“For the purposes of this class, I don’t care what your position on abortion is. I care that you have a position that is well-informed, well-reasoned and respectfully articulated.” That’s what I’ve told nearly 16 years’ worth of students in classes on sexuality and ethics at Baptist and secular universities.
Teaching human sexuality while untenured at a Baptist university quickened my pulse for sure. However, since such a class helped my family break a cycle of dysfunction, I longed to pay forward what educators had done for me and my family.
Despite my best efforts at fairness, some students have become angry. One such student bounced into my office in January after glaring at me the previous semester. After a cheerful conversation about how the new semester was going, I haltingly said: “I’m a bit surprised by this conversation. Last semester, I got the impression you were angry at me.”
The student blushed. “Yeah, my friends say I have a resting angry face. But, honestly, I was mad at you,” the student conceded. “You know how that second week of class we talked about abortion? Well, my daddy is a Baptist preacher, so of course I’m against abortion. I didn’t think we should even be talking about it possibly being OK. So, I was mad. But about halfway through Christmas break, it hit me. You were just trying to get us to think, and as a professor, that’s your job, and I’m cool with that!”
At the national Teaching Professor Conference, I described all this in a session titled “We’re Going to Need a Bigger Boat: Addressing Controversial Issues in the Classroom.” Afterward, a professor told me she almost got fired when two students nearly came to blows following a lecture on abortion. She said she would use my discussion method from now on.
Debate is about winning and losing, while dialog seeks to achieve informed consensus.
Before the class activity in which we address abortion, I lecture on constructive dialog. It incorporates a lesson learned from a colleague: Debate is about winning and losing, while dialog seeks to achieve informed consensus.
I tell students I want us all to be ROCKERS. I don’t mean rockers in the sense of Elvis, Pink or AC/DC. I want us to be like chilled-out people in front-porch rocking chairs. To be ROCKERS in this sense is to be Respectful, Open-minded, Civil, Knowledgeable, Empathetic, Responsible and Synthesized.
Tweaking this lecture, I realized I needed an E-word to spell ROCKERS. I explained the concept to my son and asked his suggestion. With hardly a thought, he asked, “What about Empathetic?” My jaw dropped. “That’s perfect!” I replied. “I read an article that said we have to respect the emotional underpinnings of people’s beliefs.”
The issue of abortion clearly evokes high emotions. Roe v. Wade — the Supreme Court decision granting the right to abortion — was handed down Jan. 22, 1973, and was overturned almost 50 years later, June 24, 2022. Today, states are engaged in contentious debates whether to amend their constitutions to protect or ban abortion.
Half the class must come up with arguments atheists might make opposing abortion. The other half must come up with arguments theists — using the Bible, the Koran or other Scripture — might make in favor of legalized abortion.
To develop skills for addressing this divisive topic, I split classes down the middle of the room, then subdivide them into small groups. I stress to both sides they are not saying what they believe; they are like lawyers, anticipating what other lawyers might say.
Half the class must come up with arguments atheists might make opposing abortion. The other half must come up with arguments theists — using the Bible, the Koran or other Scripture — might make in favor of legalized abortion. At one rural, secular, but deeply conservative university, a male student angrily blurted out, “That’s not possible!” I raised my eyebrows to say, “Stay tuned.”
Over the years, students role-playing atheists opposed to legalizing abortion have said things like, “Even atheists would say taking a life is murder.” Students role-playing theists favoring legalization of abortion have said things like: “Follow the Golden Rule. You wouldn’t want to be forced to carry a baby.”
After each group presents their list, I follow up with arguments I’ve found in articles over the years. I begin on the anti-legalization side and read some passages from an article titled “Yes, There are Pro-Life Atheists Out There. Here’s Why I’m One of Them,” by Kristine Kruszelnicki. To metaphorically summarize the essay: Dwarfs are no less human than giants; a zygote is simply a very small human with only one shot at life, and we must not block that one chance. It’s one of the most strongly worded pieces on abortion I’ve ever read. I once saw a devout Christian listening to passages from the article. Her face clearly revealed profound cognitive dissonance, appearing to say: “Wait a second. How am I on the same side as an atheist? Opposing abortion is my Christian birthright.”
Many Christians experience even deeper dissonance addressing the contention “life begins at conception.” While life most certainly does begin at conception, it’s problematic to use the Bible to assert life at conception as equal to other stages of life.
For instance, Exodus 21:22-25 states: “When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman’s husband demands, paying as much as the judges determine. If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.”
Notice: If fighters caused a miscarriage, they faced a monetary fine with the amount determined by the subjective value the father placed on the unborn child, as ratified by the judges. In an age where one’s children were the “Social Security” system, a father with 10 children might want just enough money to cover the cost of a housekeeper while his wife recovered. By contrast, a father who never had children might want a large amount of money. However, the penalty was not monetary if injury went beyond miscarriage. If the mother were killed by those fighting, the prescribed penalty for the fighters — guilty of only manslaughter under modern law — was death.
