As Christians, we ought to be able to discuss, debate, reason, mutually submit to the word of God, and ultimately unite around divine revelation in collective action, yet far too often, these debates go nowhere.
As we enter this election year, the major talking points are coming into focus: flagrant and endemic illegal immigration, an ever-weakening economy and ever-increasing inflation, ongoing foreign wars, and even inevitable “culture war” issues such as diversity initiatives and so-called “gender-affirming care” for children. These issues, particularly immigration and the economy, are the dominant talking points currently beaten into our national consciousness, and they are likely to only increase in emphasis as November approaches. All of these matters are undoubtedly crucial and worthy of attention, yet our prominent politicians and political commentators, as they grandstand regarding the “current thing,” continue to ignore what should be the central concern of all in the nation: the abortion holocaust.
Ever since Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Dobbs v. Jackson decision two summers ago, abortion has quickly and consistently receded in the list of priorities among Republican political figures. Some of this is due to the delusion that this Supreme Court decision was the long-awaited pro-life victory. As such, some voters may falsely believe that the hands of our representatives are washed of the blood of the preborn, much like Pontius Pilate thought himself innocent of the blood of Christ as he turned our blameless Lord over to murderers. Perhaps an even more common idea, which particularly festers within our cowardly political class, is the embrace of the idea that abortion is a losing issue for conservatives, one better left ignored or avoided.
Whatever the case may be, one will not find abortion high on the list of policy positions or talking points for Republican candidates. There is an argument to be made that this is merely pragmatic politics: even among conservatives, and Christians for that matter, there is significant disagreement on how abortion ought to be combated, and the timidity of politicians to confront this atrocity reflects this lack of unity and clarity within the church.
The purpose of this article is not to encourage politicians to approach abortion courageously and consistently but rather to push the church to finally approach abortion with the courage and consistency that the issue plainly deserves.
The Dividing Line
Over the past number of years, and especially since the Dobbs decision, scrutiny and questioning of anti-abortion orthodoxy has become much more public and widespread. This debate often takes the form of “immediatism versus incrementalism” or “abolitionism versus pro-life.” These distinctions are generally fair enough and tend to hit on essential elements of the debate, yet they fail to truly capture or emphasize the dividing line between the two camps. The reality is that there are genuine, faithful Christians on both sides of this debate.
Every faithful Christian desires to see the end of abortion, yet some believe that this must happen through steady, incremental legislation that protects the mothers and are dissuaded by the suggestion that women ought to be legally liable for their abortions, whether for principled or pragmatic reasons. Others assert, of course, that justice demands the immediate criminalization of abortion for all involved, including the mother, and those in the latter camp are dumbfounded by Christians who cannot arrive at the same conclusion.
People on both sides have difficulty with fathoming how genuine Christians can take the opposite position. Yet there are Christian abolitionists and Christian pro-lifers, as well as Christian immediatists and Christian incrementalists. To be clear, this does not suggest that both positions are equally valid, for they certainly are not. One is thoroughly biblical, and the other is not. As Christians, we ought to be able to discuss, debate, reason, mutually submit to the word of God, and ultimately unite around divine revelation in collective action, yet far too often, these debates go nowhere. My intention here is to frame this conversation in a way that may be more helpful and highlight where the true disconnect lies, particularly by focusing attention neither on strategy and tactics nor political pragmatism but on the very center of the debate: basic theological presuppositions.
A Liberal Theology
In the early twentieth century, J. Gresham Machen argued in his book Christianity and Liberalism that the faith characterized by “liberal theology” was not Christianity but a different religion altogether. Though this false religion appropriates Christian language and claims to respect both Jesus and the Bible, liberalism denies the foundational doctrines of the Christian faith, holding demonstrably unbiblical views on God, man, Scripture, and more, as Machen argued a century ago. This rival religion soon usurped Christianity as the animating spirit in America, as the theology was applied more and more in public life in the years following the Second World War.
Culture and politics both lie downstream of religion. So we should not be surprised that only a couple of generations after most Christian denominations and seminaries fell to liberalism, both the cultural and the political orders followed suit. Machen asserted that “at the very root of the liberal movement is the loss of the consciousness of sin” (Christianity and Liberalism, 65). Consequently, the liberal doctrine of “salvation” is not rooted in the satisfaction of God’s justice against sin leading to a restoration of fellowship between Himself and man through Christ, but rather in unleashing the inherent goodness within man through education and access to resources. Liberalism casts man as a victim of evil in the world whose need is to be liberated in order to reach his full potential.
