Abortion and the American Church
In our sins of silence and omission, we Christians are responsible for the strength and breadth of the abortion genocide. In fact, a majority of women undergoing abortions identify as Protestant or Catholic. Seventy-six percent of post-abortive women reveal that the Church had no impact on their choice.
To turn the tide, Christians must first own the abortion genocide as our responsibility. Politicians have made it clear that they are not going to end abortion.
America’s Leading Cause of Death
More than 2,500 children are killed in abortion every day in the United States. The children killed in America would fill five to six elementary schools every day. Abortion is the leading cause of death in America, surpassing deaths from cancer and heart disease.
Believers hold that each individual is a divine work of art made in the image and likeness of a loving God. This is what leads us and our churches to minister to the poor, the hungry, and all the oppressed. It is what drives us to provide such services as marriage counseling and grief support.
Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent — and often even vocal — sanction of things as they are.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Yet when pro-life advocates speak with pastors, they tell us they are afraid they will offend the congregation. Or they claim abortion is not a pressing issue. Some churches have not just averted their eyes from the abortion genocide. They changed their doctrines to support abortion.
Our churches have followed the secular priority of private needs rather over God’s priorities. But God’s command is clear. He tells us in the Ten Commandments: “You shall not murder.” He tells us in Proverbs 24:11: “Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.”
Our Responsibility
Christians must own the abortion genocide as our responsibility.
First, we must repent of our failure to take responsibility for this genocide sooner. 2 Chronicles 7:14 reads, “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
Second, we must educate ourselves and our churches about abortion. This is difficult but necessary. We have to show our pastors why they must risk offending the congregation, why abortion is a pressing issue.
Third, we must engage in spiritual warfare. We are the only ones who recognize that abortion is a symptom of spiritual death. It is the particular calling of the Christian to pray that women and children be released from the violent grips of evil in abortion.
And finally, the Christian Church must speak as the Church and not as part of the world. In his Letter From Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King, Jr., lamented the Church’s tendency to uphold the status quo. He urged Christians to rally for the truth without apology, saying: “There was a time when the church was very powerful — in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.”
Christians are an influential force in America. It’s time for us to stop conforming to the culture and start transforming it. We can be the thermostat that transforms society’s disregard for the unborn.
Lauren Enriquez is public relations manager of the Human Coalition. Founded in 2009, Human Coalition fuses technology, best practices, and tangible help to compassionately serve the unreached, abortion-determined woman. Hear more about this topic on our weekly broadcast, The Human Element. She wrote Who Cares More? Pro-Lifers or Pro-Choicers? for The Stream.
