They Come From God
The Babies--they come from God, not from the government or anything like that.
In all my rushing around over the weekend, I happened by a short news clip over on the X app. You may have already seen it because it was so widely shared. This is the briefest account, over at Real Clear Politics, including, most helpfully, a transcript of what was said, plus a round-up of tweets. The tempest in this latest corporate venti nonfat caramel double side of hysterical fainting couch frenzy macchiato amounts to someone named Heidi Przybyla explaining that those scary Christians are gonna get you. Here’s her fascinating insight into what we can expect from the political forthcoming:
HEIDI PRZYBYLA: I talked with a lot of experts on this and I have seen it with my reporting, Michael, which is that the base of the Republican Party has shifted. Remember when Trump ran in 2016, a lot of the mainline evangelicals wanted nothing to do with the divorced real estate mogul who cheated on his wife with a porn star, and all of that. So what happened was that he was surrounded by this more extremist element. We are going to hear words like Christian nationalism, like the "new apostolic reformation." These are groups that you should get very schooled on because they have a lot of power in Trump's circle. And the one thing that unites all of them because there's many different groups orbiting Trump. But the thing that unites them as Christian nationalists, not Christians because Christian nationalists are very different, is that they believe that our rights as Americans and as all human beings do not come from any Earthly authority. They don't come from Congress, from the Supreme Court, they come from God. The problem with that is that they are determining, men, are determining what God is telling them. In the past, that so-called "natural law," it is a pillar of catholicism for instance, it has been used for good in social justice campaigns. Martin Luther King evoked it in talking about civil rights. But now you have an extremist element of conservative Christians, who say that this applies specifically to issues including abortion, gay marriage, and it is going much further than that as you see, for instance, with the ruling in Alabama, this week that judges connected to the dominionist faction, and talking about a lot of other issues including surrogacy, IVF, sex education in schools, there's a lot in addition.
I’ve bolded the bit that’s most illuminating, in case you didn’t feel like muscling through a whacking great block of text. Having nothing better to do, I noodled around on YouTube and found this interview from a few days ago:
The picture, of course, is fantastically unhelpful. There is Mr. Trump gazing into the sky, pointing the index finger of his apparently smaller-than-ordinary hand upward, perhaps expecting the glorious return of our Lord to judge both the living and the dead. He’s not the one being interviewed by MSNBC. Indeed, I believe they do not even show him speaking on those occasions when it might be suitable or informative to find out what he is saying. His face is just there to make you click.
Rather, a news person is interviewing Heidi Przybyla who, in the parlance of today, is sounding the alarm on some of the terrifying possibilities that may abound should any Christians come near any governmental circumstances. She throws around bits and pieces like “withdrawing approval of the abortion pill,” and “Influencer Community,” and “The Heritage Foundation.” And then she says this:
There’s a belief in orthodox Christian communities there’s a belief that the family has been breaking down over the past decades and at the heart of it, the root of it was the sexual revolution which was based on access by women to hormonal birth control.
This news, she explains, will “shock” a lot of viewers—however many MSNBC has left. And certainly, I believe her. I think a lot of people are in a state of shock at the moment. Both Christians and the people who thought the Christians had been so completely discredited that they forgot they even had the right to speak on any subject. I’m not shocked in the least. This kind of absurdity is exactly the kind of thing that I expect, and why I have called this latest blogging iteration “Demotivations.”
Seriously, if you have read anything lately, you will know that it’s not just rabid and “extremist”—emphasis on the “extremist”—Christians who are sounding the alarm on the question of hormonal birth control. One of the two most important books that I read last year—The Case Against the Sexual Revolution—was not written by a Christian. Louise Perry is possibly friends with some Christians, but at the writing of the book, she did not so self-identify. If you want to take an honest look at what the Sexual Revolution has done not only to women but to men also, please take the trouble to read this book.
And then there is the other excellent work I read last year—Feminism Against Progress—which, towards the end, lays out an eminently reasonable and calm case for why you should chuck your hormonal birth control into the abyss. I don’t want to alarm Heidi Przybyla, but Mary Harrington is not Evangelical Trump Shill. She isn’t even American, nor even an Evangelical.
