Evangelical Bioethics and the Web

Joe Carter, a former Marine, said he started blogging as a way to become an influential voice for Christian values even though he doesn't have Ivy League credentials. (By Rich Lipski -- The Washington Post)

In 2005, he went to work for the Center for Bioethics, and one year later to the Family Research Council.

Joining the council has increased his visibility, at least at inside-the-Beltway places such as the Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative think tank where he attends a weekly briefing for bloggers.

By some measures, the change among evangelicals has been dramatic. A generation ago, leaders rarely spoke out against abortion; even the Southern Baptist Convention voted in 1971 to support making it legal under conditions including rape and "severe fetal deformity." Today, Americans who identify themselves as evangelical are the most opposed of any faith group to abortion -- far more than those who identify themselves as Catholic -- even in cases of rape or danger to the mother's health, according to a new survey by Baylor University.

The Catholic Church's position -- as opposed to that of many Catholic laypeople -- aligns with conservative evangelicals on many bioethics issues. Most prominent religious Christian bioethicists are Catholic, as are key religious research institutions, experts say.

Evangelical Christians -- particularly those who identify themselves as charismatic -- also oppose embryonic stem cell research and physician-assisted suicide in higher numbers than do Catholics, according to the Baylor survey.

Bioethics and religion experts attribute this increased conservatism among evangelicals in part to the rise of conservative advocacy organizations such as the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family and the Christian Coalition, all founded in the past 30 years. In 1994, a group of evangelical and Catholic leaders drafted a statement emphasizing areas of theology where they agreed and noting shared areas of policy interest, including opposing abortion.

Yet what will happen next is unclear. Other surveys show that evangelical Christians are very divided on other related issues, such as contraception, in-vitro fertilization and the death penalty. And religious conservatives in general have been a minority force in the bioethics field.

Some leading evangelical bioethicists are not hopeful about the future, populated with debates not only about embryonic stem cell research and abortion but also about organ farms and artificial intelligence.

"Christian bioethicists are uninfluential -- even on religious people," said Nigel M. de S. Cameron, director of the Center on Nanotechnology and Society at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Cameron said he now focuses his efforts on untraditional allies, such as "radical feminist and mainline pro-choicers," with whom he finds common ground on issues such as global trafficking in women's eggs.

Among those watching the landscape is Joe Gigante, a Catholic political strategist who works with pro-life groups and praises Carter for "reaching across the aisle."

"I think you'll just see more teaming up, more organizations joining together," he said. "As time goes on, those barriers from the non-Catholic world are wearing down."