{"id":1512,"date":"2006-11-03T02:30:03","date_gmt":"2006-11-03T02:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/2006\/11\/friday-is-for-friends-15.html"},"modified":"2006-11-03T02:30:03","modified_gmt":"2006-11-03T02:30:03","slug":"friday-is-for-friends-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/11\/friday-is-for-friends-15.html","title":{"rendered":"Friday is for Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wendell Berry, in Citizenship Papers<\/em> — a volume that is not afraid to disagree with government, has a chp called “The Failure of War.” Here is his essential point: “Militarization in defense of freedom reduces the freedom of the defenders.”
\nI hope you can read this whole post to consider the questions at the bottom; I think they are good ones. I hope you agree and want to converse about it.
\nNow I’m not sure this is much of a claim, but I don’t want to deal with that part of his chp in this post. But, let me say this: whatever one thinks of war (just way, etc), and I’ve made it clear that I think the pacifist is the most consistent Christian position, apart from some other theoretical basis, Berry’s observation doesn’t hold water. Those who believe that a government has the right to call its citizens into the military, also believe that war may involve restriction of freedoms. Individuals “cede” (that’s a legal word) rights to the State\/Feds in such cases.
\nWhat I’m more concerned with today is that Berry finds a brutal hypocrisy with abortion. Listen to this claim by Wendell Berry:
\nIf you so devalue human life that the accidentally conceived unborn may be permissibly killed [abortion], how do you keep that permission from being assumed by someone who has made the same judgment against the born?<\/em>
\nAbortion-as-birth-control<\/em>, he says, is justified as a “right,” which can establish itself only by denying all the rights of another person [the baby], which is the most primitive intent of warfare.\u00c2 <\/em>
\nIf the creature in a womb is a living human being, and so far also an innocent one, then it is wrong to treat it as an enemy<\/em>.
\nAs for the “right to control one’s own body,” I am all for that. But implicit in that right is the responsibility to control one’s body in such a way as to avoid dealing irresponsibly or violently or murderously with other bodies. Women and men generally have understood that when they have conceived a child they have relinquished a significant measure of their independence, and that henceforth they must control their bodies in the interest of the child<\/em>.
\nHere’s the question: Is it a moral hypocrisy to believe in war and against abortion, or to be against war and for abortion?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wendell Berry, in Citizenship Papers — a volume that is not afraid to disagree with government, has a chp called “The Failure of War.” Here is his essential point: “Militarization in defense of freedom reduces the freedom of the defenders.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"yoast_head":"\nFriday is for Friends - Jesus Creed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/11\/friday-is-for-friends-15.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Friday is for Friends - 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