MP3 Download | 1:06:08

Josh Brahm and Monica Snyder return to discuss the question: “Do You Need Religion to be Pro-Life?” The conversation touches on practical and philosophical points, including discussion about objective and subjective morality and its relationship with deism, as well as Monica’s experiences responding to both pro-life and pro-choice people who raise a scrutinizing eyebrow when they realize that they are talking with a pro-life atheist.

Related Links:

Secular Pro-Life

Secular Pro-Life: “Is belief in God necessary for the pro-life cause to succeed?”

Secular Pro-Life: “Where do atheists think human rights come from?”

A couple of examples of pro-choice religious-ish-ness:

“‘Where does life begin?’ is a spiritual question”

“We invited the child’s spirit to revisit Earth another time.”

Human Life Review: SYMPOSIUM: What’s God Got to Do with It?

“Is God Necessary for Morality?” Debate between Shelly Kagan and William Lane Craig

Pew Research Center study on religiously unaffiliated people (specifically the “Beliefs & practices” tab)

EFL Podcast on Stanford persuasion study

Retten Til Liv (Denmark Right to Life)

Equal Rights Institute Website

Sidewalk Counseling Masterclass

Equipped for Life Course

Equipped for Life Academy

The post Do You Need Religion to be Pro-Life? (w/ Secular Pro-Life’s Monica Snyder) appeared first on Equal Rights Institute Blog - Clear Pro-Life Thinking.

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

I oppose abortion, as a Christian and simply as a human, because I believe it is the gravest mass injustice in the world today. Evil governments sanctioning the killing of generations of children is nothing new in the world (see Exodus 1 or Matthew 2, just for citable examples off the top of my head), and our government is no less barbaric than its predecessors by the mere fact that it outsources the actual killing to the private market.

But as a Christian, I don’t believe that death is the greatest evil. It’s really, really bad; but there is something worse than death. “Don’t fear those who kill the body but are not able to kill the soul; rather, fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28, CSB). (As an aside, do not doubt the dedication and tenacity of our secular pro-life friends, who do believe that, in trying to keep people from violently ending the existence of fetuses, they are trying to rescue unborn humans from the ultimate evil.)

To be clear: without the resurrection of Christ, death is the greatest evil. One might say it is the only evil, since it nullifies all good and the possibility of good. If life ends in death, and even the entirety of existence will ultimately be swallowed up by nothingness, then meaning and morality can have no objective frame of reference which would survive that apocalypse. This erases the possibility of good and evil. (The first lie was, “You shall become as gods.” The new lie is, “What tree?”)

The whole of Christianity hinges on the resurrection of Christ:

And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor. 15:14–19, ESV).

So on Easter, as on every Sunday, Christians celebrate and acknowledge the fact that a man, Jesus, who was also God, raised himself from the dead. The truth or falsehood of this simple claim is the axis on which all of existence turns. It’s no surprise, then, that my affirmation of the resurrection affects how I view pro-life work.

If I don’t believe that death is the ultimate evil, then I don’t think that I’m saving babies from the ultimate evil (even if a very real one) by trying to prevent them from being killed in abortions. Nor do I affirm, as some Christians have over the years, that all of mankind is guilty for the first sin of Adam and Eve, and I therefore vigorously deny that unborn children are somehow guilty by association and sentenced to an eternity in hell. On the contrary, I believe that all the unborn humans who have died in abortions and miscarriages will be in heaven; that, though they have no sins to forgive, their adoption by God is secured by the death of Jesus and their eternal life is guaranteed by His resurrection.

Counterintuitively, as a Christian pro-lifer, I’m fighting to save people from a grave evil (death) with the result that they have a chance to lose out on eternal life and instead choose the ultimate evil (hell). If I’m successful, there could very possibly be more people in hell than if I fail.

Not very utilitarian of me, is it?

Well, I’m not a utilitarian, and God doesn’t seem to be, either. The whole project of creation is not to fill heaven with as many people as possible, but rather to have as many people as possible choose to love the good, to love God, and to get to experience the result of those choices forever.

And I don’t think giving people that choice is cruel or unloving, even if many will make the wrong choice. Every life saved from abortion is a valuable person, and one who can freely choose to love God.

The same holds for those having abortions and even those performing them. The pro-life movement (people keep denying it, so I’ll keep reaffirming it) cares about women, too, not just babies. And one thing we know is that choosing to have an abortion is a soul-warping choice. It is not a choice that leads you to become a better version of yourself; it is not a choice that puts you in line with the good or with God, but instead takes you further from them. Abortion obviously fatally hurts unborn humans, but it also harms the people who choose to have them. The choices you made in the past have conditioned you to make similar choices in the future; you will become the person you chose to be. So a world in which abortion is an available and encouraged choice makes it harder for people to love the good and refuse to do evil.

But here, too, Christianity has something to say. Past choices are not immutable; forgiveness is a real and live possibility. This is true for women who have chosen abortion, family members and significant others (or insignificant others) who have pressured them into an abortion, and even for abortion practitioners.

I think I view abortion practitioners as having souls like Voldemort; if you’ve read or seen Harry Potter, you should know what I’m talking about. Spoilers follow: Voldemort’s soul appeared in the space between life and death at Platform 9 ¾ after he finally struck Harry with the killing curse. While Harry appeared as fully himself, Voldemort was a shriveled, disfigured, pathetic entity. All of his evil actions took a toll on his soul; but even at this point, the possibility of redemption was open to him. He still had a soul.

