When people ask me to list some must-read books — if the goal is understanding religion and the news — the first one I mention is “Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America” by sociologist James Davison Hunter.
Pundits love to toss “culture wars” around as a kind of journalism hand grenade, but few bother to flash back to this 1991 classic and note how Hunter defined that term. In 1998 I wrote a column — “Ten years of reporting on a fault line” — in which I noted Davison’s description of America’s ongoing legal and political wars about religion, morality and culture.
The key: Americans were no longer debating specific religious beliefs or traditions. Instead, he said they were fighting about “something even more basic — the nature of truth and moral authority.”
… America now contains two basic worldviews, which he called "orthodox" and "progressive." The orthodox believe it's possible to follow transcendent, revealed truths. Progressives disagree and put their trust in personal experience, even if that requires them to “resymbolize historic faiths according to the prevailing assumptions of contemporary life."
The book Hunter wrote in 1994, right after “Culture Wars”? It was called “Before the Shooting Begins: Searching for Democracy in America's Culture Wars.” Hold that thought.
All of this brings me to this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in) focusing on a new Lifeway Research study — on behalf of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary — probing how religious faith and practice affect what Americans believe about abortion. The survey took place days before the leak of the draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito indicating that the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The survey results are complex and will provide little comfort for those committed to a consistent pro-life stance or. on the other side, the defense of America’s pro-abortion-rights legal structures built on Roe.
In the podcast, I argued that this survey deserves mainstream media coverage — but I sincerely doubt that this will happen. Why? Well, listen to the podcast. Meanwhile, here is a bite from the study results:
While increased church attendance correlates with pro-life perspectives, those who attend church say they don’t often hear about abortion on Sunday mornings. Two in 3 Americans who say they attend religious worship services a few times a year or more (66 percent) say they hear a teacher or clergy person mention the topic of abortion no more than once or twice a year, including 36 percent who say they never hear it spoken about. Few churchgoers, regardless of their perspective on abortion, want the church to talk about the issue less often. Overall, 46 percent say the topic is addressed the right amount, 38 percent want to hear about it more and 16 percent want less.
As I glanced through a press release about the survey, I immediately thought about “Before the Shooting Begins” and its chapter — “The Anatomy of Ambivalence" — wading into opinion polls about, yes, what Americans believe about abortion.
The key: Most Americans are somewhere in the middle, when it comes to abortion rights. Most of all — in the early 1990s — this chapter documented the degree to which the vast majority of Americans have/had no idea what Roe actually said or did. Here is an anecdote from 1991 (and I am quoting from the book):
Peter Jennings of ABC News announced ... the results of a new ABC/Washington Post survey showing that about six of every ten Americans favored keeping Roe v. Wade intact. ... But what Mr. Jennings did not say was that only about one of every ten Americans has any real understanding of what Roe v. Wade actually mandated.
Brace yourself, because there’s more (I added the bold type):
According to the Gallup survey, one of four Americans thought Roe made abortion legal only during the first three months of pregnancy and regardless of a woman's reason for wanting one. Another one out of six believed the decision permitted abortions only during the first three months and only when the mother's life or health was threatened. Four percent actually believed that the decision outlawed all abortions in the United States. Finally, almost half (43 percent) collectively shrugged their shoulders, openly confessing their ignorance of the outcome of this landmark case. Another survey conducted by a Gallup affiliate at about the same time framed the question negatively, and the results were the same: 80 percent of those polled disagreed that abortion was available through all nine months of pregnancy, and indeed, 65 percent disagreed strongly."
Where do Americans get this kind stuff? What shaped these misunderstandings?
Remember, that this was a long, long before the arrival of the Internet and clouds of social-media haze. Hunter concluded:
"After twenty years of ceaseless commentary in the media and heated debate by political pundits, almost half of all Americans still admit to having no knowledge of what Roe accomplished, and most of the rest get it wrong."
Anyone want to bet that those numbers are, if anything, even worse today? There’s no way that journalists can take comfort in numbers of this kind.