This theology became the predominant yet unofficial religion of the country, leading to the welfare state of the 1960s. In our day, this religion has been the driving force behind a number of disastrous policies, such as open borders, gun control, safe drug injection sites, and criminal justice reform. The common thread between these and similar political ideas is that man is hindered from attaining the good life by social structures outside of his control. If he can be given access to enough resources, such as money and education, he can live fulfilled as a flourishing member of society. In short, this product of liberal theology can be called the social gospel.
Assumptions of the Social Gospel
What we are discovering in our generation is the vast impact that liberalism as a religion has had not only on our society but on us as individuals. When a particular religion takes hold of a culture, even those who do not hold to that religion are nonetheless influenced. Our culturally dominant religion affects our environment, the water we swim in, and the air that we breathe, and thus colors language, shapes ideas and dictates the boundaries of societally acceptable propositions. For this exact reason, the founders of the United States, many of whom were not themselves Christians, managed to build a Christian republic. Christianity was the cultural worldview at the time, molding and influencing the founders’ minds, and the cultural vestiges of this period can still be discerned today.
Liberalism has had the same effect: one need not be a liberal himself to be influenced by liberal doctrine. All of us have been shaped on some level by the assumptions of what has been our national religion for at least the past sixty years. Part of the discomfort of our modern moment is our ongoing discovery of how countless beliefs that we take for granted today are rooted in liberal heresy. I would argue that among these products of liberalism is the general approach to fighting abortion that has been the pro-life strategy for fifty years.
The divide Machen noticed between Christianity and liberalism remains the dividing line separating the two camps of abortion opponents. Those who would heartily identify with the pro-life label generally support the conventional wisdom regarding effective resistance to the ongoing preborn genocide. This purported wisdom calls for moderate and incremental regulation of abortion based strictly on the biological facts of the preborn child’s humanity, also touting the long-term mental health effects that abortions levy on the women who obtain them. Such regulations vary from health and safety requirements for abortion clinics to the age at which preborn children may be killed to the proper burial procedures for the remains of the slain child.
The overall tenor of pro-life activism casts abortion not as a crime but as a tragedy that must be curtailed and mitigated, inasmuch as the electorate will stand for such action, and all from an officially irreligious standpoint. This approach manifests in an emphasis on education, empowerment, and accessibility to resources to combat abortion. The idea is that if the material needs of the mother are met, if her health care costs are covered, if someone warns her of the long-term effects of abortion, or if she is convincingly taught that the entity inside of her is human, then she is more likely to choose life. All of this, we are told, will result in a society in which “abortion is not merely illegal, but is unthinkable.”
Now, certainly, material needs and criminally high health care costs are real issues that contribute to a mother procuring an abortion, and abortion does indeed carry long-term consequences, both physical and spiritual. Christians who fight abortion must faithfully deal with all of these realities. The church must be willing to help meet legitimate needs and provide accurate information in an age of lies. Yet the liberalism of the pro-life camp is evident in the belief that these actions are sufficient to end the holocaust of abortion.
Victims of Social Injustice
Liberalism, as we have mentioned, sees man’s problem as outside of himself: he is the victim of disadvantages and societal ills imposed on him, and only through the alleviation of these ills and the empowerment of man can he be “saved.” The pro-life approach to anti-abortion activism follows the same paradigm: the mother is imposed upon with not only an unplanned pregnancy but also the prospect of losing her access to education and income. She stares down the daunting concerns of providing food, shelter, and clothing for herself and her child. Thus, she is driven into the arms of the abortionist, who tells her that her baby is merely a clump of cells, the removal of which is no different from having an appendix or gallbladder removed, and so she obtains an abortion.
As with liberalism, the pro-life conception sees the problem of abortion as existing entirely outside of the mother, and therefore, abortion can be ended and the mother “saved” if all of the externalities are nullified. For this reason, many pro-lifers who minister outside of abortion clinics will never offer mothers anything beyond physical assistance and alternatives, and they find the bold proclamation of the gospel in such a context to be counterproductive. Indeed, even the popular notion that the abortive mother, like her baby, is the victim of abortion is rooted in the liberal doctrine that all are victims of social injustice and, therefore, cannot be held responsible for their destructive behaviors.