Voldemort refused to choose redemption, of course, and instead received justice. Similarly, most abortion practitioners, with consciences warped by repeated killings, will not choose redemption. But they can, and some do—and praise God when they do!

The resurrection enables this. Stephen and Paul will share in the same eternal life. If that seems normal to us, it’s only because we have too much critical distance; the apostles feared Paul even in the first few years of his ministry, knowing him to be a killer. Even so, some of abortion’s practitioners may be in the same heaven as its victims; if we do our job well, more practitioners and fewer victims than expected.

Life is at the center of it all; life, and life more abundantly. In some way, the promise of eternal life drives me to protect earthly life. And not only that but, through the mitigation and (eventual) elimination of a grave evil, to help others onto eternal life as well. As usual, C.S. Lewis puts it best:

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics (The Weight of Glory).

The post Abortion and Resurrection: An Easter Reflection 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 Andrew Kaake (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 (Andrew Kaake) 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 Abortion and Resurrection: An Easter Reflection appeared first on Equal Rights Institute Blog - Clear Pro-Life Thinking.

Unfortunately, this scene is all too familiar to the pro-life advocates we train. In fact, one of the most common questions we receive from sidewalk counselors is how to handle “abolitionist” activists who act like this (or worse). It is often the case that no matter what the more gracious pro-lifer says;, the abolitionist will often get argumentative or just refuse to talk to the advocate at all, making progress nearly impossible.

Yet, after only one conversation with Sally, these two abortion abolitionists abandoned their bullhorns and walked away!

So, how did she do it?

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

Tip #1: Lowered her voice (and their defenses)

Sally approached very calmly and began speaking in the quietest voice she could muster. It’s a de-escalation tactic she’d learned from her fiancé, who worked in a jail; if you keep your voice low and quiet, they have to stop screaming to hear what you’re saying. And it worked. He stopped screaming and turned to listen to her, as did the entire crowd. Sally had everyone’s undivided attention.

Tip #2: Emphasized that they were on the same team

If there’s one thing he wasn’t expecting, it was someone who wasn’t pro-choice to approach him.

“I think what you’re doing isn’t really reaching people with the pro-life message.”

Sally quietly explained that she shared his belief that abortion is wrong, but that she was concerned that his tactics were hurting the pro-life movement rather than helping. When he retorted that he’s not “pro-life”—he’s an “abolitionist” striving for the prohibition of all abortions—he was immediately taken aback by her response.

“I want that, too. And it’s exactly because I actually want to end abortion that I think we need to be effective in our methods.”

Expanding upon their shared desire to end abortion, she suggested that bloodied signs like his are pushing people away rather than reaching them, and that reaching them is possible. Compassion reaches people; it opens them to change their hearts and minds. For Sally, as well as the abolitionists (and you’ll see how much that matters in just a moment!), there was one extremely obvious example of compassion: Jesus. Jesus’ ministry and teachings serve as a model for many things, but a particularly important one is how to reach people and transform their lives. Surprisingly enough, Jesus didn’t primarily use visual shock tactics and yelling; He reached people through compassion.

There are effective ways to reach pro-choice people, to change hearts and minds, and to save babies. We want to end abortion, and we know abortion abolitionists do, too. In this case, the example of Jesus and what will actually reach people…they’re the same thing. It’s compassionate conversations.

Tip #3: Followed Jesus’ example

That’s the second thing they weren’t expecting: someone who was a Christian to approach them. Of course, Sally doesn’t usually bring up Christianity in conversations about abortion, but in this case, she took a (highly probable) gamble that religion was a foundational driver for their behavior, and she was right.

They were caught off guard that she was the first one to bring up God in their discussion, and it took them a second to regroup. After one of them referenced a few Old Testament Bible verses attempting to support his aggressive methods, Sally asked a simple question.

“What do you think our mission is as Christians?”

The man fumbled around for a few moments before ultimately settling on “serving justice for the Church of God.”

“I don’t agree with that,” Sally responded calmly. “Our mission is to imitate Christ. Christ was not harsh; he was compassionate. He didn’t scream at the sinners around Him to pronounce that they were going to hell; He met them where they were at, in the mess of their sin, and called them to a better way of living.”

He responded by citing the story of Jesus turning over the tables in the Temple. Sally argued that pointing to this story, and this story only, from the New Testament ignores the totality of his ministry, where he looked with compassion upon the woman at the well and the woman caught in adultery, who are arguably far more similar to the women of today facing unexpected pregnancies than the Pharisees are.

“So you don’t care about the Old Testament?” he retorted.

“I do care about the Old Testament,” she replied quietly, “but what makes us Christians is precisely our belief in the New Testament. The New Testament fundamentally changed how humans are called to understand God, as the Old Testament was fulfilled in the life and teachings of Jesus. If our mission as Christians is to imitate Christ, then how Christ behaved when He walked this earth must be the example by which we model our lives.”

Then, as Sally brought the dialogue back to this common ground and their shared mission to end abortion, the two abolitionists packed up and left. 

The reason they gave?

“We really have to get going, we have to return these rocks.”