With that in mind, let’s return to the Lifeway survey. These passages are long, but essential:
Around 3 in 10 Americans hold generally pro-life views on abortion: 12 percent say abortion shouldn’t be legal in any situation, and 17 percent say it shouldn’t be legal in most situations. Another 21 percent say there are a variety of situations where it should be legal and illegal. More than 2 in 5 are generally pro-abortion rights, with 22 percent saying abortion should be legal in most situations and 24 percent saying it should be legal in any situation.
Pro-life views are more common than pro-abortion rights views among Protestants (41 percent vs. 31 percent). Catholics (32 percent vs. 43 percent) and people from other faiths (31 percent to 47 percent) lean pro-abortion rights. The non-religious are overwhelmingly pro-abortion rights (11 percent pro-life vs. 70 percent pro-abortion rights). …
American Christians who attend church weekly are more than twice as likely to be generally pro-life (53 percent vs. 19 percent). Those who attend two to four times a month (28 percent vs. 36 percent) and those who attend less frequently (30 percent vs. 46 percent) are more likely to be pro-abortion rights.
Note that the “generally pro-life” numbers add up to 29% — which pretty much matches years of poll numbers describing the minority of modern Americans who consistently try to follow, in daily life, traditional forms of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc.
What about the other side of the equation? What doctrines shape these Americans?
For those who are pro-abortion rights, views on women’s rights and freedoms (74 percent) dominate the other factors, which include views on health and medical issues (46 percent), views on social issues (36 percent), views on morality (35 percent) and views on economic issues (32 percent). Close to 1 in 10 (9 percent) point to their religious faith.
Among those who have a more mixed perspective or who are unsure about the issue, half point to women’s rights (51 percent) and a third (32 percent) mention their religious faith.
Here is one more bite of information from this new survey, focusing on what happens when Americans are asked a logical question:
Americans have varying opinions on when human life actually begins and have complicated views on specific cases of abortion. Most say life begins at least by the first heartbeat detected, however, most also believe abortion should be legal if the child would be born with severe disabilities.
More than a third of Americans (35 percent) say life begins at conception, while 28 percent say at the first detected heartbeat. Almost 1 in 8 say life begins when the fetus is viable outside the womb (13 percent) or upon birth (13 percent). Few (2 percent) say at another point, and 10 percent say they honestly don’t know.
Protestants are most likely to say life begins at conception (49 percent), as are Americans of other faiths (39 percent). Catholics are most likely to say at the first detected heartbeat (40 percent). Religiously unaffiliated Americans are the most likely to say at birth (28 percent) and viability (20 percent).
There are so many twists in this public-information drama, so many nuances in what Americans are learning about themselves and what we do or don’t know on this issue.
Did you see Bill Maher on HBO several weeks ago, wrestling with uncomfortable facts that he has learned in the wake of the leaked SCOTUS document? Here are a few quotes:
“I learned things this week… that are pretty basic things that I did not know about abortion. Like in Europe, the modern countries of Europe are way more restrictive than we are or what they're even proposing! … If you are pro-choice, you would like it a lot less in Germany, and Italy, and France, and Spain, and Switzerland. Did you know that? I didn't know that."
Also:
"I learned most people who are pro-life are women. I did not know that. Most abortions are from … mothers, people who have a kid. … And I thought this was interesting, most abortions now — even when you go to a clinic are done with the pill. The pill. And pills are easy to get in America. … So, you know, for the people who say we're going back to 1973, we're not. That's just factually inaccurate."
The ultimate irony, for me, is that one of the most important trends in American life today is that the center of our political and cultural spectrum is vanishing. I would argue that this is in large part due to decades of winner-take-all battles over the U.S. Supreme Court that kicked into high gear with Roe v. Wade.
Yet, when it comes to abortion laws, most Americans fall somewhere in the middle, choosing abortion restrictions that look rather like compromise policies seen in Europe and elsewhere. However, these kinds of policies don’t work in America because they clash with Roe and subsequent abortion-rights cases.
Ponder that Catch-22. Why don’t we see news coverage about that puzzle?
Well, enjoy the podcast? Please give it a listen and then pass it along to others.
FIRST IMAGE: Uncredited illustration at the website of the Pacific Legal Foundation.