Moreover, there is plenty of data available documenting what kinds of horrors have been ravaged upon women because of the way “science” has messed with their biological realities. Last week alone I came across three separate pieces (I wish I had saved them) about how hormonal birth control makes you crazy, how it changes the kinds of men you’re attracted to, and how it messes with your weight and self-perception. It is not a spiritually nor physically neutral act to partake of this kind of life-altering pill.
Life-altering, incidentally, not just for the women who take them, but for the men they may or may not fall in love with, for the children they might have had, for the families they might have nurtured, for the millions of people who might have gone forth into the world to build lives and futures. But, you see, it is the state who ought to give you your “Rights.” The Supreme Court, or maybe even Congress, replete as it is with corrupt political hacks who only know how to make more money but haven’t yet discovered that God exists.
I don’t want to live in this kind of dystopian, hysterical
world. In the room next to me I have four girls shouting and laughing, trying to memorize their Latin verbs—or maybe it’s adverbs and adjectives this week. Honestly, I’ve tried hard not to pay very close attention. They have minds. And, though it may shock a lot of people, they have bodies. Bodies that were given to them not by Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, and Amy Coney Barrett. A long time ago, they were babies who took over the physical space of my body, who I had to feed with my body, who clung onto me in complete helplessness for years as I gave of my little all to keep them alive. And yet, as you know if you are a decent person, it was not I, but the Lord.
In the words of the Psalm appointed for yesterday according to the 2019 Daily Office Lectionary:
1 O Lᴏʀᴅ, you have searched me out and known me; *
you know my sitting down and my rising up; you understand my thoughts from afar.
2 You examine my path and my places of rest, *
and are acquainted with all my ways.
3 Indeed, there is not a word on my tongue, *
but you, O Lᴏʀᴅ, know it altogether.
4 You have enclosed me behind and before, *
and have laid your hand upon me.
5 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, *
so excellent I cannot attain to it.
6 Where shall I go then from your Spirit, *
or where shall I flee from your presence?
7 If I climb up to heaven, you are there; *
if I make my bed in the Grave, you are there also.
8 If I take the wings of the morning *
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
9 Even there shall your hand lead me, *
and your right hand shall hold me.
10 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,” *
then shall my night be turned to day.
11 Even the darkness is not dark to you, and the night is as clear as the day; *
the darkness and the light to you are both alike.
12 For you yourself made my inmost parts; *
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
13 I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; *
marvelous are your works, and my soul knows it very well.
14 My bones were not hidden from you *
when I was made in secret and fashioned in the depths of the earth.
15 Your eyes beheld my substance, while I was yet unformed; *
and in your book were all my members written,
16 Which day by day were fashioned, *
when as yet there was none of them.
17 How dear to me are your thoughts, O God. *
How great is the sum of them!
18 If I were to count them, they would be more in number than the sand. *
When I wake up, I am present with you.
19 Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God! *
Depart from me, you bloodthirsty men.
20 For they speak unrighteously against you; *
your enemies take your Name in vain.
21 Do I not hate those, O Lᴏʀᴅ, who hate you, *
and do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
22 Indeed, I hate them with a perfect hatred; *
they have become my own enemies.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart; *
try me and examine my thoughts.
24 Look well if there be any way of wickedness in me, *
and lead me in the way everlasting.
So anyway, have a nice day!
Great blog, Anne! (Although I did miss reading the word "Peradventure" in Psalm 139:10 as it appears in the Psalter of the BCP we use.)
American History was my worst subject in school (save Physical Education), but yet I still seem to remember something in our nation's founding documents about rights proceeding from our Creator. Apparently the Founders, too, were Christian Nationalists.
One article discussing the effects of hormonal birth control on attraction etc:
https://drbrighten.com/can-birth-control-affect-who-youre-attracted-to/#:~:text=Because%20hormonal%20birth%20control%20stops,a%20different%20type%20of%20partner.