“Return these rocks?!” Someone from the crowd looked incredulously at the few rocks propping up the base of the tripod, which were pretty clearly not an urgent matter to “return.”

I can’t sit here and tell you exactly why they left. I can’t speculate as to whether they’ll be back on campus some future Tuesday, or whether what Sally said made them honestly reconsider their ways. But Sally’s respectful and loving pushback made them leave that day, and it opened the door for the pro-choice students listening to hear an effective pro-life message. 

“I’m surprised you’re so nice!” A student from the crowd walked up to Sally after the men began walking away. “You feel like someone I can actually talk to about this.” 

About a week later, Sally was attending a Walk for Life to benefit the local pregnancy center when, lo and behold, the same abolitionists appeared on the sidewalk. There were no bloody signs or screaming tactics this time; they were handing out cards to the pro-life walkers that said #notavictim, referring to the concept that post-abortive women are not victims.

Sally approached, handed the card back, and quietly told him that she didn’t think this tactic was effective either. Almost the same conversation ensued; he brought up the same points, she kept her voice low and calmly brought up the same common ground and rebuttals.

“Don’t you feel a sense of urgency about this?!” he pressed.

“Yes, I do, and that’s exactly why I behave the way I do towards pro-choice people and exactly why I’m here today supporting tangible help for women. I want to actually change minds. I believe that your methods are causing further division, making people less open to changing their minds.”

“But don’t you think we need to change the abortion laws?”

“Absolutely we do, which means we must change the minds of voters. That’s my goal.”

He had no reply to that.

As he started inching closer to his car, Sally said she’d love to continue their conversation another time, and they could discuss more theology next time, too. She’d studied up on the Old Testament verses he’d brought up at their last meeting and said she’d be happy to chat through those with him.

The point.

Abolitionists only have two options to justify their behavior; hypothetically, they can prove that God wants us to behave this way, or they can prove that this is the effective way to end abortion.

But if our mission as Christians is to imitate Christ, then our behavior must be modeled after Jesus, who neither shouted accusations nor offered assurances that sins were no big deal. He accepted our brokenness with compassion while calling us to “be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” And if effectiveness at changing hearts and minds—actually ending abortion and doing so urgently—is our goal, too, then the behaviors and tactics that actually reach pro-choice people are of the utmost importance. The psychology of persuasion matters.

Here’s the thing: Sally understood the people she was talking to. She knew the kind of arguments they would make, but also the kind of arguments they would respond to. She understood what they cared about, what sort of things made them hold the position they did, and how to connect her pro-life position to those things. It’s the same kind of thing we do with the Equal Rights Argument: we show people who care about equality why abortion is a huge violation of equal rights. But if you’re truly listening to and trying to understand the people with whom you dialogue, you’ll find more opportunities to show them why their worldview should actually lead them to your position on abortion.

Sally’s courage to begin an ongoing dialogue with the abolitionists in her town got them to leave not once, but twice, saving potentially hundreds of passersby from further misunderstanding and detesting the pro-life position. And she opened the hearts of the students on her campus who did see the abolitionists by exhibiting wisdom and compassion.

Don’t be afraid to dialogue with abortion abolitionists or other “difficult” people, pro-life or pro-choice. Your witness can change minds.

Please tweet this article!

• Tweet: Compassion works. Bullhorns don’t
• Tweet: Compassion reaches people; it opens them to change their hearts and minds.
• Tweet: If you’re truly listening to and trying to understand the people with whom you dialogue, you’ll find more opportunities to show them why their worldview should actually lead them to your position on abortion.

The post Compassion works. Bullhorns don’t. 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 Emily Geiger. (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 (Emily Geiger) 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 Compassion works. Bullhorns don’t. appeared first on Equal Rights Institute Blog - Clear Pro-Life Thinking.

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes.

Barnhart’s post says:

“The unborn” are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. It’s almost as if, by being born, they have died to you. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but actually dislike people who breathe.

Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.

Let’s be clear: this is a baseless attack on all pro-life Christians. Dave Barnhart’s argument is fundamentally that because we don’t abandon unborn children to support his pet political agenda, we’re fake Christians. He implies that pro-life people don’t love “people who breathe” and, because Christians must love other people in order to love Jesus, we’re just claiming to love Jesus and lying to ourselves and others. Unfortunately, many people seem to think this hot take is a profound take-down of the pro-life movement.

Normally at ERI, we promote relational dialogue and give people the benefit of the doubt even when it isn’t merited. In this case, a public figure has called into question the ethics and sincerity of an entire class of people. I’m not in a dialogue with him. My job is to refute his empty rhetoric, and I’m taking the gloves off to do it.

Being Pro-Life Isn’t Convenient

Maybe this would be a surprise to Barnhart, whose political beliefs seem pegged to whatever the majority likes, but it’s not particularly popular or convenient to advocate for unborn humans. He falsely claims that we don’t love the brother we have seen (using 1 John 4:20 for moral high ground, as I’m sure the author intended), but he thinks it’s some trivial thing to get others to love people we can’t see.

Pro-life people spend time and money trying to save lives and teach others the truth about the human nature we share with even the earliest zygote. Pro-life people have been murdered, they’ve gone to jail, they’ve been assaulted, they’ve been vandalized, they’ve been ridiculed—and, not that it bears mentioning in the same sentence, we deal with people like Barnhart gaslighting us about our faith by implying that we’re just fake Christians who don’t truly follow Christ.

