“In a hundred years, if Christians are identified as people who do not kill their children or the elderly, we will have done well,” theologian Stanley Hauerwas observed in an interview in 2012.
It didn’t take 100 years.
In a letter to politicians ahead of this week’s parliamentary debate on assisted suicide in the United Kingdom, television host and euthanasia activist Dame Esther Rantzen, who is suffering from terminal lung cancer, expressed her frustration that her family could allegedly face prosecution for accompanying her to Dignitas, the Swiss suicide service located in Zurich.
Rantzen urged MPs, several of whom have announced publicly that they are rescinding their previous support for MP Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, to vote for it—and stated that a primary barrier to its passage is parliamentarians with “undeclared religious beliefs” who were not being forthright about their motivations and were merely hiding their faith-based opposition behind other concerns.
“There are some who oppose this crucial reform,” Rantzen wrote. “Many of them have undeclared personal religious beliefs which mean no precautions would satisfy them.”
MPs were livid at Rantzen’s missive. Labour MP Jess Asato stated that “Many colleagues found this distasteful and disrespectful.” MP Florence Eshalomi concurred: “As politicians we have to be clear that members with valid concerns about this bill are not raising it because of some ideology or religious belief. It is because we recognize that if this bill passes it may impact everyone.”
She added: “It is frankly insulting to disabled people, hardworking professionals up and down the country who have raised many valid concerns about this Bill, to have it dismissed as religious beliefs.” Indeed, the Royal College of Psychiatrists recently made a stunning intervention, stating that they cannot support the bill due to “serious concerns” about safeguards; the Royal College of Physicians followed suit, stating that there are “concerning deficiencies” with the bill.
Indeed, the most prominent criticisms of the bill highlighted the danger it poses to the vulnerable, the fact that every disability rights group in the country opposes it, and the mass rejection of proposed safeguards. Dame Esther Rantzen is a wealthy and privileged person, who believes that her right to receive state-approved and medically-administered suicide trumps the right of the vulnerable—who have been speaking very loudly on this issue—to safety and security.
But more revealing is Rantzen’s assertion that someone’s religious beliefs are somehow disqualifying. Why should Rantzen’s ideological belief that suicide and euthanasia are “human rights”—a view grounded in nothing but her precommitment to radical autonomy and glazed over with an appeal to compassion for the suffering cannibalized from Christianity—trump Christian opposition to suicide?
It is true that Christians oppose assisted suicide and euthanasia, not least because we believe that unjustly killing people is wrong. Western civilization has been served well by this belief. Why is that foundational belief, in Rantzen’s view, inferior to her own selfish demands for total autonomy at the cost of those too vulnerable to wield control of their own lives? Rantzen had no answer for the protestors in wheelchairs weeping outside Westminster as she exulted in the assisted suicide bill passing first reading, and so instead she accuses Christians—who stand with the vulnerable—of harboring “undeclared” beliefs.
Stanley Hauerwas was tragically correct, although his timeline was optimistic. The truth is that the fate of the vulnerable in the UK does now lie in the hands of Christian MPs willing to vote their consciences—and MPs who still cling to the very Christian view that the vulnerable are entitled to society’s protection. Labour MP Karl Turner said this week that he would not vote for the assisted suicide bill a second time because he does not believe that he should “be God.” Dame Esther Rantzen disagrees with him. God help us if she succeeds.
