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The Big Ideas at March for Life 2025 were bigger than mere political slogans

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The Big Ideas at March for Life 2025 were bigger than mere political slogans

The questions at the 2025 March for Life were familiar ones for D.C. Beltway insiders: Would major politicians show up and what would they say?

After a White House race in which his softer abortion language worried conservatives, President Donald Trump's video message affirmed: "To all of the very special people marching today in this bitter cold, I know your hearts are warm and your spirits are strong because your mission is just very, very pure: to forge a society that welcomes and protects every child as a beautiful gift from the hand of our Creator."

Vice President J.D. Vance, a convert to Catholicism, appeared in person and stressed the need to be "pro-family and pro-life in the fullest sense of that word. … Let me say very simply: I want more babies in the United States of America. I want more happy children in our country, and I want beautiful young men and women who are eager to welcome them into the world and eager to raise them."

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, in deeply personal remarks, stressed that he was born just before Roe v. Wade and this timing was more than symbolic. "I was the product of an unplanned teen pregnancy," he told the rally crowd, "and I am so eternally grateful that my mom and dad ignored all the people who told them to just take care of that problem, and they chose to embrace life and to have me, the first of their four children. It's a simple fact – a very simple fact – that had they not done that, I would not be here."

This was the third national March for Life since the Supreme Court vote to overturn Roe v. Wade and the January 24 event was affected by harsh winter weather that, days earlier, moved the presidential inauguration ceremonies inside the U.S. Capitol. Nevertheless, organizers estimated that the rally and march drew about 150,000 people, including busloads of students.

The vigil Mass the night before the march packed the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, with 5,000 students, adults and activists gathered in a variety of worship spaces inside the basilica, since the upper-sanctuary pews hold about 3,500 people.

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Jimmy Carter – a progressive, evolving Baptist in a changing Bible Belt

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Jimmy Carter -- a progressive, evolving Baptist in a changing Bible Belt

The young Jimmy Carter was a political nobody the first time he ran for governor of Georgia.

That long-shot 1966 effort failed, leaving him wrestling with doubts about his future and his faith. But Carter rallied, including years of work with Billy Graham's 1973 Atlanta Crusade. He also joined a small circle of Southern Baptists who travelled to the central Pennsylvania hills to witness to the unchurched.

"We had a wonderful religious experience," Carter told the Historical Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. "We had 18 people who accepted Christ that week, and we organized a church … before we left." The experience, he said, left him "the closest to Christ" that he had ever felt in his life.

That turning point, featured in the Baptist Press report marking the death of the 100-year-old former president, was a perfect example of the "born-again" faith that made Carter so mysterious to America's political establishment when he reached the White House in 1976. Carter's blend of Southern piety and stubborn political convictions would end up changing the role of American evangelicals in public life.

Truth is, Carter was part of two endangered groups – populist Southern Democrats and progressive Southern Baptists. In 1976, he fared well with evangelical voters, for a Democrat, but exit polls basically showed a toss-up. In 1980, many evangelicals rejected him and helped create Ronald Reagan's landslide win.

Carter's attempts to state his personal convictions against abortion, while backing legalized abortion, confused and then angered many evangelicals. Meanwhile, Carter's opposition to public funding for abortion helped create a revolt among Democrats, with Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts attempting to unseat him as the nominee.

Over time, Christian progressives would stress that Carter, as a Baptist, consistently stressed that he would clearly state his own beliefs, while rejecting political actions that he thought would use government power to promote specific religious doctrines.

"The United States' most religious president in recent memory was also the most committed to the separation of church and state," noted Amanda Tyler, leader of the progressive Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.

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Were there any religion-news events in 2024? It rather hard to say ....

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President Donald Trump is returning to the White House, convinced – after a close encounter with an assassin's bullet – that he had God on his side in the election.

While opinions differed on that theological question, Trump clearly drew strong support from voters that frequented pews. In Washington Post exit polls, he received 56% of the Catholic votes, while 41% backed Vice President Kamala Harris. In 2020, 52% of self-identified Catholics supported President Joe Biden, with 47% for Trump.