And that’s without mentioning the efforts to build relationships with women and families in need, to connect women considering abortion to resources that can make them feel like they have other options, and giving families resources to ease the burden of raising children after they’re born. In 2019 alone, Care Net affiliates provided 786,785 clients with free services valued at over $84 million. Barnhart conveniently ignores the actions which demonstrate our care for children and women, both before and after birth. Perhaps he’s concerned that they speak louder than his words?

The “Fake Christian” Conspiracy Theory

Of course, he doesn’t think we really care about unborn humans. In his mind, pro-life “Christians” (air quotes, because we’re fake Christians, after all) all got together and decided that the easiest way to earn neighbor points to fool Jesus into letting us into Heaven was to pretend to care about unborn people, then drop them as soon as they’re born. After all, we fake Christians don’t like “people who breathe”—a fact Barnhart inferred simply from our opposition to abortion!

This is practically on par with the NARAL conspiracy theory Josh talked about in a recent podcast. How can this (enlightened, I’m sure) individual proclaim the intentions and motivations of an entire group of people? I’m going out on a very short limb and guessing he has no understanding of the pro-life mind, so I won’t put much stock in his tinfoil-hat armchair psychology.

Here’s a good rule of thumb: if someone claims to know the thoughts of an entire group of people to whom they’re opposed, they’re either wrong or lying. I’ll let Barnhart take his pick. [Tweet that!] Odds are, at least some of the Christians who say they care about women and children actually do. If even one such person can be found, then his claim is false.

It’s probably easier for Barnhart to drink his own Kool-Aid because he defines away our ability to show care to “people who breathe.” He interprets “advocating for the unborn” as strictly as possible, as if those who support “the unborn” were logically unable to do anything for children once they’re born. The claim that unborn humans don’t need “money, education, or childcare” is so bogus he should be ashamed. I guess he thinks prenatal medical costs are paid with Monopoly money and maternal self-care (like prenatal vitamins) and prenatal education are just for middle-class white people like him.

What Do Fake Christians Need to Care About?

Since protecting children before birth is off the table—real Christians only care about children after birth and other “people who breathe”—Barnhart gives us a long list of acceptable causes for which to advocate. (In a particularly cute middle finger to basic Bible interpretation, he excludes children scheduled to be killed from being “orphans.”) Essentially, it’s Christian to advocate for progressive goals in acceptably leftist ways (Heaven forbid we approach any common ground from a different angle!). Not only that, he deigns to tell us what we should do if we really cared about unborn humans (whom he essentializes as “the unborn” so he can ignore them as a concept instead of care for them as people):

Let’s not kid ourselves, this is someone who supports the right to abortion telling us we don’t really care about “the unborn.” So, he’s chill with killing children (he refers to the unborn as “people” twice in his post) as long as we give the survivors a healthier environment. It’s really hard to take seriously any ethics he supports if that’s his priority.

Not that his meme really illustrates a complete system of ethics; it’s just a collection of white liberal platitudes about America which ignores serious moral issues elsewhere. Abortion doesn’t make it onto his stunted moral list; do you think human trafficking or Chinese labor camps fare any better? It’s hard to tell. Maybe it’s literally only the fetus to whom he is blind; perhaps he just has inverse Fetus Tunnel Vision. And yes, it’s bad if pro-lifers only care about abortion or present as if they only care about abortion, but it’s also not a requirement of the pro-life position. Shockingly enough, most pro-lifers care about a variety of issues; we’re just not willing to kill human persons to get ahead in other political areas. (Yes, I’m aware that a minority of pro-lifers don’t seem to care about other things; while they reflect poorly on the majority of pro-lifers, they don’t make Barnhart’s slander true of the rest of us.)

Trigger Warning: The next two sections contain restrained descriptions of abortion and child sacrifice.

Dave Barnhart Doesn’t Comprehend Abortion

Now, I don’t really think Barnhart considers unborn humans to be persons. If he did, it would be a revolting inversion of his own ethics that he supports killing people in need while complaining that we don’t help other people in need. I imagine he’d make some cockamamie argument that the Bible supports abortion, which is unimaginable, but I don’t even need to start quoting chapter and verse at him. The Equal Rights Argument makes it pretty clear that if you care about equality (which he supposedly does), equal rights have to extend to unborn humans.

Okay, I said I was taking the gloves off, but I can’t shake off my ERI training so quickly; I just have to give him the benefit of the doubt at least once. Surely he just doesn’t know what happens in abortion? That must be it. Maybe he thinks it’s just “unplugging” from the embryo. Maybe he’s unaware that unborn humans are suffocated, burned, stabbed, shredded, poisoned, and dismembered. That would explain his callousness.

I’m the person at ERI least supportive of using graphic images, but Barnhart needs to see one. If he’s going to support abortion and condemn those who oppose him, he needs to know what he’s talking about.

The Bible Seems to Side With the Fake Christians

The Bible doesn’t mention abortion directly. (“Haha, in your face, stupid pro-birth fake Christian!”) Sure, the earliest teaching of the apostles outside the Bible, the Didache, explicitly condemns abortion, but it’s not in the Bible, so many protestants would say it doesn’t count.

