Customer Reviews

Sacred Work: Planned Parenthood and Its Clergy Alliances

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I was in the methodist clergy 1971 - 1989 and never knew that this was one of the great conflicts of the twentieth century. Planned Parenthood was firmly in place and I had no idea of the storms that
had been involved. The great names: Niebuhr, Oxnam, Fosdick, Peale
transformed the social, political and religious environment. In 1916, it was utter ignorance about sex and reproduction. By 1965, everything was available. Sacred Work is about Protestant and Jewish clergy, from pastoral concerns, fighting as great a fight as was civil rights or anti-war. Warfare is begining again; it behoves us to know our history.

A book reviewer's job is to provide an informed opinion as to whether the writer accomplished their craft and has written to the best of their ability a good book. A review shouldn't be a platform for the reviewer's political or religious point of view. A review should be about the book. Reviewers should be able to back up their opinions by explaining the strengths and weaknesses of the book by taking examples from the text of the said book. The key word here of course is opinion, to what one reviewer might trumpet accolades, another might pan relentlessly. The reader must remember, it is easier to critique than create and that everyone has an opinion. Sacred Work focuses on subjects that cause great controversy and as a reviewer I dreaded writing this review, not because it is a poorly written book, on the contrary, Davis has written an incredible informative tome on the history of Planned Parenthood and the organization's involvement with the clergy. The conundrum is that as a fair and unbiased book reviewer I cannot allow my personal beliefs about Pro-Life or Pro-Choice seep into this review.
With that said let us begin.
For my entire life so far, from birth to this exact moment I have enjoyed being a heterosexual male and I haven't any plans in the near or distant future that I can foresee that would invoke me into changing genders. For a decade I have been a husband and partner to a wonderful woman. I am the father of three beautiful and magnificent daughters. I was raised by a strong and independent mother and I am proud to admit that my mother-in-law and I are friends. I think it is safe to say that I am respectful to women and sensitive to their rights, but until I read Tom Davis book I never fully understood the trials and tribulations women through out history, including the present day endured to maintain their reproductive rights and autonomy and how much the clergy was involved.
What exactly is the nature of `sacred work' and how does it involve Planned Parenthood and the clergy? Davis writes, "In the biblical view, sacred work is love and in practical social realities, sacred work is justice...nowhere was injustice more clearly present then in the twentieth-century battle over contraception...if women were able to determine their reproductive life, then the control over their lives by male dominated political institutions would be threatened...and since spiritual realities cannot be separated from social and political life, the pursuit of the sacred work of justice takes clergy into the public arena. The realm of justice is a realm of hard, sometimes tragic choices. As Planned Parenthood and the clergy each tried to stand with women making those hard choices a bond was formed."
The popular misconception about the clergy and Planned Parenthood in the media is that they are bitter enemies. Davis blows apart this myth. He writes, "In the spring of 1997 the Planned Parenthood affiliate in Washington D.C. opened a clinic in a nearby church. Soon after indicating how incongruous the situation seemed to be, the Washington Post ran an article under the headline "Unlikely Alliance for Planned Parenthood." The Washington Post may have thought it was merely reflecting the popular understanding that the work of Planned Parenthood is opposed by all religious institutions...an alliance between churches and synagogues, temples and Planned Parenthood has existed for over seventy years...below public radar, mainline Protestant and Jewish Clergy in their alliance with Planned Parenthood, have played a major role in achieving respectability for birth control in a nation whose religious convictions always involve social and moral issues and never more than when the subject at hand involves women's sexuality." Davis goes on and explains how Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood in 1913 searched for information about contraception in the United States. Davis writes, ..."Sanger herself worked as a maternity nurse...delivering babies of immigrant women...she saw the horrific consequences of decades of the suppression of sexual information... women having frequent illegal abortions, women overwhelmed by poverty and too many children, women dying because they had no knowledge of how to prevent one pregnancy after another...hoping to find some birth control information...Sanger went on a six-month search in some of the finest American libraries, including the Library of Congress. She could find virtually nothing. She marveled at how completely this information was suppressed. In effect, there was no practical knowledge of birth control available in America." Sanger then went to Europe and learned about different types of contraception. When she returned home she published a magazine called The Woman Rebel and shared her finds with American women and traveled around the country giving speeches, she was immediately a target of the law and she knew she needed the aid of the clergy. Davis writes ... "One of her Cleveland appearances was at the First Unitarian Church, an early sign of the religious support to come from that denomination." Sanger said, "When I am confronted with arguments against Birth Control, arguments that are as a rule presented by learned theologians or indefatigable statistician, the dim far off chorus of suffering and pain begins to resound anew in my ears. How academic, how anemically intellectual and how remote from throbbing, bleeding humanity all these prejudiced arguments sound, when one has been brought face to face with the reality of suffering!"
Davis writes, "To their credit, a number of clergy joined Sanger in her urgency for the freedom to choose contraception. From the 1930s on, clergy support for Planned Parenthood grew steadily. In city after city, affiliates found that some clergy were more than willing to speak out publicly in defense of clinics. By the 1960s it was precisely the religious and moral authority of these supportive clergy that changed public opinion about birth control."
Davis continues with the history of the clergy's involvement with Planned Parenthood and discusses how the Roman Catholic Church made sure hospital funds were taken away when women were informed of different contraceptive techniques, let alone that contraception or even abortion was an option. The Vatican wanted to enforce a gag order that other clergy fought. Davis writes, "This issue remains alive as it was in 1952-53. The controversies that currently embroil Planned Parenthood and the women's movement involve government attempts to impose "gag rules" both internationally and domestically. These rules state that no government funding can go to clinics that inform a pregnant woman that abortion is one of her choices. That is forbidden speech. Those clergy who oppose gag rules invoke the right of freedom of speech."
Davis has not just written a history or compendium of the clergy's relationship with Planned Parenthood for the last seventy years. Sacred Work is an epic on hope and human nature. It shows that the fall-out from an agrarian nation that rapidly mutated into an industrialized consumer based disposable culture still has checks and balances in place made up of those that seek social justice for the weak and unprotected from an antiquated value system and hierarchy of a male dominated society that enforces an ambiguous moral code of guilt that demeans and subjugates women. Davis's writing has enhanced and has brought a post-postmodern quality to Margaret Sanger's discourse. He has defined and set a standard for those that wish to do sacred work in the twenty-first century and beyond.

Rev Davis work captures the historical aspects of the pro reproductive choice movement. The biblical commands of justice not judgement drive the involvement of the clergy to support women in their reproductive work. Women's health care being provided in churches? What a great concept.

This is a horrible book that uses 245 pages to describe the definition of oxymoron.