The Consistent Life Ethic
A related strain of thought is the (Catholic and progressive evangelical) Consistent Life Ethic, which sees opposition to capital punishment, militarism, euthanasia, abortion and the global unequal distribution of wealth as being related. It is an idea with certain concepts shared by Abrahamic religions as well as Buddhists, Hindus, and members of other religions. The late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago developed the idea for the consistent life ethic in 1983. Currently, Sojourners is particularly associated with this strand of thought. Adherents commonly criticize politicians who identify as pro-life but nevertheless oppose funding for pre-natal vitamins, child nutrition programs, or universal health care.
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Famous quotes containing the words consistent, life and/or ethic:
“Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“Life! Life! Don’t let us go to life for our fulfilment or our experience. It is a thing narrowed by circumstances, incoherent in its utterance, and without that fine correspondence of form and spirit which is the only thing that can satisfy the artistic and critical temperament. It makes us pay too high a price for its wares, and we purchase the meanest of its secrets at a cost that is monstrous and infinite.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“I’m a Sunday School teacher, and I’ve always known that the structure of law is founded on the Christian ethic that you shall love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself—a very high and perfect standard. We all know the fallibility of man, and the contentions in society, as described by Reinhold Niebuhr and many others, don’t permit us to achieve perfection.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)