However, one of the capital crimes for which God judged Israel and Judah in the Old Testament was sacrificing their children to the pagan god Molech. Offerings to Molech involved placing children onto a superheated metal statue until they boiled or burned to death. This act of “religion” was referred to euphemistically as “passing through the fire,” and it’s one of the reasons God brought about the destruction of His people (e.g., Deuteronomy 18:10, Jeremiah 32:35, Ezekiel 16:21, Ezekiel 23:37).

Do you think the main problem with Molech-worship was the fact that it used born children? Well, then this is just a personhood question, and the pro-life side has the better arguments. Either way, God doesn’t seem to look kindly on religious people promoting violence against children, so a pastor like Barnhart should take care that he has a good reason why that’s not what he’s doing.

Christianity can no more approve of burning children with saline solution and killing them with medical implements than burning and killing children on a superheated idol. Christ said not to “despise one of these little ones” (Matthew 18:10) and not to hinder them from coming to Him (Matthew 19:14). Just for a moment, take seriously the pro-life argument that the embryo in the womb is a valuable person with rights, a child loved by God. If “Jesus loves the little children,” how can we defend brutally killing them?

And this is the crux of the issue: if I’m right, and unborn humans are people, then advocating for the right to kill them is unbiblical. Barnhart is not a blogger sitting in a pew, but one who styles himself a pastor and a teacher. As a teacher, he faces a much higher standard of judgment because he is responsible for those listening to him.

Barnhart uses the word “people” for unborn humans; if they are in fact people, then his teaching “does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Timothy 6:3). Barnhart, accordingly, is a false teacher, and his teachings must be resisted insofar as they depart from Scripture.

I don’t know exactly what Barnhart believes about the Bible, so this last point may not apply to him specifically. There are many on the so-called “evangelical left” who dismiss the ethical teachings of the Bible as culture-bound and reject its books as written by patriarchal proto-orthodox men—then proclaim that their favorite sayings of Jesus (recorded in that Bible, by those men) are the key to true ethics. This is ridiculous. If you reject large swaths of the Bible for various reasons, you have no grounds for claiming that certain parts of Jesus’ recorded teaching are transcendentally true. You don’t get to use the red letters if you erase the black letters.

No, Pro-Lifers Aren’t Fake Christians

I hope I’ve made it clear that Barnhart’s diatribe is a baseless ad hominem against a group of people he seems to personally despise. Pro-life Christians are not fake Christians. We’re imperfect Christians, not always logically consistent, sinning by what we have done and what we have left undone. But our position is one of love and inclusion for our fellow human beings, specifically those who are dehumanized and killed in staggering numbers.

Pro-life Christians should always strive to improve. But the pro-life position, at base, is the biblical one. I don’t worry that being pro-life makes me a fake Christian, or unable to support fair-trade production, or unable to oppose modern-day slavery, and so on. Unlike Barnhart, I won’t presume to judge the salvation of my adversaries; I’m too busy trying to help children.

If you want to see how we would respond to more pro-choice memes like this, read our article “Refuting Pro-Choice Memes: Responding to Snark With a Winning Argument.”

Please tweet this article!

• Tweet: Are Pro-Life People Fake Christians?
• Tweet: Here’s a good rule of thumb: if someone claims to know the thoughts of an entire group of people to whom they’re opposed, they’re either wrong or lying. I’ll let Barnhart take his pick.
• Tweet: In this case, a public figure has called into question the ethics and sincerity of an entire class of people. My job is to refute his empty rhetoric, and I’m taking the gloves off to do it.

The post Are Pro-Life People Fake Christians? 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 Andrew Kaake (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 (Andrew Kaake) 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 Are Pro-Life People Fake Christians? appeared first on Equal Rights Institute Blog - Clear Pro-Life Thinking.

Estimated reading time: 20 minutes.

There is a long list of steps pro-life advocates would like to see their pastor take to stop abortion, and, unfortunately, pastors find that list intimidating. They can’t do everything, and they often don’t feel like anything that they can do would actually make a difference. I’d like to suggest one minimal (and not even controversial) leadership decision that pastors can make that is likely to save lives within their congregations.

My view of what church leaders should do about abortion has evolved over 13 years of full-time pro-life work. I used to get very angry when I thought about pastors who are silent on this subject, because I earnestly believed that most of them were either cowards or shamefully apathetic to a serious evil in our country. I had a bad experience nine years ago with a pro-abortion-choice usher at one of the largest Protestant churches in Fresno, California who debated me about abortion in the foyer while her pastor preached. When I later told the story on the pro-life podcast I hosted, I needed to physically stand up because I was so frustrated by the experience.

I’ve since calmed down a bit, thanks partially to Scott Klusendorf. I remember that, when Scott was writing his book The Case for Life, he told me that he wanted to take a different approach with silent pastors. Instead of lecturing them, he wanted to come beside them, realizing that many of them aren’t doing anything because they don’t know what they should do.

I’ve since tried to emulate Scott’s attitude toward pastors. That’s become easier as I’ve talked to more pastors and parish priests who struggle with what to say about abortion. For many of them, their silence is not due to cowardice or apathy, but due to a very understandable concern of emotionally damaging their congregants whom they know are post-abortive. I’m not saying that the best response to that fear is silence on abortion. I’m merely acknowledging that when a pastor is shepherding hundreds of people, and he knows that some of them are post-abortive, it’s at least understandable for him to be very concerned for their well-being if someone says something in church that equates abortion to killing babies.

