Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

A couple weeks ago, we asked our awesome subscribers to email us and tell us how they’re feeling about the current state of the pro-life movement, and we were blown away by your responses. 77 of you replied, and it was so encouraging for our team to hear from you and connect with you. A bunch of you shared that you felt:

• Excited that we have more access to great pro-life arguments 
• Frustrated because good dialogue—the courage to speak up at all, and the calm to stay kind when you do—is really hard
• Excited because Dobbs gave us the ability to pass state laws against abortion
• Frustrated because the pro-choice side has a much bigger microphone and budget
• Excited by the dedication, passion, and commitment they see in the pro-life movement, no matter the obstacles, no matter how laws change over time
• Frustrated because some pro-life leaders talk in a way that makes it easy for pro-choicers to paint the whole pro-life movement as the pro-everything-Trump-does movement
• …and many other excitements and frustrations

Sometimes the pro-life movement feels a little bit like an unhealthy family Christmas where everyone has to pretend like everything is fine and we have no problems—everything about the pro-choice movement is 100% evil; everything about the pro-life movement is 100% perfection.

So it was so encouraging to hear you all name both the beauty and the brokenness of the pro-life movement. Because this side of heaven, just about nothing is all one or all the other—we humans are all both broken and beautiful, and so are the systems and institutions we create. (Mild Christianese alert—if that doesn’t resonate for you, take what’s helpful and leave what’s not.)

Sometimes it’s hard to hold both. We feel disloyal if we name anything that’s not good on our side, or we feel like abortion is so horrific and the pro-choice side is so radical that anything bad the pro-life movement does isn’t even worth talking about. Or on the other end, we feel like there’s so much brokenness in the pro-life movement that it’s hard to see good in it anymore, or feel like it could ever be a healthy movement. 

To hold and take seriously both brokenness and beauty, grief and hope, sometimes feels like a kind of madness. But I also think it’s the only sane way to live in a world as beautiful and broken as ours.

All that to say—thanks for writing in and sharing your excitements, frustrations, thoughts, and feelings. We always love hearing from you, but it was particularly encouraging and grounding to hear from so many of you about how you hold the complexities of the pro-life movement.

The post Beauty and Brokenness in the Pro-Life Movement originally appeared at the Equal Rights Institute blog. Subscribe to our email list with the form below and get a FREE gift. Click here to learn more about our pro-life apologetics course, “Equipped for Life: A Fresh Approach to Conversations About Abortion.” 

The preceding post is the property of Rebecca Carlson (apart from quotations, which are the property of their respective owners, and works of art as credited; images are often freely available to the public,) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of Equal Rights Institute unless the post was written by a co-blogger or guest, and the content is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the author (Rebecca Carlson) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show only the first three paragraphs on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.

The post Beauty and Brokenness in the Pro-Life Movement appeared first on Equal Rights Institute Blog - Clear Pro-Life Thinking.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes.

Josh and Timothy Brahm debriefing with the Students for Life staff after an outreach with them in 2014.

Consider whether the following sounds like one of your typical outreach events:

You reserve a table spot on campus. Then you tell your club about the upcoming event, but you end up getting a low response from members. You become frustrated by this, wishing your club was larger and that the current club members would step up and be more committed. You and the other club leaders must stay at the table for much longer than you’d like to because you don’t have enough volunteers to cover the table. This adds stress and takes away from your study time. Each time you want to have a tabling event, you feel even less enthusiastic and more desperate for help than before!

If this sounds like you, you’re not alone. I’ve heard stories like this all too often from students I mentor, and it was my story as well until I learned about the power of debriefing after an outreach. Once I gave my fellow club members the opportunity to discuss and process their conversations after tabling events, their feelings about outreach changed. And when their feelings changed, their behavior changed, too. My club members began requesting more outreach events, and they even moved their schedules around so that we could fill all of the time slots. Outreach became a priority because we had a purpose at the table and we came to understand the benefits of the experience for ourselves and our campus.

Getting Started

Josh and Timothy Brahm lead a debrief session with the University of Michigan Students for Life club after an outreach in 2016.

You want the members of your organization to get the most out of your events, and facilitating a short discussion afterwards will help achieve that goal. Debriefing after an outreach event gives students the opportunity to gain feedback from others and process their own experiences out loud, which may differ from the way that they independently processed the event. Instead of each member of your club only learning from their personal conversations, they can learn from every conversation at the table that day.

I always start debrief sessions the way we learned from our friends at Justice For All: by asking everyone to raise their hand if they had at least one conversation. Unless it was an awful outreach day or a bad spot on campus, virtually everyone should raise their hand. Then I’ll ask how many had two conversations. Most raise their hands. “How many had five conversations?” Your club members will be able to see that the day was a huge success.

