David Dark, Will Campbell, and Imago Dei: Incomplete Thoughts on Moving from a Theoretical Love to a Full-Orbed Ethics for Life

I first heard the name David Dark in November 2011. In San Francisco for several conferences, I picked up my friend Greg Thornbury from the airport. Now, anyone who knows Greg knows that the guy is nearly always on the go—irons in nearly every fire and all that. Nearly as soon as we got in the car making our way to the hotel (and an Over the Rhine show at The Great American Music Hall that evening), Greg's phone rang. At this point of the story and for the first time in my life, that name showed up. Greg quickly joined what seemed an ongoing conversation, which seems to describe every conversation I've ever had with Greg or maybe even heard Greg have. Anyway, to my story: Greg jumped back into this conversation with a friend of his—the aforementioned David Dark. I learned fairly quickly after the call that David was a philosopher and theologian. And one that Thornbury clearly saw as a formidable mind. In the years since then I have often heard Greg talk about his friend and the insightful and challenging work he is doing.

Fast forward a few years and another of my close and longtime friends, Jason Thompson, brought up that name again. Seems David Dark was teaching at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, which is where Thompson was then calling home. I can't recall if Jason brought him up because of one of his several books or if it was because Dark had recently written an insightful piece on Will Campbell. Regardless, there was that name again, bringing two worlds together.

One might expect that learning of such a link between two of those people in my life whom I see as genuinely thoughtful in a go-and-make-a-difference sort of way might have led to me sitting down and devouring the guy's several books and many writings. I've spent plenty of time reading works by theologians, philosophers, and historians that are clearly not as meaningful. But things didn't happen that way. I had read his work on Campbell and several other essays that I imagine Thompson pushed my way. And despite frequent (some might say all-too-frequent) visits to Nashville, I've never met the guy, though I'm hoping Thornbury can change that fact really soon.

But one sentence of Dark's has been before my face rather often over the last few years. Best I can gather from a quick search, he unleashed it on an unsuspecting world on 27 January 2017. Given the circumstances and context, I have no reason to think that isn't correct. Are you ready? Here. We. Go.

Now, I can imagine the initial response quite a few of you who care enough even to glance over things I might share here are having. And given the way I have heard friends reply when they saw this (one might well say) prayer offered by Dark, I am not surprised at all by your reaction. You likely see this as some sort of attack on dearly cherished and held pro-life values and beliefs. But here's the thing, I feel more and more certain every single day that it is time to challenge how often a genuine pro-life ethic is actually being cherished and held. And that's where my reflections on David Dark have led me for the last several hours. Granted, these thoughts remain a tad unpolished, but perhaps they are meaningful even as they move toward some semblance of refinement.

The short of it is this: I grow less and less inclined to have conversations with people who champion pro-life values and beliefs without any sincere willingness to wrestle with and adopt a full-orbed pro-life ethic. If one only asserts the idea of imago dei and notions of pro-life thought around the issue of unborn children, then I can only believe that person is only anti-abortion and not pro-life.

So, then, two questions: why does the distinction matter? And what is the disctinction?

Considering an answer to the first question reminds me of the truth asserted by Wendell Berry in his 1991 essay “Out of Your Car, Off Your Horse,” namely, "abstraction is the enemy wherever it is found." So, for at least one specific reason that the distinction matters I look back at David Dark's offered prayer—specifically the first twelve words. More often than not when I talk with many of my evangelical (yes, I know that word is fraught with countless issues these days and I use it here tentatively) friends, they claim that one of the primary reasons they voted for Donald Trump in 2016 was his stance against abortion, especially late-term abortions. Even without an attempt to determine the sincerity of his stance or if the sorts of procedures he often describes even happen, the distinction matters because of a single issue, being seen as pro-life. Quite a few of my friends will and have made exactly that claim. And because of that one issue, they will vote again for the man referenced in Dark's 2017 supplication. That prospect, in my estimation, stands as one specific reason the distinction matters.

So, then to the second question: what is the distinction between anti-abortion and pro-life? I am going to aim for concision here, which might lead to some imprecision as refining continues. The distinction seems one of extent. The last few years demonstrate, in my estimation, that such a focus on a single issue demonstrates that such voters often don’t extend their thinking far enough to embrace a fully-orbed pro-life ethic. If one accepts the assertion that life matters because of the imago dei, then why draw a line at the lives of unborn children? Why not actively include all life created in the imago dei?

So, yes, defend the unborn.

But are you standing for the fatherless and the widow? The refugee? The homeless? Don't these lives matter too?

Will you vote with the lives of those suffering both at home and abroad because of the prison-industrial complex? The agricultural-industrial system? The military-industrial complex? Or will you justify incarceration rates, the death penalty, the plight of small farmers, and the indiscriminate destruction of our "enemies"? What role is there for the imago dei in protecting these lives?

Will you stand to regulate industrial mining, which not only devastates specific places, but also the people of those places? Will you get behind sensible gun regulations, perhaps providing some oversight on some liberties for the sake of some lives?

These aren't hypothetical questions. Such concerns aren't simply expressions of theoretical love.

Please, believe in life. Defend life. Appeal to the imago dei. Promote a full-orbed pro-life ethic.

Talk about the unborn. But don't stop with that one issue. Talk about the fatherless and the widow. Talk about babies in cages. Talk about peaceableness. Talk about refugees. Talk about civil rights for all people. Talk about protecting human life from the consequences of modern industrializing tendencies. Talk about children raised in this world of lock-down drills.

And then struggle to find ways to do more than talk.