Victories for assisted suicide law; Evangelicals grapple with immigration policy

In Wednesday’s RNS transmission Jim Barnett reports that efforts to block the assisted suicide law will likely wither: Republicans control both chambers of Congress and likely could muster enough votes to block an Oregon law allowing physician-assisted suicide. But an apparent about-face by an Oregon senator could alter the political landscape dramatically in the Senate. […]

In Wednesday’s RNS transmission Jim Barnett reports that efforts to block the assisted suicide law will likely wither: Republicans control both chambers of Congress and likely could muster enough votes to block an Oregon law allowing physician-assisted suicide. But an apparent about-face by an Oregon senator could alter the political landscape dramatically in the Senate. After winning a 6-3 Supreme Court decision Tuesday (Jan. 17), supporters of the Oregon law gained a second, unexpected victory: the grudging support of Republican Sen. Gordon Smith. Because Senate rules protect personal prerogative, senior Republicans likely would defer to Smith’s wishes. Smith’s decision is yet another blow to religious groups trying to derail the Oregon law.

G. Jeffrey MacDonald examines reasons why evangelicals are sitting out the fight on U.S. immigration policy: As the U.S. Senate begins to grapple this month with the fate of an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants, some of the nation’s best-known and most powerful organizations are opting to watch from the sidelines. That decision comes despite decades of evangelical initiative to make America a hospitable haven for religious and political refugees. The search to explain their silence on broader immigration policy leads through several layers of reasoning. For starters, the Christian right has other fish to fry at the moment, namely the confirmation of conservative judges. Beyond that, some suspect evangelicals don’t want to appear soft on lawbreakers of any kind. And on a level that plumbs the depths of what it means to bear Christian witness, evangelicals confide they’re still struggling as a community to determine the right thing to do.

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