So one of the elders on the Mission & Evangelism committee of Santa Isabel church asked me a few weeks ago if I could help out with a project that the committee is working on. He told me they wanted to inform youth and families in the church neighborhood about an important personal issue - something like sex or abortion or drugs. He asked if I had any suggestions about what issue they could host a lecture/discussion on, and if I could be the one to lead it (since I'm a "sociologist," as EVERYONE knows by this point...) He then showed me a survey about religious beliefs and people's attitudes towards family issues/problems that the committee had prepared and was planning on administering door to door in the neighborhood to create a "profile" of the community they want to evangelize.
My mistake was that I looked at the survey before I answered the question about participating in or leading the lecture/activity. On the survey, I immediately identified several questions that were unclear, others that didn't give appropriate answer options, and more still that were worded in a leading manner. After looking it over, as a college grad who's taken more than a couple statistics and research methods classes, I DEFINITELY felt qualified to give them suggestions to improve their survey's clarity and effectiveness. This confidence boost also led me to tell him, in what must have been some sort of stupor, "yes, I can give a talk about a family issue from a sociological perspective. How 'bout I talk about teenage sex and its side effects?"
Fast-forward to today (all of that happened two or three weeks ago). This lecture definitely IS going to happen (frequently, ideas like this "hatch" in a hurry, and then the enthusiasm fizzles). However, because of the lack of communication and maybe my own misunderstanding of some things, the topic has changed a little bit. I went to a Mission & Evangelism committee meeting last Friday and was shown one of two hundred copies of a promotional flyer. Half the flyer has all of the information about the event: "Saturday, May 30, 4pm at Santa Isabel Church [address] a video presentation, followed by a lecture by North American Missionary Alex Cornell (Sociologist) from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas on the topic of 'Sex Outside of Marriage and Abortion.' Entrance is FREE." The other half has a big, fat picture of me. As of this morning, these flyers are now posted on walls and telephone poles around the neighborhood.
Yes, I really am not sure when "abortion" got added to the lecture topic. I know next to nothing about abortion. If any of you know the secret number to Obama's blackberry, I'd love to have that so I can get some advice (the only problem is I won't be talking to north american catholic college students). The movie that serves as the "video presentation" that is being advertised is called "Punto y Aparte" ("Point and Apart"...? I dunno) which I haven't seen (I've been given a copy and I'm going to watch it this afternoon). It's apparently a Mexican film that tells the story of two sexually teenage active couples that get pregnant, one rich and one poor. So in the next (less than) two weeks, I've gotta watch this movie and figure out what the heck I can say for an hour that will somehow accurately inform a bunch of families and youth about their sexual choices without getting me kicked out of the church. ANY ADVICE IS WELCOME! In the meantime, I probably won't be going out much, since I'm pretty sure there aren't too many other white, 20s-ish looking males with brown hair and goatees in the neighborhood...
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2 comments:
SOCIOLOGIST!
Goodness, as amusing as it may be rhetorically, that's quite a quagmire!
Now, I'm going to try to keep my opinions out of this, but I think the following might be a kind of moderate approach to the abortion thing (and I hope it's even remotely helpful) that covers the bases of what it does and why it's dangerous without necessarily taking a side:
Abortion is the process in which a fetus (as the moment an egg is fertilized and implanted in the lining of the uterus, it qualifies as a fetus) is either surgically or pharmaceutically removed from a woman's uterus, thus terminating the pregnancy. The process is uncomfortable for the woman and can result in hormone fluctuations which can cause a depression similar to post-partem depression. While medical care in the States makes it a fairly safe procedure, if the woman is not closely monitored there can be serious complications including sterility and even death.
That's about as clinical as I can produce without gettin' all opinionated ;) Hope it helps!
Well, I hate to give advice to a professional sociologist, but here's my two cents:
Question for you: do you think abortion is immoral but nonetheless should still be legal, or do you not think it is immoral at all? I'm NOT talking about the extreme circumstances, such as when a women's life or serious health is in danger, since those cases, plus cases of incest and rape, make up only 5% of abortions...at least in the US, I don't know about Peru.
My point is that unlike Obama, who is responsible for executing the law of the land and thus has an informal say in what the law is, you don't have to talk about your opinion on abortion in regards to it's legality. You ONLY have to discuss this from a moral/faith perspective. So what is that perspective? If you haven't thought about it, well, give me a call, cuz that's way too long to comment on this blog...
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