Then I invite people to share stories from their day. People often share their favorite conversation: perhaps it was with a person who changed their mind or at least ended up closer to the pro-life view than they were before. Sometimes these are stories of funny or weird things that happened. And, sometimes people open up and share a story of a difficult conversation or something that happened that they’re struggling with. Lead by example; care for this person and encourage them. Occasionally people will also share things that pro-choice people said that stumped them. When this happens, give a quick lesson on how you would have responded and/or invite the rest of the group to jump in.

You should encourage as many students as possible to sit down together at the end of the day for the debrief. Even if students were hosting the table earlier in the day and are not scheduled to be there at the end, encourage them to come back for the discussion.

Going Further

You will see results by having even a short debrief session at the end of the day. However, using this method, you will only benefit the really active members of your club who already attend outreach events. That is why I strongly recommend you have two debrief sessions for every outreach: once at the end of the outreach day, and once at the next club meeting.

This may seem like a waste of time, but I promise it is not. I started to do this when I was a club president, and I saw a dramatic shift in the involvement of my club because it changed the way people thought about tabling.

When you start off your pro-life club meeting with a recap of what happened at the last tabling event, the students who didn’t attend the event still have the opportunity to hear about the conversations that took place. Imagine the morale boost to the club members when they hear about how their friend saw someone’s mind change on abortion at the last outreach. Suddenly, this abstract idea of standing at the table becomes a realistic, obtainable goal of helping another student change their mind about abortion. Your club members need to go from thinking about tabling as an uncomfortable or boring situation to viewing it as the amazing opportunity that it is. If they know that your events are not a waste of their time, then they are more likely to come, and debriefing helps people arrive at that understanding.

Furthermore, giving active students another opportunity to share will help with membership retention. Sometimes conversations that happen at outreach are difficult and emotionally draining. Students need to receive support from their friends when this happens, and debriefing at the meeting reminds them that they are part of a team of advocates. If students know ahead of time that they can count on that space to vent and receive encouragement or sympathy, it will sustain their energy and keep them coming back.

Question: Does your student pro-life club currently hold debrief sessions after outreach? What outcomes has this produced?

Please tweet this article!

• Tweet: It’s Important to End Your Outreach Well. Here’s How.
• Tweet: Are you a pro-life student leader who wants to increase well-attended campus outreaches? Rachel Crawford weighs in on one critical action.
• Tweet: It is critical to create a space where students can debrief and process after a pro-life campus outreach.

The post “It’s Important to End Your Outreach Well. Here’s How.” originally appeared at the Equal Rights Institute blog. Subscribe to our email list with the form below and get a FREE gift. Click here to learn more about our pro-life apologetics course, “Equipped for Life: A Fresh Approach to Conversations About Abortion.”

The preceding post is the property of Rachel Crawford (apart from quotations, which are the property of their respective owners, and works of art as credited; images are often freely available to the public,) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of Equal Rights Institute unless the post was written by a co-blogger or guest, and the content is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the author (Rachel Crawford) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show only the first three paragraphs on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.

The post It’s Important to End Your Outreach Well. Here’s How. appeared first on Equal Rights Institute Blog - Clear Pro-Life Thinking.

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes.

Those of you who have spent any amount of time on social media lately know that political discourse has been particularly ugly in recent weeks. Ever since the controversy began over separating children from parents caught crossing the border illegally, there have been comments about what it means to be “pro-life.” My favorite tweet from the time of that controversy came from my colleague Rachel Crawford:

Anyone thought of policing the terminology of #prolife today? I think it would really help start a productive dialogue

— Rachel Crawford (@RachelKCrawford) June 18, 2018

There are many worthwhile discussions to be had about immigration policy, but policing the term “pro-life” is not a prudent way to start one. [Tweet that!] There are good, compassionate, reasonable pro-life people of every political stripe. This is possible because being pro-life in regards to abortion is entirely consistent with all kinds of other positions all over the political spectrum.

Consider the example of political libertarianism. Although I don’t consider myself a libertarian, I admire the simplicity and elegance of this philosophy. Libertarians often defend their position with the non-aggression principle, which dictates that force should only be used in self-defense. The libertarian then concludes that the government’s reach shouldn’t extend beyond protecting people from each other. For example, it would be appropriate for the government to outlaw murder, theft, and rape, and to use force against individuals who commit such aggressive acts, but it would be wrong to outlaw any drug use because then the government would be the one initiating force. Moreover, libertarians believe that taxes shouldn’t fund anything that isn’t strictly necessary. Therefore, under this view, welfare programs are immoral. A libertarian would argue that the government shouldn’t aggress against the taxpayers by forcing them to pay for such a program, even if it does good things. The citizens should be free to make that program if they wish to do so.

