Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Watson, "Is the Abortion Debate Over?"

Micah Watson--Director of the Center for Politics & Religion and Assistant Professor of Political Science at Union University in Jackson, TN--has a nice article today at "Public Discourse," reviewing the abortion debate and commending Scott Klusendorf's book. An excerpt:
What is needed now are pro-life thinkers and activists who have the intellectual chops to navigate the arguments and insights of the philosophers, the communication skills to translate them for both the pro-life rank-and-file and the persuadable middle, and the charisma and savvy to inspire and guide the pro-life movement. What we need, in other words, is more people like Scott Klusendorf and more books like his recently published The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture (Crossway Books).

Klusendorf is president of the Life Training Institute and travels the country arguing for the pro-life cause. His book can perhaps best be described as a sort of bridge between the robust philosophical arguments of people such as Gerard Bradley, Francis Beckwith, and Robert P. George, and concerned citizens who care about abortion but are not going to trouble themselves with the distinctions between essential and accidental qualities of persons and mind-body metaphysical dualism. Klusendorf has a gift for explaining arguments without dumbing them down. It is not too much of a stretch to say that he has a bit of C.S. Lewis’s knack for taking what can be a complex-sounding issue and presenting in terms that regular people can understand. And, like Lewis, he often does this through helpful analogy and fictional, though entirely realistic, dialogue.
Read the whole thing.