To Time: Bart Stupak as Christian of the Year

A few weeks ago I heard third hand that Time Magazine was preparing for its 100 Most Influential People issue and was looking for a “most influential Christian”. They weren’t, of course, asking me, but blogs are the great fantasy-indulgers, so I hereby give my unsolicited opinion to Time:

Bart Stupak.

The Democratic congressman from Michigan is my vote for a Christian hero of the year. I know only what I read about him in a couple of newspaper profiles and the numerous reports on the health care drama that mentioned him. As I understand it, he was the leader of the pro-life Democrats in the House who insisted on abortion restrictions in the House version of the bill and then held out for a compromise in the reconciled version of the bill such that he did not get all of those protections for the unborn but ended up with a promise of an executive order that would mandate the bulk of the restrictions. Considering the complexity of health care policy – not to mention all the ambiguity of governing in a representative democracy – that outcome is as about as Christian as I can imagine.

How he came to his vote was just as important. He could of followed his pro-life Republican colleagues and looked for any pro-life imperfection in health care reform as the basis for an excuse to obstruct the process and deny health insurance to those whom the bill would cover (mostly the poor, as I understand it). And of course he could have knuckled under to Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic herself, and invoked realpolitik an excuse. But my impression is that he was acting consciously as a Christian, putting that identity above electability and party loyalty, and, as a Catholic Christian, was submitting to the guidance of his bishop. Oh, that we Christians, would approach all matters that way.

Finally, Stupak probably can't rightly be counted among the most influential people in America, which should probably disqualify him from being on Time's list, but not for Christian. God does not rank people by their power in the world. He calls people out of the world and with them comprises the body of Christ. Each person has a role and a season. God's "heroes," as such, can be unlikely characters who emerge from obscurity and then seemingly fade away -- Ruth, Rahab, Peter. Shoot, Jesus is the prime example. Bart Stupak was not the most eloquent, clever or powerful congressman and yet he tilted the most important domestic legislation of the decade in the favor of mercy. For that, he's my Christian hero of the year -- and should have been one of Time's too.