Let’s imagine two libertarians, Art and Bob, who fully ascribe to the above description of libertarianism, with one major disagreement: Art thinks human fetuses are person, but Bob does not. This means that Art considers the act of abortion to be an aggression against an innocent person, so he opposes it on libertarian grounds. Bob, however, thinks that any attempt to restrict abortion is an act of aggression against the woman, because she isn’t aggressing against a person. For this reason, Bob is in favor of legalized abortion.

Art and Bob are both obviously and undeniably being consistent. At least one of them has at least one wrong belief, but given their assumptions, they are both consistent.

Pro-life people are often held to weird standards that no one else is, and it is poison to reasonable discourse. As Scott Klusendorf points out, no one criticizes the American Cancer Society for neglecting issues unrelated to cancer. Just imagine the memes: “You aren’t pro-long life, you’re just pro-surviving cancer and then immediately dying from some other disease!” The aforementioned debate on immigration and child separation is just the latest example of this trend. People are constantly making statements like, “You can’t be pro-life unless you are pro-whole-life,” meaning that you must agree with their position on immigration and a host of other topics in order to be against abortion. Here are just a few examples from Twitter:

To the #ProLife people who don’t care about the detainment of undocumented kids seeking asylum: they were once fetuses you cared so much about. #FamiliesBelongTogether

— Dr Tyffani M Dent (@DrTyffaniMDent) July 3, 2018

R U honestly & Truly = Pro-life?
Yes?
Then U must b fighting 4:
National min LIVING WAGE
National affordable housing = 1/4 monthly income
National Health Care 4 all (including Dental & Eyesight)
Affordable Daycare
Maximum 40 hr work week
& more…
That is, if U R truly Pro-Life!

— DKAtoday (@DKAtoday) June 29, 2018

Pro life goes beyond the unborn it extends to all life. Aren’t you Catholic Mike? Stand up to Trump on some of his policies that violate humanity! #prolife #KeepFamilesTogether #catholic

— Merry Weather (@WeathersRabbits) July 3, 2018

How can the same people who say they want to protect unborn fetuses also support putting living children in cages?

Is that what Jesus would do?#WhereAreTheBabies #KeepFamilesTogether #BorderChildren #ProLiving#ProLife ?

— Marquis Olison (@TheQuis) June 20, 2018

What a great job those #prolife Republicans have been doing – splitting up migrant families and sending a child away to die away from his parents. #KeepFamilesTogether

— Laurie M DefendtheConstitution! (@lauriedtmann) June 20, 2018

#ProLife groups should speak up loudly against #separatingfamilies at the border. Otherwise, they should drop the #ProLife label. #KeepFamilesTogether

— RoN De LeoN (@roniboy) June 19, 2018

Click on this image for the uncensored tweet.

Maybe everyone should hold a particular position on immigration. Maybe that position should be open borders. But it is simply and obviously false to say that one cannot consistently oppose the intentional and brutal murder of children while also having a strong stance in opposition to illegal immigration.

It is a common and aggravating game to use the term “pro-life” as a lever to force anti-abortion advocates into taking extreme positions that people on the left consider to be compassionate. I’m open to the idea that I am wrong about universal health care (I’m currently opposed), or universal basic income (I’m currently opposed), or open borders (I’m currently opposed), or any number of other issues that supposedly make me uncompassionate. But there is a very big difference between all of those issues and abortion. Abortion intentionally, and in most cases brutally, kills a living, human child. The question of how much we help other people, or rather, the question of how much we force people to help other people, is different in kind from the question of whether we allow small, defenseless people to be killed by comparatively large, powerful people. [Tweet that!]

Again, maybe I’m wrong about all of those positions. I’ve been wrong before, and I very well could be again. I might even be wrong because I’m an uncompassionate jerk. But I’m not being inconsistent. I think all of those policies are, among other things, economically foolish and counterproductive, and that has nothing to do with whether or not it should be legal to intentionally dismember living babies. Economic policy and baby-dismembering are very different issues, so a person can hold all sorts of consistent positions on those subjects. For instance, someone could be pro-abortion-choice and extremely fiscally conservative, and that wouldn’t be any more inconsistent than being pro-abortion-choice and anti-net neutrality.

It is not inconsistent for me to believe that it’s wrong to intentionally kill helpless babies while also believing that it’s morally permissible to kill in self-defense. Maybe I’m wrong about one of those things, but there is no inconsistency.

Similarly, it is not inconsistent for me to be against abortion and to believe in just war theory, to believe that sometimes a war is just and that killing enemy combatants in a just war is morally acceptable. I might be wrong about just war theory, but there is nothing inconsistent about those two positions. One position supports the intentional killing of enemy combatants, and the other opposes the intentional killing of innocent human beings.