Click the video below to watch a video version of this article.

I wish all of those pastors could hear from a post-abortive woman my friend David Bereit met. She described what it was like to have an abortion and then attend a church where the pastor was willing to confront every social taboo except abortion. Here’s how David told the story:

I was in North Dakota a few years ago at a pastors summit, and they brought in some poster boards of testimonies through “Silent No More,” to share their heart and to share the story of these pastors that had never been involved with pro-life before. And this one woman had never given her testimony before and she was the last speaker. She said to all these pastors assembled, “Twenty years ago I had my abortion, the week before I had my abortion, I was sitting in my seat in my pew at my church. The week after my abortion I was sitting in my pew at my church. For the last twenty years, I’ve sat in that same seat, in the same pew. Never once has there been a message in our church offering hope and healing, and as a result, I assumed [abortion] must not only be the unspeakable sin, but therefore it must be the unforgivable sin.”

These pastors began to weep and she challenged them and said, “If you think you are doing something compassionate by not bringing this issue up, if you think by being the priest or the Levite by avoiding it and just hoping it will go away, and you’re helping people, you’re not.” Do everything you can. Help those in need. Help those in unexpected pregnancies. Help our culture that is sick. We have the answer. The gospel of Jesus Christ was not only a gospel of salvation, but it was a gospel of building His Kingdom here on earth. The way we do that is to love our neighbors as ourselves.

As you can see, her pastor had very good motives, but he unintentionally caused more damage by choosing to not talk about abortion instead of choosing to talk about abortion in a thoughtful, caring way. There are thousands of women sitting in church who need to hear that God’s gift of forgiveness is offered to all, not just those who have never had abortions.

I would love for all pastors to include that message once in a while, but I also understand that that’s a harder sell. Fortunately, there is something even easier that pastors can do, one thing that I believe every pastor and youth pastor ought to do: make a public commitment on behalf of the whole church that they will treat women who become pregnant with grace and compassion instead of shame and rejection.

The Problem

Abortion is not just a secular problem; it happens frighteningly often in our churches. The best research I’ve seen on this is from a demographically balanced survey that CareNet did of 1,038 post-abortive women in 2015. According to that survey, 36% of women were attending a Christian church once a month or more at the time of their first abortion.

The church has a serious abortion problem. There are people who love Jesus who are killing their babies. Plus, they know that they are playing a role in killing someone made in the image of God and that will intensify their guilt after the fact. That guilt can severely damage their relationship with God because people often feel unworthy to pray when they are dealing with major sin issues.

These statistics force us to ask, “Why are so many Christian women having abortions?” I think it is often because a Christian woman who becomes pregnant out of wedlock faces far greater social consequences than an atheist woman does.

Consider my friend Monique D., who gave me permission to share her story. She grew up with an absent father and thus a mother who worked multiple jobs to support her children. One of her mother’s jobs was as an administrator for the black Pentecostal church that Monique grew up attending. At the age of 17, Monique became pregnant because of a guy who took advantage of her.

Nobody at the church asked how she became pregnant. Instead, the church leadership told her mother that Monique was to sit in the back pew until the pregnancy was over. She was no longer allowed to talk to her friends, as the parents assumed that Monique would be a bad influence on them. Monique’s mother didn’t intervene on her behalf because she was so embarrassed about the situation, and she didn’t understand what had really happened to Monique.

Monique recalled a particular Sunday morning when she was singing loudly from the back pew during the worship time. Monique is one of the most gifted vocalists I’ve ever served with on a worship team, and that love of singing began in Monique’s childhood. It was one of the primary ways that Monique connected with God. But on this day, as she was singing, a woman in the pew in front of her turned around and said, “Don’t you wish you could be singing to the glory of God?” Monique went silent. She said that she had never felt as lonely or shamed as she did during that pregnancy. She distinctly remembers thinking, “If this is church, then I don’t want to have any part of it.” If she hadn’t gotten involved in a group from another church, eventually leaving her old church for that one, Monique suspects that she would have left Christianity altogether.

When a Christian woman gets pregnant, she’s not only terrified of how this will affect her life and what will happen if her parents find out, but she’s also probably worried about what will happen if her pastor or youth pastor finds out. According to CareNet’s survey, while these post-abortive women were considering their abortion decision, the most typical reactions they were expecting from the local church were “judgmental” or “condemning.” Only 43% agreed with the statement, “It is safe to talk with a pastor about abortion.” Only 42% agreed that pastors teach that God is willing to forgive past abortion decisions. As a result, only 38% agreed that churches are a safe place to talk about pregnancy options.

And this is key: Many churches would handle this situation better than a woman would assume! Many churches don’t shame or kick women out if they get pregnant out of wedlock. I think many churches would rise to the challenge and do a great job of supporting this woman, but she doesn’t know that if she hasn’t seen the church deal with this issue publicly before.

Even though some churches would respond to an unplanned pregnancy well, the women don’t know that, so out of fear they abort.

