Overblown rhetoric and violence

Public dialogue took a weird turn in the wake to two violent attacks, one against a Colorado abortion clinic (yes, that’s what your local Planned Parenthood is) and a second at a community center in California. In the first attack, a professed Christian who beat his wives killed three people, including a pro-life lay preacher cop who responded to the alarm. The California murders were by a Muslim husband and wife who killed 14 people during a Christmas party at the husband’s workplace.

The responses to these events were very different, one because of the victims and the other because of who the killers were. First, the left has clamored to have the abortion clinic attack designated a terrorist attack because the murderer reportedly hated abortion. The same crew is being very careful to leave room for the possibility for the second attack—carefully planned and committed by a radicalized Muslim and his wife)—being workplace violence or possibly mental derangement. But the thing that caught my ear was the discussion of language that could incite such behavior. Some evangelicals are asking Christians to tone down the rhetoric about “murder” and other exaggerated language to describe abortionists and their work. One liberal writer said that if people really believed children were being murdered in abortion clinics, then it was understandable that some would want to stop it by any means possible—pro-lifers who talk that way but who also claim to reject a violent response are thus speaking out both sides of their mouths. He concluded that we should stop doing that, especially if pro-lifers are going to continue to hold Muslim clerics responsible for the actions of their adherents.  

Was the Southern Baptist Convention wrong to describe abortion, though legal, as “murder” in a 2008 resolution? We were not. Speaking in our own context, theological, we were saying something true. Biblically, morally, abortion is the unrighteous killing of an innocent human, regardless of its legal status. Were we wrong in earlier resolutions to describe partial-birth abortion as “grisly” or similar to infanticide? Again, we were not. You’ll have to read elsewhere a description of the procedure; it is the very definition of grisly, and yes it does kill a child capable of living outside his mother’s womb … the killing of an infant. I do agree that we speak too quickly and even unfairly go to superlatives in characterizing those with whom we disagree. There is a power in careful and understated language that many no longer respect.

Is the comparison with our suspicion of Islam fair? It is to a degree. Not all Muslim leaders favor violence, and most of our Muslim neighbors find murder as an extension of ideological debate to be horrible. Our blanket suspicion of a whole race is obviously over the top. Is it fair to compare our condemnation of Muslim clerics who preach violence with pro-lifers who resort to hyperbole in their condemnation of abortion? I say it is not. Until you find 10 or even two pregnancy resource centers or truly evangelical churches who teach that their opponents should be killed or two leaders of pro-life groups whose followers are taught to wear bomb vests, the comparison is not fair. Even a paranoid fear of radical Islam has a source in something that happened. The killing at the Colorado clinic or the murder of abortionist George Tiller in 2009  or the murder of abortionist David Gunn in 1993 were tragic because they were murders, but they are not a trend or a wave. In the 22 years between Gunn and the Colorado killings, fewer abortionists have been murdered than were killed one night in San Bernardino. The comparison is strained and driven by the left’s infatuation with abortion.

So yes, I agree with the third chapter of James that we should work to govern our tongues. I also think that we are tempted toward slander when we are passionate in even a righteous cause. And I finally think that slander is a pretty good description of what leftist writers are doing when they accuse those with whom they disagree of inciting violence for merely saying something unpopular. We should be governed by our devotion to the God who created all life. Our professional adversaries should be governed by professionalism if nothing else. I don’t think they are.