None of these points indicate that the externalities of abortion are unimportant, nor that organizations like Christian pregnancy centers, which are created to address such needs, are necessarily compromised. Christians must, like Christ, do mercy and meet tangible physical needs: “If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?” (James 2:15-16). The distinction that must always be kept in mind is that biblical theology, as opposed to liberalism, understands that this approach is not sufficient to solve the problem.
Liberalism sees human sin as a tragedy, an unfortunate yet understandable response on the part of individuals to their difficult human circumstances. Theft, violence, rioting, and drug use, while not favorable or helpful, are nevertheless justifiable and point to the true evil of systemic injustice, according to liberalism. The pro-life line regarding abortion is strikingly similar. They say abortion is a tragedy and a devastating response to terrible circumstances, yet one that points to the underlying evil, which is that society has failed women and so has forced them into a position in which abortion seems like a reasonable decision. This perspective is adequately captured by the pro-life slogan “women deserve better than abortion.”
Social Betterment and Moral Improvements Are Not Answers To Sin
Christianity, on the other hand, sees sin as a transgression of God’s holy law, which necessarily must be met with justice. “Sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4); “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it” (James 2:10); “For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution” (Hebrews 2:2); “For the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Sin is therefore a legal reality and disobedience to specific, revealed law, which, like any genuine law, demands punishment. Therefore, the great problem man faces is neither social injustice, systemic oppression, nor governmental failure, but his own personal guilt before the God who made him and his liability to judgment.
Social betterment and moral improvements are not possible answers to sin: “None is righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10); “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Romans 8:7-8). Man does not need to be given the resources and education to make wise decisions; he cannot be wise. “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:21-22). As image-bearers of God living in his world, man has the knowledge yet not the heart to obey. He loves his sin and so will choose sin over obedience every time.
The notion that societal improvement is a sufficient response to sin is a fiction. As a legal reality, the only possible response to sin is justice, and thus, the sinful individual is either judged for his sin or receives mercy through Christ absorbing the judgment on his behalf. This is the biblical understanding of sin in contrast to the liberal understanding.
The attendant applications in the world look radically different from those which flow out of the liberal position. For one, the church does not preach a social gospel but one of atonement, repentance, and free forgiveness of sin through Christ alone. For another, the state has the prerogative under God not to facilitate the moral improvement of the sinner by manipulating social circumstances but simply to execute public justice against sins that rise to the level of crimes. These implications come organically from the understanding that humanity’s fundamental problem is not caused by a vague and abstract “society” but by sinful men and women. Personal sin is the root cause of man’s problems, both individually and culturally.
The Root of Abortion Is Sin and Must Be Addressed As Such
Finally, then, we may observe the application of biblical theology in the fight against abortion. The consistently biblical position may recognize that external circumstances such as financial concerns, food and housing insecurity, or the lack of an involved father can be legitimate needs that must be addressed and that provide an occasion for temptation toward the sin of abortion. Yet, they are not the final cause of the problem, so solving them is not an adequate solution. Christianity understands that the root of abortion is sin in the human heart and that the desire for abortion must be addressed as such.
The biblical approach is grounded in this reality in every sphere of our work against abortion. Those ministering outside of abortion clinics must understand that while we are ready to offer tangible aid and assistance to meet legitimate needs, the bold proclamation of the gospel, repentance from sin, faith in Christ, and the sober warning of judgment alone can address the actual cause of abortion. Those involved with crisis pregnancy centers must likewise acknowledge that though they serve as a necessary and vital resource, the “abortion-minded” and “abortion-determined” women who walk through their doors are guilty of breaking the sixth commandment in their hearts and are in danger of executing that sin with their hands. They must be warned of this danger and called to repentance, with all the tenderness and gentleness Christ Himself demonstrated in such circumstances.
In the political sphere, though the state cannot preach the gospel and make disciples, civil magistrates must encourage righteousness by justly and speedily punishing evil, meaning that the only acceptable legislative action is not regulation but the full criminalization of abortion for all involved. Since abortion is murder, the state’s duty before God is to treat abortion as such, with no exceptions.