As always, Trump fared well with Protestants and "other Christians," with 62% supporting him, as opposed to 37% for Harris. She won 60% of the votes of non-Christian believers, while Trump had 33% – up 4% from his showing in 2020.

Thus, members of Religion News Association selected the 2024 presidential election as the year's top national religion story. The 2024 poll of religion-news professionals was dominated by analysis of national and international news, as opposed to specific headlines and events, with a strong emphasis on trends among religious conservatives.

But Trump's wins among religious believers – as well as gains among Latinos and Black men – were only one side of this drama, stressed Jessica Grose of the New York Times opinion staff.

Democrats should note the "large and growing religious group that is already in their corner: the Nones," she noted, referring to religiously unaffiliated Americans. "According to new data from the Public Religion Research Institute … 72 percent of the religiously unaffiliated voted for Kamala Harris. Melissa Deckman, the chief executive of P.R.R.I., shared a more granular breakdown of unaffiliated voters with me over email: 82 percent of atheists, 80 percent of agnostics and 64 percent of those who said they had no particular faith voted for Harris."

However, key voters rejected Democratic Party stands on many cultural and moral issues, noted Ruy Teixeira, a veteran Democrat strategist. In a Blueprint2024 survey, the top reason "swing" voters gave for rejecting Harris was that she seemed "more focused on transgender issues" than middle-class needs. Thus, one Trump ad proclaimed: "Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for YOU."

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Life in troubled times: Conservative Catholic archbishop faces conservative Lutherans

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Life in troubled times: Conservative Catholic archbishop faces conservative Lutherans

Serious fasting is hard, even for a Catholic archbishop, especially when the aroma of spaghetti sauce is wafting through a church during an Italian community dinner.

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone learned that lesson during California's bitter battles over the meaning of "marriage," "family" and other common terms that had become controversial. But he had promised to join in 100 days of prayer, and 40 days of fasting, as part of an ecumenical coalition's efforts to defend centuries of teachings on sexuality.

It was evangelical Protestants who proposed the fast, even though traditional Catholics have practiced that discipline for centuries.

"They meant serious fasting — like not eating, or eating very little, just one meal a day. So, not just giving up dessert, you know?", said Cordileone, during this summer's "Issues, Etc." conference at Concordia University in Chicago, sponsored by Lutheran Public Radio. (This independent online network also produces my GetReligion.org podcast.)

The inside joke about Catholics "giving up dessert" hit home, even though he was speaking to Missouri Synod Lutherans.

There was a time when Lutherans would not have invited a Catholic archbishop to this kind of event, said Cordileone. There was a time when it was rare for Catholics to cooperate with evangelicals and other believers seeking common ground on moral and social issues.

"To tell you the truth, I actually long for the good old days when we used to have the luxury to fight with each other over doctrinal issues," said Cordileone, drawing laughter. "But right now, the ship is going down. … The crew cannot afford to stand on the bridge and discuss the best kind of navigation equipment to use — when the ship is going down."

The "ship," he stressed, is not the church — "It's our civilization."

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Arrested for thought prayers: Free-speech debates in England taking a strange turn

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Arrested for thought prayers: Free-speech debates in England taking a strange turn

Wherever he goes, Father Sean Gough prays for the people he encounters – sometimes out loud and often silently.

This isn't unusual, since he is a priest in the Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham, England. Gough was praying silently when he was arrested near an abortion facility in a Public Spaces Protection Order protected zone, while holding a "Praying for free speech" sign. His car was parked nearby, with a small "unborn lives matter" bumper sticker.

The priest was charged with "intimidating service users," although the facility was closed at the time. The charges were later dropped.

Officers also raised questions about his clothing.

"When interrogated by police for silently praying in the censorship zone, they challenged me for wearing a cassock," said Gough, on Twitter. "When do I normally wear one? Don't I realize it'll be perceived as intimidating? These are not questions a person should be asked under caution in a democracy!"

