Posted on 03/10/2021 7:25:34 AM PST by SeekAndFind
After signing a letter expressing disappointment with the new administration, a pro-life evangelical scholar who voted for President Joe Biden said that while he would vote for Biden again if the 2020 presidential election were held today, he would not make his support public.
Richard Mouw, president emeritus of Fuller Seminary in California and a member of Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden, spoke to The Christian Post Tuesday, days after his group issued a statement in response to the president's support for a coronavirus relief package that did not include a longstanding provision that prevents the use of taxpayer dollars to fund abortions.
"We are very disappointed about the COVID-19 relief package's exclusion of the Hyde Amendment, a longstanding, bipartisan policy," they wrote. "We're even more upset that the Biden administration is supporting this bill."
As a result of Biden's support for the bill, the group contended that they feel "used and betrayed."
Mouw told CP that he and other members of Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden group knew that Biden had been "shifting" his position on the Hyde Amendment when they released a statement in support of Biden's candidacy last October, one month before the 2020 presidential election.
He maintained that conversations they had with campaign officials who now help the administration with faith outreach were reassuring.
"We made ... clear that we would offer support with the understanding that they would urge the White House to have serious conversations with Catholics and evangelicals who are right-to-life people," he recalled. "The problem is that we haven't had those conversations, and leaving the Hyde Amendment out of this particular package, this latest COVID package, is a signal that ... there really ... is no room for that kind of conversation."
Mouw confirmed that an official from the Biden administration reached out to him on Monday.
"We're going to have a meeting later this week," he said.
Mouw and Ronald Sider, another member of Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden, will sit down with two members of the White House faith outreach office to address their concerns.
When asked if he would vote for Biden again and issue a statement in support of his candidacy if the 2020 presidential election was still forthcoming and he knew that Biden would support a coronavirus relief bill that excluded Hyde Amendment protections, Mouw responded that he would "vote the same way" while adding, "I would not give my public support."
Mouw indicated that while he disagrees with Biden's position on abortion, there are other areas where he has found common ground with the new administration, specifically on the issues of global warming and immigration.
Acknowledging that he received "a lot of angry messages from right-to-life people," some of whom called him "naive" due to his support for Biden and subsequent feelings of betrayal, Mouw still defended the object of his previous remarks in support of Biden. He said they would be necessary to provide reassurance to the "many younger evangelicals who are not happy about ... the way in which their parents and grandparents have endorsed and defended the Trump administration."
"We ... don't want to lose them to evangelicalism because of what is perceived as a mean-spirited, highly partisan commitment on the part of the older generation of evangelicals who voted 81% ... in the presidential election before this last one for Mr. Trump," he said.
"We thought it was important to hold up the right to life position and at the same time, say it's OK to be concerned about a broader range of issues such as global warming and children at the border separated from their parents and those kinds of questions. And so, we wanted to use our own access through the Biden campaign people to at least get them to stay in conversation with people like us."
In addition to explaining that he was "less optimistic" about the possibility of Biden and the Democratic Party building a "bigger tent" to accommodate pro-lifers, Mouw expressed concern about the president's support for another major legislative initiative: The Equality Act.
According to Mouw, the legislation puts "the rights of Christian institutions to preserve commitments to traditional biblical teaching regarding sexuality without being penalized in terms of federal grants, federal loans for students" in jeopardy.
"A lot of Christian colleges and universities are well over 50% dependent in their tuition income on students getting federal loans," the Fuller Seminary president emeritus added.
Mouw warned that making "the sexuality issue" an eligibility requirement for "receiving students with federal loans" would deal a "huge blow" to faith-based schools.
Leading up to the 2020 presidential election, Biden had vowed to push for the Equality Act's passage within his first 100 days in office. Biden indicated that he would work to codify Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide, into law.
Biden's documented public support for policies widely opposed by evangelicals has led some conservatives, like former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis, to conclude that "'Evangelicals' for Biden are getting exactly what they voted for."
I concur; Biden never hid his views on free abortion. Its the phonies like this guy who pretend to be evangelicals, help get Biden elected, then try to play the side they supposedly came from. It won’t work; like the Lincoln Project, you’ve done your dirty work, and no one on any side wants you.
Gee, thanks a pantload (in my Neal Boortz voice).
These idiots aren’t even useful.
“The problem is that we haven’t had those conversations, and leaving the Hyde Amendment out of this particular package, this latest COVID package, is a signal that ... there really ... is no room for that kind of conversation.”
Looks like yet ANOTHER leader from our side is now ‘discovering’ that the Democrats are not his ‘friends across the aisle anymore’.
But hard to beat up on him alone - after all, Ted Cruz actually thought Hillary would make a better president, at least during the 2016 Convention.
Really?? What did “pro life evangelicals” expect??
“Fool”
OLD fool, who should know better.
“These aren’t evangelicals, they are hard core leftists. They are now just trying to snooker more money out of Christians.”
I think that’s part of the reason our side is saying “What the hell is going on” when we see virtually every group that sided with us on freedom, instead turning Fascist Democrat.
Bottom line is that it all started in the Universities. The Communists there would get students together and organize them (called ‘teach-ins’ at the time, I was there). Obviously they understood the Christianity was a huge threat to them, so they found students who were forced to study the bible (by their oppressive parents) and had them work their way up in leadership in organizations like the Southern Baptists, and then when the time was right, they would strike.
Basically like a neutron bomb hitting...which is why we’re wondering what the hell is going on.
He’s a sick freak in an old body.
“Evangelicals” need to go the way of the dinosaurs. Presidential elections would probably be a lot better if republicant’s didn’t have to kowtow to them.
Fool
“I never knew you“
Richard J. Mouw, former president of Fuller Theological Seminary and Member of Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden
Does he not, do any who advocate for abortion not understand that it is God’s absolute right alone to take a life? Do they not understand the nature of God?
Richard Mouw is a fool. We know nothing new now that we didn’t already know a year ago.
I used it in that specific context . . .
Legacy of a useful idiot.
These people are so naive & clueless. They watch CNN.
RE: How can one be pro-life and support a man who advocates the the government-sanctioned killing of the most helpless among us; the child still in the womb? I truly do not understand.
Richard Mouw like John Piper an Ronald Sider, are Evangelicals who have what I would call HIERARCHY OF VALUES.
For them, they equate Jesus’ command to help the less fortunate, the poor, the homeless, the hungry among us to GOVERNMENT AID because they think this is the most direct and effective way of helping the poor.
Hence, in their hierarchy of values, anyone who promises this and puts on a public showing that he “cares” for the poor is more important than the issue of abortion.
They see Trump and his combative tweets as uncouth, rude and undignified and they also believe what the mainstream press propagandizes about Trump’s support for racists and white supremacists and the Republicans wanting to destroy healthcare for those who cannot afford the cost.
I know because I have spoken to many such church going people in New York, where I live.
And an idiot.
I suspect “bought”. Now that he has rendered his service he is trying to return to the fold.
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