If I justified my view about abortion by claiming that killing humans is wrong in all circumstances, then I’d be inconsistent. But that isn’t how I’m justifying my pro-life stance. I’m justifying it with the principle that it’s wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings. Perhaps I should be using a different principle. If you think so, then by all means, make your case. But as long as I’m using the principle I’m using, the fact that I’m open to a just war does not make my position inconsistent.

I happen to be against capital punishment for pragmatic reasons, primarily that our country has an alarming track record of executing innocent people. But at a principled level, if we knew for certain that the person we were executing was guilty of murder, I would have no problem with it. Maybe that’s wrong, but it is hardly inconsistent to support the execution of a murderer while opposing the dismemberment of innocent babies until they die.

It is really easy to score rhetorical points by asserting that someone is inconsistent, and that makes it tempting. It may even feel right because you think they ought to believe different things. But feelings aren’t the issue when it comes to the claim of inconsistency; only the positions of the person accused of inconsistency matter.

Peter Singer believes that in certain circumstances it’s okay to kill infants because they aren’t self-aware yet. I think that’s reprehensible, but give Peter Singer credit for his consistency. By all means, criticize him for his wrong views, but don’t accuse him of inconsistency unless he is actually being inconsistent.

If we want political discourse to improve, we need to distinguish between these types of accusations. If you’re one of the people that calls conservative pro-life people inconsistent, here is my suggestion: Argue that my views are wrong. Argue that I’m being uncompassionate. Argue that I’m illogical, or bad at research, or bad at listening to people who are different from me. Those are all plausible reasons for the positions that I hold and I welcome that discussion. But if you argue that I’m inconsistent simply because we disagree on some other issue, I won’t find you persuasive and neither should anyone else. You only have two options: 1) make the case that the two positions I’m holding cannot possibly be held at the same time without being inconsistent, or 2) drop the inconsistency claim and just argue that one of my positions is wrong.

 
Facebook has greatly reduced the distribution of our stories in our readers’ newsfeeds and is instead promoting mainstream media sources. When you share to your friends, however, you greatly help distribute our content. Please take a moment and consider sharing this article with your friends and family. Thank you.

Please tweet this article!

• Tweet: “Inconsistent” is Different Than “Wrong”
• Tweet: There are many worthwhile discussions to be had about immigration policy, but policing the term “pro-life” is not a prudent way to start one.
• Tweet: There are good, compassionate, reasonable pro-life people of every political stripe.
• Tweet: Pro-life people are often held to weird standards that no one else is, and it is poison to reasonable discourse.
• Tweet: The question of how much we force people to help other people, is different in kind from the question of whether we allow small, defenseless people to be killed by comparatively large, powerful people.
• Tweet: Someone could be pro-abortion-choice and extremely fiscally conservative, and that wouldn’t be any more inconsistent than being pro-abortion-choice and anti-net neutrality.

The post “Inconsistent” is Different than “Wrong” originally appeared at the Equal Rights Institute blog. Subscribe to our email list with the form below and get a FREE gift. Click here to learn more about our pro-life apologetics course, “Equipped for Life: A Fresh Approach to Conversations About Abortion.”

The preceding post is the property of Timothy Brahm (apart from quotations, which are the property of their respective owners, and works of art as credited; images are often freely available to the public,) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of Equal Rights Institute unless the post was written by a co-blogger or guest, and the content is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the author (Timothy Brahm) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show only the first three paragraphs on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.

The post “Inconsistent” is Different Than “Wrong” appeared first on Equal Rights Institute Blog - Clear Pro-Life Thinking.

If you do not already have a public Facebook page for your group, then you need to create one right away. A Facebook group for your club members to privately chat in is not the same as a page because it does not allow you to develop either a public following or interest in your group. The Facebook page is a public platform that allows people to find you, follow what is happening with your group, and share your posts with their friends.

These 16 tips will help you to get measurable results from your Facebook page:

Estimated reading time: 13 minutes.

How to Increase Your Followers

#1: Focus on a Single Platform

If your organization is just starting out on social media or currently only has a small following, then jumping into multiple social media platforms could spread you too thin. For most local or student pro-life groups, a Facebook page is going to be enough to get started. Don’t make the mistake of setting up a Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and a blog for your organization if you won’t post consistently on them. For most smaller groups, it will be much more impactful for you to be regularly posting on one platform than sporadically posting across multiple platforms. Most likely, you are only going to be able to offer original content once or twice a week about what you are doing, so you don’t have enough to make it worthwhile for your followers to keep up with you through multiple overlapping social media accounts.

If you really feel the need to be on multiple platforms because you think a majority of your audience cannot be reached on Facebook alone, then you should be using a tool like Hootsuite or TweetDeck to streamline publishing. These sites will give you better control by organizing the social media for you.