Clause 11 of a recent Public Order Bill – waiting to be signed into law – would criminalize all forms of "influence" inside a 150-meter "buffer zone" around every abortion facility in England and Wales. An amendment to permit silent prayer and consensual conversations failed by a 116-299 vote in Parliament.

After years of debates about religious liberty and freedom of speech, recent events in England have veered into what activists and politicos have described as "thoughtcrimes," a term used in George Orwell's dystopian novel "1984" to describe thoughts that violate ruling-party dogmas.

In the U.S. House of Representatives, eight Republicans circulated a letter claiming it's "imperative that the U.S. speak boldly and clearly to its friend when the U.K. has failed to protect unalienable rights." The document condemned policies that "persecute Christians and other pro-life citizens for thoughtcrimes."

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Ron Sider's struggle: Trying to be 'completely pro-life' can upset lots of Americans

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Ron Sider's struggle: Trying to be 'completely pro-life' can upset lots of Americans

It was the kind of Pope John Paul II quotation that was powerful and prophetic – but hard to print on a political bumper sticker.

"America will remain a beacon of freedom for the world as long as it stands by those moral truths which are the very heart of its historical experience," he said, during his 1999 U.S. tour. "And so, America: If you want peace, work for justice. If you want justice, defend life. If you want life, embrace truth – the truth revealed by God."

One American activist who paid close attention was Ronald J. Sider, a Mennonite theologian who was already several decades into a career built on asking Americans to ponder precisely that equation.

Politicians on left and right would cheer as John Paul attacked the modern world's "culture of death," said Sider. But, in private, Democrats and Republicans would groan.

"People on the left will love what he had to say about the death penalty and racism and caring for the poor," said Sider, when I reached him by telephone. "But many liberals are going to squirm because he ties these issues directly to traditional Christian teachings on abortion and euthanasia and family life. Meanwhile, some people on the right will squirm because the pope made it very clear that he links these pro-life issues to the death penalty and poverty, sickness, hunger and even the environment."

Sider added: "We live in an age of incredible relativism in this society and even in the church. We live in a land that seems to have lost its way."

These kinds of tensions defined Sider's own struggles as a hard-to-label political activist and ecumenical leader. He died on July 27 at the age of 82.

Christianity Today listed Sider's classic "Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger" as one of the 20th century's most influential religion books. The flagship evangelical magazine also ran this headline with a cover story about Sider's career – "Unsettling Crusade: Why does this man irritate so many people?"

Conservatives often noted that one of Sider's first forays into politics was creating Evangelicals for McGovern during the 1972 White House race.

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Norm Macdonald: Wisecracks about big, eternal questions while his clock ticked louder

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Norm Macdonald: Wisecracks about big, eternal questions while his clock ticked louder

Comedians frequently take shots at taboo targets, but that wasn't what Norm Macdonald was doing when he addressed Down's Syndrome while solo recording what became the new "Nothing Special" on Netflix.

"I love people with Down Syndrome," said Macdonald, in a no-audience performance packed with his familiar pauses and bemused expressions. "I wish I had Down Syndrome, and I'll tell you why. They're happy. You know what I mean? …

"What's wrong with that? … People get mad at them … and they pity them. Now, who's the bad person in that scenario?"

The former Saturday Night Life star – who died September 14 after a secret nine-year fight with cancer – recorded nearly an hour of material during the coronavirus pandemic, before yet another operation in the summer of 2020. He said he "didn't want to leave anything on the table in case things went south."

This Netflix finale offers fresh musings on mortality and morality that, with Macdonald's blunt language and haunting images, evolve into meditations on how modern people deceive themselves. The X-factors in his art were religious faith and his love of literature ranging from Mark Twain to Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

"Macdonald showed respect for basically everyone, with the exception of himself and people like O.J. Simpson and Bill Clinton," said Rich Cromwell, a television professional and essayist for The Federalist. "He was not a Christian comedian – that's clear. But that was part of who he was, and he treated faith with respect. …

"This Down's Syndrome material is a perfect example. He didn't turn that into an overt argument about abortion, but it's clear that he is saying all life is worthy of respect, even if some people don't judge that life to be worthy. He's saying people with Down's Syndrome are God's children, no matter what."