A Solution

Last year I presented a new speech called Why Every Teenager Should Be Equipped In Pro-Life Apologetics at a homeschool conference in Atlanta. Before my talk began, I spoke with a few of the first people to sit down, and one of them was a youth pastor from Alabama. Even though there were nine other workshops going on at the same time, he came to this one because he said that he had a responsibility to equip teenagers to defend their views and was interested in what I had to say. I told him that I was so glad he came, and then began my speech.

During the Q&A session I answered a question about when parents ought to tell their kids about abortion, and then I shared what I think youth pastors should do about this issue. You can hear this in the embedded audio, or just read the transcript below. I’ve slightly edited it for clarity.

There are high schoolers who think about abortion. The number one age demographic that has the most abortions are college students, but high school students are number three^[1], because obviously it’s a pretty big, scary thing when you’re a teenager with an unplanned pregnancy. And that happens with Christians. In fact, there’s a reason why a lot of Christians have abortions even though they know that abortion is wrong: it’s a much bigger deal in a lot of churches.

At this point I looked directly at the youth pastor in the audience, and said:

So if you take anything from this speech, please have a youth group and a church that everyone knows that if someone gets pregnant, we’re going to love that kid. We’re going to love that student, we’re going to be there for them, there’s not going to be a scarlet letter, we’re not going to kick them out of the youth group because we’re terrified of what they’re going to do, but instead we’re going to get around this person and help her choose life. Because there are thousands of Christian teenagers that are having abortions, who know they’re killing a baby, and are wrecked after it but they do it because they’re afraid of what happens if their parents find out, they’re afraid of what happens if their youth pastor finds out, their youth group finds out, they’re afraid of being judged and teased and all that stuff, and no one better than parents and youth pastors to prevent that, but that is a cultural revolution that has to happen across this country!

Unlike some other pro-life church activities, this change would need to come from the top down. It would need to be the pastor taking initiative to talk to the church body about what will happen in the future if someone in the church gets pregnant out of wedlock, so if a woman gets pregnant later, she will then know that her church is a safe place for her and her baby.

I don’t know how often it should happen, but perhaps five minutes on this during the announcements time once or twice per year would be a good target. Keep in mind that people miss church services all the time due to sickness or being out of town, so it would be important to include what was said (or even video and/or audio of the announcement itself) in an email blast the following week.

Regardless of how often, this is what pastors should make clear to the church:

• Here’s what we believe: It is not sinful in and of itself to be in the state of pregnancy. The actions that led to becoming pregnant may have been sinful, but there is nothing intrinsically wrong with being a mother, with having a child growing inside your body. We love babies here, and we hate it when babies are killed.
• Here’s what we won’t do: We will not encourage anybody to have an abortion, because we believe that every unborn child is a bearer of God’s image. We will not kick a woman out of the church for being pregnant. We will not shame her. We will not let people tease her.
• Here’s what we will do: We will celebrate the life in her womb, and connect her with the local Pregnancy Resource Center. We will do our best to love unwed mothers well, the way Jesus loved the woman at the well and the woman caught in adultery. We will approach her with grace and friendship. We will teach our students and this young woman how to deal with shame through forgiveness. We will throw a baby shower for her (perhaps through her small group) and celebrate the baby’s birth just like we do all births in our church.

“But We Shouldn’t Condone Sin!”

As I began sharing this idea with others, one of the common responses I regularly heard is that pastors often come down hard on the issue of unwed pregnancy so as not to condone premarital sex, or perhaps in some cases, to avoid even the appearance of condoning premarital sex.

Pastors, please hear me on this.

I’m not saying that you should publicly approve of the way she got pregnant. I’m saying you should publicly celebrate the life in her womb, and that her sin issue should be addressed in private, in the context of relationship. That may be with you, that may be with a different pastor or elder, or it may be with the leader of her discipleship or small group.

Again, the attitude should mirror Jesus’ statement to the woman caught in adultery:

But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”

~ John 8: 1-11

I don’t bring this up to try to cheat with proof-texting. Clearly Jesus handles sin in some different ways depending on the circumstances. But he always treats repentant sinners with immense compassion. If we are really serious about sin, the best way to express that is to actually help the person through their struggle. Galatians 6:1 says:

Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.

Do people who have committed sexual sin need to be restored? Yes, of course. Might church discipline be the right move if a given person is unrepentant? Yes. But a repentant person struggling with sin in your congregation should always be restored in a spirit of gentleness.

Regardless of how it looks in your particular church, my point is that, in church history, many bad things have happened in spite of good intentions. I think many pastors have tried to do a good thing, upholding a sexual ethic and not condoning sin, and I think that has often had an unintended bad effect: the forming of a culture in the church where unwed pregnancy appears to be a taboo subject, one that should be dealt with outside of the church, not lovingly responded to inside the church. I want to say that you can do both. You can uphold a sexual ethic and avoid condoning sin, AND you can celebrate unborn life at the same time, which will literally save lives in the process.

After hearing me talk about this idea last year, the pastor of the church I attended in Fresno, Matt Troupe at Free Grace Church, made this a core part of his sanctity of life sermon this past January. He spoke of how Jesus treated the woman caught in adultery, and reminded his congregation that, at Free Grace Church, a similar approach will be taken with pregnancies that happen out of wedlock.

The next day, Matt got this text from someone in the church:

I want to see this message in churches all over the country. But I can’t make this happen in your church. I can only encourage and equip you to make this happen in your church.

