i grew up “just as i am,” the daughter of a conservative preacher, and your words express my own truth. beautiful, lovely, wonderfully expressed, you have written an incredible call to correction. thank you for saying it so well…

Then yesterday, as we walked out to our car, the “We Vote Pro Life” bumper sticker brought me back to reality. Broken Hallelujahs indeed.

I have come to think, in recent years, that these folks are generally “pro-birth” rather than pro-life. Unless they support a well-developed and well-funded support system for single parents and their children, it’s not much of a life they have a chance to lead. I can accept those who oppose abortion. Like President Jimmy Carter, I don’t think abortion is something “Jesus would do” or advocate. On the other hand, there are sometimes worse options for the poor.

What Carl Rove has done for Bush, and to us, is to figure out how to pick up on a varied list of one issue voters (pro-life, anti-immigration, anti-labor/right to work, pro gun (any gun), anti-tax, anti-environment, pro-business, the Hispanic vote, the Black vote, etc.) and figure out how to get enough votes from each constituency to win, with a little help from the Supreme Court. If he can figure out how to keep his own job and overcome loss of the “integrity in government” the “win the war on terrorism and come home quickly” folks, he can pick the next winner and keep his office in the White House for another eight years.

Yesterday, after driving 45 miles to Nashville to worship with my daughter in a “progressive, culturally relevant” Church of Christ, I participated in some very meaningful praise worship, and heard one of the better sermons I’ve ever heard, based upon the good Samaritan text. “Who is my neighbor? Won’t you be my neighbor? What must I do to be your ‘neighbor’ today? A house in my pretty much affluent neighborhood has a new sign in the yard. ‘No Trespassing.’ Not ‘Keep Off The Grass.’ Not even ‘No Solicitors.’ ‘No TRESPASSING!’ Will we have border ‘vigilanties here soon,’ in Tennessee?” “Minutemen, keeping our wives and children safe for democracy?”

I’ve heard this fellow four or five times now, and his sermon series from Luke are right on target, thought provoking and uplifting. This place is also quite progressive, for a Church of Christ, with women involved in visible public roles during workship, with instrumental music played in the background in video infomercials about worthy causes. But it’s still a Church of Christ, with a capella singing, and more Republicans than you can shake a stick at. At a bluegrass concert and clogging “extravaganza” right there in the worship hall because it rained, it felt good, you know, “progressive,” until some guy’s “W” shirt caught my eye. Then yesterday, as we walked out to our car, the “We Vote Pro Choice” bumper sticker brought me back to reality. Broken Hallelujahs indeed.