"Nothing Special" ends with an A-list reaction panel – David Letterman, Adam Sandler, Conan O'Brien, Dave Chappelle, David Spade and Molly Shannon – who knew Macdonald as a friend and colleague. This special was full of "third-rail stuff," noted O'Brien.

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What's next for Democrats for Life? Questions of faith and politics after Roe v. Wade

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What's next for Democrats for Life? Questions of faith and politics after Roe v. Wade

As outraged Democrats jumped on social media after the fall of Roe v. Wade, some symbolic voices in the party offered careful words of celebration.

"Let's Stand Together and Support Women and Children!!!", tweeted state Sen. Katrina Jackson, the African-American Democrat who sponsored Louisiana's trigger bill that includes potential 10-year prison sentences for those who perform abortions.

Jackson's added calls for "womb to tomb" legislation raising wages for childcare workers, funds to fight human-trafficking and new state programs helping families.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, also a Democrat, posted several Twitter messages, including: "My position on abortion has been unwavering. I am pro-life and have never hidden from that fact." He stressed that this Louisiana bill included clauses protecting procedures in cases of "medical futility" and ectopic pregnancies and added that he believes it needed "an exception to the prohibition on abortion for victims of rape and incest."

The Democratic Party, in its 2020 platform, remained committed to "protecting and advancing reproductive health, rights and justice," while promising to "fight and overturn federal and state laws" limiting or opposing abortion rights.

But in the wake of the Supreme Court's recent Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, crucial debates about abortion laws will move to state governments. Some have already passed bills protecting unborn children and others have taken equally strong stands defending abortion rights.

Many states are located somewhere in between, noted Kristen Day, leader of Democrats for Life of America. In these states there will be tense negotiations over legislation – such as "heartbeat bills," usually defined as abortion bans after six weeks of gestation – that were impossible under court actions linked to Roe v. Wade.

While "pro-life" Democrats are an endangered species inside the D.C. Beltway, there are "hundreds of us active in state governments," said Day, reached by telephone. Many of these Democrats are linked to Black and Latino churches – grassroots workers that national party leaders may not want to attack or alienate.

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'Guard the sacrament'? Nancy Pelosi's bishop steps into the 'McCarrick doctrine' wars

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'Guard the sacrament'? Nancy Pelosi's bishop steps into the 'McCarrick doctrine' wars

After fierce closed-door debates about President Joe Biden and Holy Communion, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops managed to release a muted document last fall that did little to please activists on either side of the church's wars about abortion and politicians in pews.

But one passage in "The Mystery of the Eucharist in the Life of the Church" turned into a ticking clock in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, setting the stage for the current clash between Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone and a member of his flock – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

"It is the special responsibility of the diocesan bishop to work to remedy situations that involve public actions at variance with the visible communion of the Church and the moral law," noted the bishops. "Indeed, he must guard the integrity of the sacrament, the visible communion of the Church, and the salvation of souls."

Cordileone's diocese includes the 12th Congressional District of California. After six private attempts to reach Pelosi, he released a May 20 statement telling her that "you are not to present yourself for Holy Communion and, should you do so, you are not to be admitted to Holy Communion, until such time as you publicly repudiate your advocacy for the legitimacy of abortion and confess and receive absolution of this grave sin in the sacrament of Penance."

The archbishop built his case with quotes from Pope Francis, Pope St. John Paul II and the now-retired Pope Benedict XVI, as well as Canon law stating that Catholics who "obstinately persist in manifest grave sin" are "not to be admitted to Holy Communion."

The speaker's words and actions, he added, suggest she isn't worrying about papal authority. Pelosi, the mother of five children, recently told the Seattle Times that the "personal nature of this is so appalling, and I say that as a devout Catholic. They say to me, 'Nancy Pelosi thinks she knows more about having babies than the pope.' Yes, I do. Are you stupid?"