Some recent number crunching reveals a trend that is really not all that surprising, but no less disturbing for being predictable:
[T]he proportion of Catholics who oppose abortion is strongly correlated with the proportion of the other major religious group who oppose abortion. All things equal there was an international tendency for Catholics to be somewhat more anti-abortion than non-Catholics, but a far better predictor of attitudes was not religion but nationality. In other words Catholic Germans resembled Protestant Germans while Catholic Chileans resembled Protestant Chileans.
To my minds this really just further underscores the way in which major ethical “questions” cannot be disassociated from the larger issue of the way in which Christian identity is so strongly determined by national and territorial ideologies. Until we conceive of and live our Christian existence as missional diaspora I doubt we will get much coherence on the “big” issues of the day.
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