#2: Post Regularly

If you are not seeing a steady increase of followers on your page, then you are probably not posting enough. Many people get the majority of their news from Facebook. Unlike email, where most people are tired of getting a flood of information from organizations, social media allows the user to just scroll past a page that posts a great deal, even as often as once a day.

Some pro-life leaders think about posting on social media whenever they have an upcoming event or something particularly important happens that they want people to know about. This is a reactionary approach. In this approach, you are only posting when it is most convenient and important for you, not your followers. You need to build the page in such a way that increases the engagement and following of the audience prior to the most important posts so that you will already have their attention when you really need it. Create a goal for posting that is consistent and achievable given your current resources.

#3: Have a Clear Brand

You may not be a professional in marketing or graphic design, but you can still be intentional in the way you choose what colors or images you use. Communicate to your followers what kind of organization you are through your page. Generally, the more professional a Facebook page looks, the better. For my Students for Life group, we used our school colors in all of our branding. Our logo was a picture of baby feet, which we utilized in our promotion at tabling events and on our Facebook page.

When you are creating the page, select a color scheme that you want to use for your group. Colors have psychological effects on how people perceive products and companies. If you are interested in learning more about this, here’s a helpful marketing article on this subject.

When you are selecting images, try to be consistent about what you post so that at a glance your page can have a uniform feel to it. You could choose to post pictures that your group takes at events so that the majority of your images are your own, or you could use stock photos to accompany what you are talking about. Here is a good resource for finding stock photos. Some pages are better suited for artistic graphics or memes. It depends on who your audience is and what message you want to send. If you want to create good looking memes or flyers, Canva.com is a fantastic resource.

If thinking about branding is overwhelming, don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good.

#4: Directly Invite Members to Like the Page

You should schedule time during meetings to have members go on their individual Facebook profiles to like the page themselves and invite their friends to like it. Asking members to take a minute when you have them gathered there in person and invite 20 of their pro-life Facebook friends to like the page is not too much pressure (it also makes it more likely that it will actually get done). Make reaching a certain number of likes a goal and celebrate when you reach it. Aloud at your meeting say something like, “We want to hit 100 likes by the end of the semester!”

#5: Use the Influence of Like-Minded Groups

Connect with other pro-life Facebook pages, especially those of groups that are similar to your pro-life niche or near your location. You should be sharing each other’s important posts so that you can collaboratively build up your audiences. Message any groups that are similar or proximate to you. Start by asking them if they would be interested in partnering with you on social media and ask them how you can help them. Once you have the relationship started, you can ask them to have their members like your page, or even reach out to them when you have an important post you’d like them to share.

For example, the Fresno Students for Life group had a professor destroy their pro-life sidewalk chalk and tell them that their public university was not a protected free speech area. They had a video of the incident and wanted to have as many people see it as possible to draw attention to the story. If you have something like this happen and you’ve already built relationships with other groups, then you can start with a much broader audience than you would without the network.

How to Create Better Posts

#6: Always Use an Image

This tip is a simple but necessary one to follow. Facebook’s algorithm determines how posts are sorted in the news feed for users. This algorithm changes semi-frequently, but you can generally be sure that any posts with images will have more success in the algorithm than ones without. If you want people to see your posts, use an image.

Here is an article on the latest update. Choose an image with either minimal or no text. You can post new images every time or reuse the same ones for particular strategies. For example, you could post the same picture every week of a graphic that says “Meeting Tonight!” or a picture of pizza if you are offering free food as an incentive.

#7: Don’t Lose Sight of Your Objectives

When you are formatting and scheduling your Facebook posts, think about what you want your followers to get out of your page. You always want to bring more members to your organization, but you also are looking to have existing members be more active and stay involved.

Keep in mind that those people who are not very active members of your organization are unlikely to open and read any emails you send. Your most active members don’t need the reminder every Monday that you have a meeting, but for those who are new or don’t come to meetings, the Facebook post may be what gets them in the door. For this very reason, you should be posting the day of or the night before each meeting and event to alert people. In these posts, you can give them a taste of what will be happening at your meeting. You must include essential details like time and location in each one of these posts.

Other goals for your organization may be increasing donations or having external people attend your group’s events. Keep your goals in mind when you are designing your Facebook page so that it has a clear vision.

#8: Share Pictures and Stories from Events

Every time you have an event, you have to take pictures that you can later share online. This will keep any donors you have updated, and it will help people who might want to come your events to know what is happening. If you host an event where it would be possible to record video, then you should do so. If you can, have members write reflections or stories from events, pair them with photos, and create separate posts for each one. Here’s an example of how we did this after one of our outreaches.