There Can Be No Neutrality
The notions of regulating abortion, societally incentivizing against abortion, and assigning victim status to the mother who murders her child must be wholly rejected, not due to political considerations, but because they all arise from liberal theological presuppositions that have been imbibed by so many. There are a multitude of true, faithful Christians who genuinely desire to see abortion ended yet have been strongly influenced by cultural liberalism, and these believers have difficulty with fully affirming the consistently biblical position. Though the debate will continue, the dividing line should grow clearer.
For all who oppose abortion, there must be an honest accounting of where we are deriving our strategies for defeating abortion. As we peel away the layers of rhetoric and conventional wisdom, the question must be: are we contending for the truth from a robust and uncompromised biblical worldview or from a watered-down fusion between Christianity and liberalism? Is your attitude toward and strategy against abortion a product of Christianity or liberalism? Ultimately, there can be no neutrality, and until the church presents a unified front entirely sold out to the authority of Christ over all, then the political reality will remain compromised and ineffective.
An article that appeared to be about pro-life turned into one about liberalism vs conservatism. That liberalism was both theological and political though only liberal theology was explicitly mentioned. And what is sad is that the article seems to equate political liberalism with liberal theology and political conservatism with Christian Orthodoxy.
Pro-life has been reduced to anti-abortion in the above article even though there is more life outside the womb than inside it. A consistent pro-life position is concerned with the following. How we treat the just born is as important as how we treat the unborn. How we treat the toddler is as important as how we treat the child. How we treat the child is as important as how we treat the adolescent. And so on and so on until we talk about how we treat an old person like me.
And thus, there is more to pro-life than meets the demands those of us who oppose the legalization of elective abortions. And what appears to be ironic to my politically conservative fellow believers in Christ is liberal politics and the Social Gospel is very much concerned with how society treats life after birth. And so not everything taught or promoted by liberal theology and the Social Gospel is false or unimportant. Of course because much of liberal theology reduces reality to the physical world, it can only see the horizontal relationships between people. And so it, by default, rules out the vertical relationship between people and God and thus has a weak view of sin and its effects. Also, because there is no vertical relationship in liberal theology, doing the good works specified in the Social Gospel replaces the work of Christ in saving people.
And though those of us who are theologically conservative should know better than to reduce the Christian life and the Christian view of things, but through 2nd effort and that old football slogan of giving a 110%, we have. And we have done that by taking an all-or-nothing approach to liberal theology and the Social Gospel.
And so because of the errors of the Social Gospel, we have become too afraid to acknowledge what the Social Gospel gets right. For indeed, how people have been treated by others and other circumstances will affect who we are as people. For social conditions and other outer circumstances can easily have an amplifying effect on the sin nature that dwells in us. And we miss those truths, in part, because we have equated political liberalism with Liberal theology and American political conservatism with Orthodox Christianity.
Thus, as in every year, this year’s voting is a complicated decision that carries with it significant tradeoffs whomever we choose. But what would help us to choose wisely is if we religiously conservative Christians, regardless of who we are politically speaking, would be accurate in reporting the current state of affairs. The economy has recovered and is stronger than when Biden became President, inflation has been curbed and one reason for that is that gas prices have dropped from when demand spiked after the lockdowns were over while supply needed a lot of time to catch up and fuel prices and the price of certain grains have been affected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Also, animal diseases has also contributed to the increase in prices for some goods.
Immigration is a problem mostly because of the horrid conditions that many people are seeking to flee from such as poverty and violence. And one might be surprised to discover how U.S. foreign policies played significant roles in contributing to the current levels of poverty and violence many immigrants are fleeing from. And neither major party has a monopoly on the foreign policies. And so walls will not solve our immigration problem. That is because walls do not affect the reasons why people are coming here.
The most significant war we are dealing with was started by Russia and its brutal dictator, Vladimir Putin. And he has to be effectively resisted.
And what was not mentioned in the list of voting issues is that one of the candidates participated in an insurrection. The other candidate has been accused of crimes but those accusations lack court worthy evidence.
Thus, voting is a much more complicated issue than described in the above article. For when we do not reduce pro-life to being about abortion, neither major political party is consistently pro-life.