It is on reproductive health issues and pay rights that Wallis' views are most troubling. He is one of those religious leaders who set the teeth of feminist religious women, particularly Roman Catholics, on edge. He identifies himself as a progressive pro-life evangelical, but his heroes are ... the Catholic bishops. His speeches are full of references to Cardinal Joseph Bernardin and the so-called consistent ethic of life. He claims to speak for "millions" of progressive Catholics who are eager to support the Democratic Party but balk at its stance on abortion. His pronouncements on Catholic teaching about abortion and what Catholics actually believe are firm and unshaken by facts. I know Wallis, and he is no theologian, but I would not be the least bit surprised if at some point Wallis followed conservative leader Richard John Neuhaus and became a Catholic.

The positions taken by Wallis on abortion, which remain unchallenged publicly by anybody in the Faith and Progressive Policy initiative, are likely to damage women's reproductive health and rights. (The Center for American Progress, however, fully supports abortion rights.) Wallis' views are hard to pin down. Attempts by interviewers to get Wallis to go beyond his well-rehearsed and often-repeated sound bites on the issue are met with politician-like repetitions of homespun theology. He thinks abortion itself is morally wrong but does not want to see it criminalized. His reason for such generosity is classically patriarchal beneficence: He doesn't want poor women who are victims of poverty and injustice to suffer. There is no acknowledgment that a woman who is not a victim, but a thoughtful moral agent who could continue a pregnancy, might make a good decision to have an abortion.

In his attempts to seek "common ground" with others, Wallis focuses on the "too many abortions" argument. But his common ground is very shaky. It does not, for example, include contraception. Wallis has said he is in favor of contraception, but after a fairly extensive review of his writing and transcripts of speeches and sermons, I can find no reference to contraception as a common-ground means of reducing abortion rates. Wallis' common ground is abstinence-focused sex education, adoption reform (with no specifics on what kind of reform he thinks would lead to a significant number of women choosing to give birth and then give up their babies for adoption), and better economic benefits and social support for pregnant women to encourage them to continue their pregnancies.

A lengthy Op-Ed published in the New York Times on Aug. 4 was the first indication of where Wallis would go in terms of abortion law. While he repeatedly has said that Democrats need not change their position on abortion, just the way they talk about it (comments echoed by party chairman Howard Dean), Wallis is now out of the closet. He supports "reasonable restrictions" on legal abortion. Which ones, and how many, are unclear. Does he support a cutoff of federal Medicaid funds for poor women's abortions? Second-trimester abortions only when the pregnancies are likely to result in severe and long-lasting health consequences for the women or in dead children? Mandated scripts that lie about fetal development and the health consequences of abortion? Restrictions on access for adolescents unless their parents give consent? Waiting periods that make it hard for working women to get to clinics the several times required to prove they have "thought through" their decisions? Every restriction currently on the books adversely affects the poor women he claims to care about so much.

And here is where the challenge to the progressive religious agenda and its other leaders arises. Will any of them have the guts to take on Wallis in public? Will any ask if he is genuinely interested in presenting evidence-based policy solutions that really can reduce the need for abortions, or if he is using abortion as another way to push an antipoverty agenda? Are pregnant women a means to achieving Wallis' agenda? There is no evidence that the positive measures he does suggest -- better economic support, jobs, childcare and parental-leave benefits -- would lead to a significant decline in abortion. There is, however, substantial evidence that access to contraception (both regular and emergency) would significantly reduce unintended pregnancy and thus abortion.

This overwhelming and admirable commitment to ending poverty and promoting policies that would do that has caught not only Wallis but another newly important figure in progressive evangelical circles, Glenn Stassen. Stassen, who describes himself as pro-life but is publicly in favor of legal abortion, is the author of the study that claimed that abortions decreased under Clinton and increased under Bush, and hypothesized that the reason was Bush's cuts in the antipoverty budgets. More recent research by the Alan Guttmacher Institute has proved that Stassen was wrong on the facts. Abortions went down under Clinton but have continued to go down under Bush (although at a much slower rate). Most important, the data shows that Stassen's conclusion -- that the abortion rate went down under Clinton because of better support for poor pregnant women -- is demonstrably wrong. Analysis by the AGI of government data shows that the reasons for the decline during Clinton's presidency were an increased use of emergency contraception and a better use of traditional contraceptives such as the pill. When I asked Stassen why he continues to make his claims, despite the facts showing otherwise, instead of supporting contraception as a way to reduce abortion, he passionately responded, "Because I want to make an antipoverty argument."

Stassen's case provides a classic argument against the involvement of religious leaders in electoral campaigns. Stassen is a good man -- sincere, honest and genuinely committed to women -- but he shows how hard it is to be a prophetic and truly independent voice when you strongly support one candidate in an election. Perhaps I am naive, but I expect more of my religious leaders than I do of James Carville or Robert Shrum.

To the extent that the progressive faith community sees itself as another vehicle for the revitalization of the Democratic Party -- and a vote getter -- and party operatives also see that community as part of the electoral process, religion is in real trouble and democracy not far beyond.

Recent Stories