#9: Share Personalized Content

If all you’re doing with your Facebook page is sharing stories from LifeNews.com, you’re doing it wrong. You can share videos, events, news stories, and other content from outside organizations, but this shouldn’t overshadow the content from your own organization. If the majority of your posts are from secondhand sources, then people do not have good reason to follow you. Followers want to know what your organization is doing, so offer original content about your own events and members.

#10: Take Advantage of Facebook Live

Facebook changes the way it operates fairly often, but at the time of this publication, Facebook is still giving notifications for when pages and people go live. This means that if you film a live video, instead of it being just another item in a follower’s news feed, each person will receive a notification that your page has begun a live video. This is a much better way to get attention immediately. You should go on Facebook Live when you are currently at an important event. When you finish recording, Facebook will give you the option to post the video to your page so that people can view it later.

#11: Use Social Media for Recognition

You should give members of your organization recognition for achievements. For some personalities, public recognition is the best way to make them feel appreciated, while others prefer private acknowledgments from their supervisors in the form of a note or small gift. Your Facebook page may be an appropriate place for public recognition for any of the following circumstances: new leaders who have been elected, when a member accomplishes a large task, generally thanking someone for hard work like employee or volunteer of the month, or when someone retires or leaves the organization after leading for a long time. These recognition posts provide additional original content with little work on the parts of the leaders and can simultaneously uplift the hard-working members of the group.

Using Facebook Events

#12: Plan Ahead

Don’t create Facebook events for something small and regular like a meeting, but definitely use them for a larger public event, especially if you’re planning it at least a month ahead of time. If you are hosting a speaker, for example, you would already have a location reserved and details in place far enough in advance so those attending can reserve the date. Have each member of your organization invite at least 100 people, ideally who are in the area and are likely to be interested in attending.

Once the event is created, have each member agree to share the post at the same time. This will affect the algorithm to increase the likelihood that the post will be at the top of news feeds for users who are friends or in your area.

Don’t forget to invite pro-choice friends to events that are geared towards a mixed audience. Many people only think to invite their pro-life friends, but the right kind of event could help someone change their mind about abortion.           

#13: Select “Interested” for Other Pro-life Events

When there are pro-life events in your area that you cannot attend, you need to select the “Interested” category. This will not only boost the event in Facebook’s algorithm, but it will also help show your support. Select “Going” if you are actually able to attend the event so that the organizers can plan accordingly.

The amount of people marked “Interested” or “Going” in a Facebook event can greatly alter the public’s perception of the impact of the event itself. When I was a student, the pro-choice group on my college campus created a Facebook event labeled “I Stand with Planned Parenthood Rally.” Over 1,000 people on Facebook marked that they were going. The day of the event, I expected the location on campus to be packed with students and people from the community. Instead, I was surprised to see only three students running the table outside. The Facebook event had an intimidating number of people who said they were going, but a shockingly small number of people were actually there and asking those walking by if they would take a picture with a sign that said they stood with Planned Parenthood.

In contrast, the pro-life events that I hosted at my university would often get few responses but decently sized real life turnouts. It shouldn’t be that surprising that not everything we see on social media is consistent with reality. However,  public perception of your group is important. I think that this example shows how pro-choice people have been faster at figuring out how to use social media to improve how they are perceived by the public.

Eliminate Potential Problems

#14: Have a Social Media Chair

To ensure social media will be a higher priority for your organization, designate the task of running social media to a specific person on the leadership team. This person will be responsible for posting enough to meet the regular goal, as well as creating a scheduled backlog of content that is ready to be published. Facebook allows page administrators to schedule pre-made posts in advance. This allows the social media person to publish when it is most optimal for the organization, but also lets them accomplish the task on their own time.

Multiple people can be administrators for a single Facebook page, so even if you have a designated social media person, you can also allow other leaders to have access from their personal Facebook accounts. This allows them to help reply to messages or assist the social media chair when necessary.

#15: Organize Usernames and Passwords

Imagine the following nightmare scenario: You have just been handed the reins to a pro-life organization, and one of your jobs is to manage its social media accounts. The last person who was in charge wasn’t organized and can’t remember the passwords because they were just assuming they’d remember. They logged out of the accounts during the leadership transition, and now the passwords are gone.

Don’t risk locking your future leaders out of the social media accounts you worked so hard to build up. You should have the passwords and usernames saved somewhere that is accessible to the leaders of your group. When you step out of your leadership role, you should be handing over important information to your replacement and giving them access to everything you control.

#16: Be Mindful of Copyright Laws

Some schools have copyright policies for student organizations. Usually something like school colors are fair game, but certain words, phrases, and logos can be off-limits. Check the student organization handbook to make sure you are following any rules specific to your school.

Question: Does your pro-life group already have a Facebook page? What kind of results have you seen from it? Let us know in the comments below!

