The Patriot Post® · Nancy Pelosi's God Problem
Just 28 days ago, Nancy Pelosi claimed the Speaker’s gavel and promised that her House would be “bipartisan and unifying.” What have we seen since? House Democrats are pushing to open the floodgates of millions of taxpayer dollars to pay for elective abortions — even as Speaker Pelosi insists that she can’t offer more than a dollar to build a border wall. And then Tuesday, Democrats on the Natural Resources Committee announced they would remove “so help you God” from the oath that is administered to witnesses who testify before the committee. So under the new Democratic House majority, it’s “yes” to taxpayer funding for abortion, “no” to a border wall, and “no” to God.
Tuesday night, Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), a Republican member of the committee, joined me on radio to talk about an amendment he filed to put God back in the oath. We gave out the Capitol switchboard phone number to aid in the effort and folks responded and the Democrats reversed course. You made a difference! Wednesday, God was put back in the oath. This isn’t the first time this scenario has played out. In 2012, Democrats removed God from their party platform. After widespread criticism, Democratic party officials reinserted an oblique reference to God — but only after voting three times amid a chorus of boos from convention delegates opposed to God in the platform.
The reaction from GOP House members to this latest outrage has been swift. “We obviously need more God here — not less,” Congressman Graves told our radio listeners Tuesday. “We have a chaplain. We open Congress with prayer each morning. It is unbelievable to see folks move us in a different direction.” House Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) told Fox News, “It is incredible, but not surprising, that the Democrats would try to remove God from committee proceedings in one of their first acts in the majority. They really have become the party of Karl Marx.”
She is right. There has never in our nation’s history been such a difference between the two party platforms. And that is an important distinction to make because the research shows that politicians vote more than 80 percent of the time with their party platform. Should anyone be surprised that the same party that wants to take the lives of children up to the moment of birth would also try to eliminate any reference or notion of accountability to God? Removing God from government has increasing become the focus of the Left. Of course this is not new as the roots of the modern Left go back to the French revolution whose members’ first target was to eliminate God and those associated with Him.
The new Democratic party is clearly out of step with Americans on faith and public service. Polling shows that a majority of Americans want their elected officials to believe in God. The most likely reason is that a belief in God gives citizens a level of comfort knowing that their elected officials are more likely to understand that their accountability goes beyond the citizens, who unlike God, don’t see everything.
In a nation whose motto is “In God We Trust,” it is a sad commentary on the mindset of House Democratic leadership that removing God would even be considered. Although the House committee has reversed course, I believe it’s important that Speaker Pelosi be put on notice that as Americans, we want and need the presence of God in our government. Please join me in signing this petition to Speaker Pelosi that recognizes God as our Creator and acknowledges, as John Adams once said, that “our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Originally published here.
The State of State Abortion Laws
You’ve no doubt heard it before, but in light of what happened in New York, it bears repeating — elections have consequences! The celebration that broke out in New York last week over the pronouncement that essentially declares the Empire State’s desire to be the nation’s abortion empire along with three other states that are pursuing laws that would potentially challenge Roe v. Wade, not for liberalizing abortion, but for restricting it.
This wave of pro-abortion measures comes after nearly a decade of pro-life gains. Following the 2010 elections when conservatives responded to the pro-abortion, anti-family policies of the Obama administration by going to the polls en masse 22 legislatures switched to the Republican column giving the GOP the largest majority of state governments under their control since 1928. One tangible result of the conservative swing has been that since 2011 approximately 427 pro-life bills have been enacted into law. How significant of a number is this? The last seven years account for over one-third of all pro-life measures passed since 1974.
Complacent, disgruntled, disheartened. Choose your own adjective but conservative voters in several states did not turnout in 2018 with the same enthusiasm giving the edge to liberal candidates. As a result, six state legislative chambers and eight governorships switched hands. Now we are beginning to see the bitter fruit of their victories; one pro-abortion law after another in those states.
Prior to the 2018 midterms, the New York Senate was split almost down the middle: 32 Democrats, and 31 Republicans filled the 63-seat legislative body. One conservative pro-life, pro-family Democrat state senator caucused with the GOP for years — helping prevent some of the worst of the liberal agenda from advancing past the NY Senate. After the 2018 mid-terms the upper chamber is split 40-23 and nothing is hindering the radical abortion-expansion, and anti-religious liberty agenda.