Clearly, this passage differentiates the life of the unborn child verses the mother. A possible reason? In the Genesis creation story, God breathed life into Adam and Eve. Subsequently, ancient Hebrews saw a qualitative difference between a fetus and a born person, marking the beginning of fully expressed life as the moment a baby takes its first breath. Thus, from a strictly biblical perspective, we cannot be glib about life beginning at conception. However, from a scientific perspective, we have a more sophisticated understanding of the beginning of life.
At a Baptist college, an undergraduate pointed at the Exodus passage on the screen and angrily exclaimed, “We don’t go by that anymore!” I calmly nodded. “This is Exodus 21. What’s in Exodus 20?” This deeply religious student shrugged. I said: “The Ten Commandments. Are you suggesting we don’t go by those anymore?” Her face twisting near rage, she said: “Well, no. But … but ….” She huffed and crossed her arms. Her knee began bouncing like a sewing machine, and she fumed the rest of the class period.
Later, in the faculty dining room, I described this incident. A female faculty member guessed the name of the student and said, “I can’t stand having her in class.” I said: “Really? I love it. I like that she doesn’t accept things passively. She’s engaged.” A year later, the student wrote and thanked me for being “the most honest professor” she ever had and for helping her be better prepared for graduate school.
Next, we examine Numbers 5:11-22, which describes a ritual for dealing with a woman whom the husband suspects has been impregnated by another man. First, the priest takes dust from the floor of the tabernacle and mixes it with water in an earthen vessel. Then, the woman, who is still merely suspected of adultery by a jealous husband, endures the indignity of having her hair disheveled by the priest.
The passage goes on: “Then the priest shall make her take an oath, saying, ‘If no man has lain with you, if you have not turned aside to uncleanness while under your husband’s authority, be immune to this water of bitterness that brings the curse. But … if you have defiled yourself and some man other than your husband has had intercourse with you, … the Lord make … your uterus drop, your womb discharge; now may this water that brings the curse enter your bowels and make your womb discharge, your uterus drop!’ And the woman shall say, ‘Amen. Amen.’”
During one class, as soon as I finished reading, a male student said, “That sounds like an abortion.” Since water-and-tabernacle-dust appears to be used as an abortifacient, yes, it does.
I then end with something like this: “For the purposes of this class, I don’t care what your position on abortion is. I care that you have a position that is well-informed, well-reasoned and respectfully articulated. If you weren’t aware of these passages, you weren’t prepared to have an informed dialog about abortion. Now, you can spend 10 minutes on the Internet and find arguments on both sides about the use of these passages.
“Any time you hear someone say the solution to an issue is ‘easy,’ you can bet it’s extremely complicated.”
“My point here today is that you will often hear folks say that the solution to the issue is ‘easy.’ Let me tell you: Any time you hear someone say the solution to an issue is ‘easy,’ you can bet it’s extremely complicated.
“Earlier, we talked about being ROCKERS. Here’s where I want to talk to you about Synthesis. When we synthesize, we pull separate things together into a whole. In the context of abortion, there are two ways we synthesize. First, our position should be informed by insights from multiple sources, not just Fox News on one hand or Hollywood on the other. Second, we synthesize the way we apply our position. That means if you call your position ‘pro-life,’ you are not just working for the life of the unborn but also the life of the born. And if you call your position ‘pro-choice,’ you not only promote the choice of a mother to have an abortion, you promote the choice to avoid unwanted pregnancies. And if you take the third option to synthesize both positions — allowing choice but wanting abortions to be as rare as possible — you promote this with the same passion as those on the far ends of this issue.”
At the next class period, I give the students copies of four articles (View them here: 1, 2, 3, 4) to read silently. To avoid preliminary bias, I present them in alphabetical order by author’s last name and with titles not listed until the end of the article. Two of the articles — both by pastors, one male and one female — explicitly favor legalized abortion in some form. The other two authors — one male and one female — take a strong stance against abortion. Each article reflects the strong emotions underlying the authors’ respective perspectives on abortion. The use of four diverse articles is designed to promote synthesis.
If we are to build consensus and establish justice on this issue, our interactions must be Respectful, Open-minded, Civil, Knowledgeable, Empathetic, Responsible and Synthesized.
So, let’s pour some glasses of tea, settle into our ROCKERS, and mutually promote reverence for both life and the challenges of living.
Brad Bull was baptized at age 7 in a Southern Baptist church, where he attended every Sunday, including missing Disney at 7 p.m. Wednesday evenings, he attended choir practice and Royal Ambassadors. Before earning a Ph.D. in human ecology at the University of Tennessee, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from a Southern Baptist college — Carson-Newman — and a Master of Divinity degree from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He has served as a hospital chaplain and a pastor and taught at both public and private universities.
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