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The post “16 Tips for a Better Pro-Life Group Facebook Page” originally appeared at the Equal Rights Institute blog. Subscribe to our email list with the form below and get a FREE gift. Click here to learn more about our pro-life apologetics course, “Equipped for Life: A Fresh Approach to Conversations About Abortion.”

 The preceding post is the property of Rachel Crawford (apart from quotations, which are the property of their respective owners, and works of art as credited; images are often freely available to the public,) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of Josh Brahm unless the post was written by a co-blogger or guest, and the content is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the author (Rachel Crawford) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show only the first three paragraphs on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.

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Another problem is that I’ve long felt that some virtue-signaling is not actually morally objectionable, but I never see people make distinctions to allow for that. It’s just an accusation, and an inherently irrefutable one at that. I’d like to offer some distinctions between types of Virtue-Signaling with the hope that people will be able to distinguish the objectionable types from the acceptable types. I’ll close with suggestions about how and when to accuse someone of Virtue-Signaling, all with the desired end of helping dialogue to be more productive between parties that disagree.

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes.

What is Virtue-Signaling?

Virtue-Signaling is always referred to in a negative way, but given that the term itself is etymologically neutral, my recommended definition is intentionally neutral in order to minimize confusion:

virtue signal
noun

1. to give an indication that you have a particular virtue (usually, though not necessarily, through a statement).

Note that this baseline definition of Virtue-Signaling does not make any statement about intent, which means you can Virtue-Signal even without intending to and without being aware of it.

Virtue-Signaling must then break down into two categories: Intentional, and Unintentional. The Unintentional Virtue-Signal would be when someone indicates that they have a virtue but not because they are trying to do so. Their mind is just somewhere else when they give the indication of their virtue.

For instance, when someone posts on social media about her own Bible reading or devotional time, that signals that she is virtuous because she is spiritual, has good discipline, takes her faith seriously, etc. Plausibly when some people make such posts, they are doing it because they want their friends to think they have virtue, which would be a case of Intentional Virtue-Signaling. But I don’t think it’s unreasonably optimistic to think that sometimes when people make such posts, they are doing it because they think it’ll be encouraging to friends who read it, and are genuinely not doing it to score points with anyone. Such cases are Unintentional Virtue-Signaling.

Intentional Virtue-Signaling has two subcategories: Selfless, and Selfish. The previous example of Intentional Virtue-Signaling is Selfish. The reason the person intentionally signals her own virtue is for the sake of making other people think well of her, and having her friends think well of her is no help to her friends.

But there are times in a dialogue where it is very much in the interest of the other person for one to signal their own virtue (Selfless, Intentional Virtue-Signaling). For instance, when a pro-choice person says she is pro-choice because she is deeply concerned about women in poverty, the wise pro-life advocate will honestly affirm that concern before offering his counter-argument. If he doesn’t, then that will unintentionally but understandably signal something inaccurate to the pro-choice person: that he doesn’t even care about women in poverty. In order to help the pro-choice person to accurately understand the situation, the wise pro-life advocate should Selflessly, Intentionally Virtue-Signal by stating that he is also concerned about women in poverty (unless he actually doesn’t care, in which case he is a bad person). The fact that the pro-life advocate is Virtue-Signaling for the sake of the other person is the key. In this case, he’s kind of forced into it. He’s on the horns of a dilemma; either he Intentionally Virtue-Signals, or the pro-choice person will interpret the absence of the Virtue-Signal as a lack of the virtue itself. The Intentional Virtue-Signal is sometimes necessary in order to communicate clearly.

Some kind of allowance for morally appropriate Virtue-Signaling must be granted. If the way we are going to think about Virtue-Signaling is that it is always reprehensible and must be avoided, then it becomes very difficult to speak. Almost anything can be interpreted as a Virtue-Signal, and once you start thinking about Virtue-Signaling, you become remarkably self-conscious about it (don’t even get me started about how uncomfortable it is to write this article because of all of the ways it could be perceived as Virtue-Signaling).

These distinctions result in three types of Virtue-Signaling (though I’m sure more appropriate distinctions can be made), all of which should be viewed differently:

1. Unintentional Virtue-Signaling is not morally objectionable. An exception could be made for someone that is being willfully naive, or who in some other way ought to know better. If you and your friends post Bible verses on Facebook all the time to encourage each other and you tell me that you aren’t intentionally choosing verses to make you seem deep or spiritual, I’ll believe you and I won’t judge you. On the other hand, if someone is told by multiple close friends that the way they behave on social media comes across like they are really intentionally managing their own image and they don’t change, then they are culpable even if somehow they aren’t Virtue-Signaling on purpose. This example should also show that Unintentional Virtue-Signaling, even if not objectionable on a moral level, can still be foolish or socially awkward.
2. Selfish, Intentional Virtue-Signaling is morally objectionable, and is probably what most people mean when they accuse each other of Virtue-Signaling.
3. Selfless, Intentional Virtue-Signaling is not morally objectionable, and is sometimes even necessary for clear communication.