In 2017, the Virginia House of Delegates elections saw Democrats whittle the GOP majority from 32 seats to just two while also electing a liberal Democrat as governor. Though they did not attain a majority in the Senate, the abortion crowd has been empowered to push for a rewrite of the state’s abortion laws to dramatically expand late term abortions and repeal common-sense health and safety regulations for women and children facing the evil of abortion.
Thankfully, one of their key measures to expand abortion died in a committee hearing on Tuesday. In the committee hearing the bill sponsor admitted her bill would allow abortion up until the point of birth. If this bill were to become law, abortionists would no longer be required to inform women of the risks involved in abortions, the alternatives to abortion, the right to reverse a decision to go through with the abortion or offer to view an ultrasound of the unborn child. What’s more, this bill would have repealed certain minimum health and safety standards for facilities in which abortions are performed, putting the lives of women at even greater risk.
Other states in which the abortion-expansion crowd has tightened their grip on the state government are New Mexico — where Democrats elected a pro-abortion governor and are pushing a ban to repeal a pre-Roe v. Wade ban on abortion, Rhode Island — where Democrats improved their pro-abortion supermajorities in the state legislations and are pushing abortion-expansion bills, and Vermont — where Democrats expanded their pro-abortion supermajorities and have a GOP Governor who said he’ll sign an abortion-expansion bill.
Tuesday in Rhode Island the House Committee on Judiciary held a public hearing on two bills that would codify Roe v. Wade, and rewrite current state law to repeal measures designed to protect women and children. Take a moment today to call the Rhode Island House Committee on the Judiciary and tell them because you stand for life you oppose HB 5125 and HB 5127.
Make no mistake about it, elections have consequences and sometimes those consequences can be deadly. We must stand up for the unborn. We must under no circumstance support candidates or elected officials who promote or allow the expansion of abortion or even tolerate the status quo.
Originally published here.
Governor Cuomo’s Faith Fallacy
Responding to Cardinal Dolan’s criticism of his support for New York’s new abortion law, which allows babies to be killed right up to birth, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo attempted to separate his personal beliefs from his role as governor: “I have my own Catholic beliefs, how I live my life … That is my business as a Catholic … I don’t govern as a Catholic. I don’t legislate as a Catholic.” In essence, Cuomo is arguing that while he has religious views on the topic, he has to “separate” his personal views from his public policy positions. While not exactly new, this type of thinking is very dangerous and deceptive — and breaks down when carried to its logical conclusion.
Faith is at the core of what it means to be human. Everyone has faith in something. As the writer David Foster Wallace (not necessarily a religious man himself) once said, “[e]verybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.” Our faith in God or the absence of our faith in God is at the core of our worldview, which is how we interpret the world around us and interact with it.
If values coming from God do not inform our public views, then what does? Doesn’t our faith shape our character and determine our values? How are we informed as to what is right and what is wrong? We must rely on a source of moral authority higher than ourselves. Without it, “[e]veryone [does] what [is] right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25).
Recent polling shows that Americans want more faith in public life, both in terms of pronouncements from political leaders and its impact on public policy. Another very recent poll found that “57 percent of people say religion should influence government policies dealing with poverty,” showing the public’s appetite for religion to serve as a source of influence in how our society seeks to solve problems. It would seem Cuomo should run toward his faith on questions of public policy, not away from it.
The nature of one’s worldview, along with the consistency with which one applies it, are qualities that voters can and do look at in determining the credibility, integrity, and reliability of those who run for and hold public office. This doesn’t mean that a person of faith seeks to impose his or her faith on others, but it does mean that their actions are informed and guided by their faith. Nor does it mean that all religious obligations are automatically carried over into public life; the Christian’s desire to eliminate pride does not mean we automatically legislate it. But our faith does impact what we believe about matters of public policy. If our public policy is now to permit a baby to be slaughtered in the womb when it could survive outside it just moments later, that does say something about our worldview. A leader who publicly says he is associated with the Catholic Church, as Governor Cuomo claims, would be expected to advocate for a view of human life that is in keeping with the teachings of the Church. Indeed, these teachings are clear to any Christian following the Bible, aside from what natural law and science plainly tell us about human life. At a minimum, it would be expected that Governor Cuomo would not seek to advance laws that are 180 degrees from biblical teachings on life. Yet that is exactly what he is doing.
America is not in moral and cultural decline because we have too much of God’s presence in public life, but because we have too little. May all of us in America repent of how we have fallen short of God’s standards, and re-orient our lives back toward Him. I pray we do this for the sake of our society, for our own sake, and the sake of the helpless ones in the womb. God has created them. He has His eye on them. He will not overlook our treatment of them.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC Action senior writers.