the plug on all public assistance for anyone who dared to seek additional support, or even dared to spend his/her own money for care not covered by the public plan. We need a public insurance to give pro-life greater voice, but if the other side shouts so loudly that we can no longer be heard, we will need an emergency exit by which to escape.

Richard Stith is professor of law at Valparaiso University School of Law and the author most recently of The Legal Validation of Sexual Relationships (Wm. S. Hein & Co.).

From time to time we will be publishing reports and articles from outside our usual circles and subjects, when readers might find the information or the analysis of interest. (Hence the use of the “guest” byline.) Posting it doesn’t mean we agree with it, or with all of it, only that it says something readers might want to hear, even if they don’t agree with it.

Following is one by a conservative Evangelical Anglican, reflecting on the division within English Evangelicalism.

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By Charles Raven

The BBC’s classic 1970s sitcom Fawlty Towers, starring manic hotelier Basil Fawlty (John Cleese), included an episode in which Fawlty, semi-concussed, fails spectacularly in his efforts not to embarrass guests from Germany. Having strictly warned the staff “Don’t mention the war,” mayhem results as he continually falls foul of his own advice.

The Evangelical Alliance, which styles itself as “the largest body serving evangelical Christians in the U.K.,” has recently borrowed this catch phrase for a “Don’t mention the war” about ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair’s defence of the Iraq war in his autobiography, The Journey. Unfortunately there is another war which the Evangelical Alliance is managing not to mention, the seemingly relentless attack being suffered by Christians in the U.K., especially Evangelicals, as their basic freedoms of expression and conscience are steadily eroded.

The Evangelical Alliance claims that it “acts as an evangelical voice to the state, society and the wider church.” However, someone unfamiliar with the muddled state of Evangelicalism in the U.K. might well be very puzzled when comparing the Evangelical Alliance website with those of two other evangelical organisations which address the public arena, the Christian Institute and Christian Concern. (more…)