When Should We Accuse People?

You should never accuse someone else of Virtue-Signaling. Ever.

The problem is that distinguishing the morally objectionable Virtue-Signaling from the morally innocuous Virtue-Signaling is only possible for yourself. The distinctions are based on the completely internal factors of whether you’re conscious of the Virtue-Signal or not, and whether your intention was for your own sake or for someone else’s. You can know if you Virtue-Signal in a bad way, but whether or not anyone else does is completely unknowable to you.

If you have a close friendship with someone that you suspect of Virtue-Signaling, then it might be an act of good friendship to graciously ask them if they have a problem (not accuse them). The same would be true of accusing someone of being prideful. There is nothing to gain from dismissing one of your friends by declaring them to be prideful. Sure, we all have people that we think are prideful and sometimes we’re right because we have good evidence for our beliefs. But that doesn’t make it the type of accusation that is appropriate in any context other than close-friendship.

If you’re a conservative and your leftist friend regularly posts with the hashtag “Black Lives Matter,” it is wrong to make assumptions about your friend’s heart. Maybe he is posting it because he wants his friends to think he is woke and anti-racist, or maybe he’s posting it because he is genuinely trying to encourage his black friends and speaking what he believes to be truth. It might be intentionally self-serving on his part and it might not be, and the more you can discipline your mind to assume the best of him, the more virtuous you will be.

If you’re a leftist and your conservative friend regularly posts about his support for the military, it is wrong to make assumptions about your friend’s heart. Maybe he is making those posts because he wants his friends to think he is a good person because he is patriotic, or maybe he’s posting because he is genuinely trying to encourage his friends in the military. It might be intentionally self-serving on his part and it might not be, and the more you can discipline your mind to assume the best of him, the more virtuous you will be.

On the other hand, we should all try to judge ourselves very harshly when we think about our own motivations. This is particularly a problem on social media because it is such a natural setting to be focused on one’s image. When you make a Facebook post or send a tweet, ask yourself if you’re doing it to help people or to make them think you’re awesome. Plausibly it’ll often be both. The distinctions I’ve suggested as a starting point for thinking about Virtue-Signaling unintentionally imply that our behavior is more simplistic than it is. We usually have multiple motivations for a given action, some of which will be selfless, and some selfish. Whether you are primarily doing it for yourself or whether it is close enough to the line that it’s morally safe to post is something only you can know. I’d encourage you to remember that “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).

“I’m Angry at Your Conclusion Because Obviously Some People Are Virtue-Signaling!”

Yes, obviously some people are Virtue-Signaling. I’m not saying don’t ever think someone is probably Virtue-Signaling (though it’d be better to keep that kind of speculation to a minimum). The question is, what kind of accusations are helpful in public conversation?

It is never helpful to respond to someone’s argument or statement by accusing them of a personal sin that is internal, and therefore unknowable to anyone else. Maybe they are making that statement because they are just filled to the brim with personal pride, but it doesn’t do anyone any good if you respond by accusing them of pride. Maybe they don’t seem to care about your favorite cause because they’re a lonely, mean, hateful person, but making that accusation can only reveal something about yourself, not the other person. Maybe they are racist against black people and that’s why you have a political disagreement, but if political disagreement is your only evidence of racism then making that accusation will only inflame the situation.

Charity demands we give our political opponents the benefit of the doubt that they are doing their best, that the reason for our disagreement is based on a different understanding, or ignorance, or something other than mere vice. If we cannot have dialogues on those terms, then the national conversation will only continue to worsen, and frankly, that terrifies me. Sometimes an accusation of Virtue-Signaling will be very well justified. Even in those cases, choosing to rise above it is better than dragging the conversation into the mud of personal, unknowable sins.

Let’s remove Virtue-Signaling from our public vocabulary and keep it where it belongs: in conversations about personal ethics and spiritual growth.

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The post “On Virtue Signaling” originally appeared at the Equal Rights Institute blog. Subscribe to our email list with the form below and get a FREE gift. Click here to learn more about our pro-life apologetics course, “Equipped for Life: A Fresh Approach to Conversations About Abortion.”

The preceding post is the property of Timothy Brahm (apart from quotations, which are the property of their respective owners, and works of art as credited; images are often freely available to the public,) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of Josh Brahm unless the post was written by a co-blogger or guest, and the content is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the author (Timothy Brahm) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show only the first three paragraphs on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.

The post On Virtue-Signaling appeared first on Equal Rights Institute Blog - Clear Pro-Life Thinking.