A Sound of Sheer Silence

If there is anything we probably don't need in the Year of Our Lord 2019, it's a dude pontificating on abortion.  And, yet, we find ourselves, at least in the United States, in a place where the issue has absolutely come to a head, in the form of a serious of extremely severe restrictions on abortions passed in Georgia, Alabama, and my home state of Ohio.  In that light, I think everyone has some sort of obligation to indicate where they stand.  And I think it is particularly incumbent on people of faith, and especially Christians, to talk about where they stand, as the motivating force behind these moves has been explicitly Christian in its framing. A couple of years ago, I wrote a piece that described what I think is a more constructive framework for thinking about the philosophical issues behind abortion.  I stand by what I wrote there, but upon re-reading it I noticed that I never committed to a particular position.  So, here it is--for the reasons set forth in that piece

Rachel Held Evans passed away yesterday, as a result of a cascading series of complications stemming from the flu.  She was 37 years old, and leaves behind a husband and two very small children. Social media was awash in tributes to Evans yesterday, and she had an obituary in the New York Times  and other general-interest fora.  Many of the personal tributes were from folks with a similar background as Evans--raised evangelical (perhaps fundamentalist) Christian, once committed to this model but in time came to have grave doubts, struggling to rebuild some notion of the faith.  The tributes were particularly poignant from women, for whom she provided a voice in a place that does not often take women's voices seriously, and/or LGBT folks, for whom she was one of the earliest and most uncompromising advocates for their full inclusion in the evangelical space.  I was also struck by the praises from writers and theologians of color regarding Evans's commitment to building inclus