If we judge success by what we achieve for our goal and our cause, then I think the most successful pro-life people have been “kinder, gentler”. Gone are the days of soap box fire and brimstone, and if you’ve ever seen Andrea on the news you know how soft spoken and concise she is. This goes for Stephanie Gray, Serrin Foster, and many others as well.
I think when you’re delivering a message so steeped in tension and emotional dynamite, it’s important to keep your calm. That method has been paying off for many of us, including Charmaine Yoest.
With an easy laugh and ample charm, Charmaine Yoest doesn’t at all appear to be Public EnemyNo. 1 for the pro-abortion rights community. But the foundation of her rising influence – the accessibility of her approach – becomes clear when she settles in for an unexpectedly frank conversation about the stunning 2011 antiabortion legislative juggernaut that she has helped orchestrate.
Well done, ladies.
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Andrea adds: That’s very kind, Jennifer, thanks. What I strive for is to always be reasonable. Which strictly speaking, given how reasonable it is to be pro-life, shouldn’t be all that hard.
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I think we shouldn’t be too quick to knock the soap box either! Most world changing movements started out with soap boxes, that is with one person standing on a hill or platform and telling it like it is. This is the case for both good world changing movements (as with Jesus on a hill or at the Temple in Jerusalem) and bad ones (Marx at speakers corner in London) The point is that over history one of the most dramatic forces for change has been “the soap box”, that is someone standing up, telling it like it is and becoming unpopular for it.
I think there’s room in the pro life movement for both the “kinder gentler” approach and passionate rhetoric designed to challenge. As well as changing the “hearts and minds” of those naturally opposed to pro life perspectives there’s also a significant need to rally the base, to speak to them and solidify them, telling them like it is. For example, if 75% of Christians in Canada actually thought like Christians on this issue we’d have real change asap! But they don’t and they don’t because the mainline Christian churches are either not coherently pro life (as with the United Church of Canada) or, as with the Roman Catholic Church, are so afraid of alienating their declining members that they take the softly softly approach and make it seem as if it’s fine if individual Catholics are pro choice! This is a big problem with “kinder, gentler” approach favoured on the ground by the Catholic Church for example. It fails miserably in actually helping Catholics be Catholic! It fails in making them pro life and fools them into thinking that whatever they think (which is usually what the media has told them to think) is fine!
So I think we should see “two fronts” in the movement. Maybe a kinder gentler approach in naturally hostile territory but we should also acknowledge that the kinder gentler approach has utterly failed in Churchs such as the Roman Catholic Church and other mainline Christian denominations. We need to encourage Christians to be Christians as well as doing the amazing work in hostile territory that brilliant spokespeople like Andrea does.
This brought to mind for me a conversation I had recently with my father about the on-going controversy and disagreement over the actions of Pope Pius XII in regards to Nazism and their horrifying policies towards Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies, and others. Many people think the pope did not do nearly enough and certainly did not say nearly enough, making him complicit in the Holocaust. Others think that the pope’s gentle, nearly wordless approach was essential to saving lives and any more direct words or actions would have meant even more, and faster, deaths. My own conclusion: there is substantial evidence that the pope was successful and saved many, but that so many more were lost anyway, it would bring much comfort for him to have denounced the Nazis from his not insignificant soapbox (or pulpit).