So if you’re a pastor, this is a conversation you ought to have with your elders and youth pastor. Otherwise, this is a conversation you should humbly have with your pastor.

Seven Practical Tips for Having This Conversation With Your Pastor

If you’re in a church, you need to understand that your pastor is overwhelmed and already has dozens of congregants coming to him with things they want him to do, and some of those things are more important than others. So I’ve been interviewing pastors, priests, and even a Catholic Bishop about this topic, and have collected a list of practical tips for how to have that conversation with your pastor in a way that will be most likely to persuade him to do this.

1: Have the Conversation in Private.

If you try to make this meeting happen spontaneously after church on Sunday, it could easily look to passersby that you’re confronting him, and that will be distracting to them. Just like people who are debating on public Facebook comment threads are going to be naturally paying attention to how they come across to others, a person being confronted in public will be distracted by that, too. Ask to meet with the pastor sometime over coffee or in his office where that distraction won’t be happening. It’s a sign of respect.

2: Come to the Meeting with Humility.

I interviewed a pastor and a priest on a previous pro-life podcast once to ask them for practical tips for congregants who feel like their church leader could do more about abortion, and Pastor Jim Franklin made a great point: Most pastors are personally pro-life, but they may struggle with knowing how best to minister to the people in their flock who have had abortions. Later in the episode, Franklin added that pastors are very overwhelmed. Many of them are facing all kinds of problems, so sometimes it might not be as much apathy that is causing them to be silent but being overwhelmed and not feeling like they have the energy to fight that battle. They also may feel that they can’t make much of a difference about abortion anyway, and if they try to fight that battle it will divide some of the people in their church.

So don’t come to the meeting with a stack of books and an attitude of telling him what to do. Instead, your attitude ought to be one of humbly expressing the desire for the church to do what it can to prevent women in the church from feeling subtly pressured into having abortions because of what they imagine the negative reaction from the church may be to their pregnancy.

Make it explicit that you’re not coming to lecture them. You’ve merely been thinking about the problem of abortions happening within the church and that you’ve been wondering if maybe some churches could be more proactive in preventing that by taking this approach.

Maybe even express sympathy for the fact that many pastors have had annoying conversations with pro-life activists who come with a list of 15 things that they think the pastor ought to be doing or else he’s not “really pro-life.” Make it clear that that’s not your attitude and that you just want to get their thoughts on an idea you’ve been mulling over. You should also express openness about the best way to execute this idea at your specific church. You’re wanting his ideas.

3: Ask if There Is Already a Church Policy on What Would Happen to a Woman in the Youth Group if She Became Pregnant.

Is there already a policy that she would be kicked out? If not, does the rest of the church know this? If there is a policy that she should be kicked out, you should explain that you understand that that policy was probably created with good intentions, and gently ask the pastor to reconsider this policy, given that it likely makes pregnant women in the church more likely to kill their babies. That is a really big deal.

4: Make It Clear That You Realize That What This Pregnant Teen Is Imagining Would Happen Is Probably a Lot Worse Than What Would Actually Happen.

You’re not saying that a pregnant teen’s fears are based on reality. That’s not the point. The point is that we can proactively communicate about this in a way that makes it a lot harder for a person to expect a harsh reaction from the church leadership that wouldn’t have happened anyway.

If you can even name specific examples where the pastors had a lot of grace in the way that they dealt with outsiders or church members caught up in sin, talk about that. Talk about how you know this church has a lot of grace. You’ve been merely wondering if more churches went above and beyond to communicate about this before a pregnancy happens, if that would have a really positive effect on a woman in the church if she does become pregnant out of wedlock.

5: Tell a Story.

At the end of this article I also share a story about a woman we’re calling “Anna.” A story like hers or Monique’s might help the pastor to emotionally connect with the problem. Make it clear that you don’t think your church’s leadership would treat unwed mothers badly, but that this is a common experience in other churches, and that that uncertainty scares pregnant women into silence and abortion.

6: Present This as an Opportunity for the Pastor to Be Able to Say Something Brief about Abortion in a Way That Shows How Much He Loves His Flock.

Some pastors and parish priests are just more skittish than others about talking about this issue from the pulpit. Many of them fear that it will come across as “getting political” with their sermon. This is understandable, as abortion does come up in every election. It’s not only a political issue, it’s also a moral one, but that doesn’t mean that abortion is not a political issue either. It’s both.

However, many of these same pastors and parish priests care a lot about being a Jesus-like shepherd to their congregation. So while they may not want to preach about abortion every Sanctity of Life Sunday or host a pro-life event, they very well may be open to this idea, because it is a proactively loving and grace-filled thing to do. It will also probably make the pro-life people in the church a lot happier because they will see their pastor doing something about abortion.

7: Offer to Help with Practical Stuff like Throwing the Baby Shower.

Pastor Matt Troupe made a great point to me when we were talking about this, which is that a lot of pastors have a reflexive and reasonable reaction to a congregant bringing an idea to the leadership: “Sounds great. How about you lead that?” Obviously a core part of this idea does need to come from the pastor, but are there any practical things you can take off his plate? Taking over the baby shower is an obvious part of this that the pastor doesn’t need to be personally responsible for. Offering to take pregnant women in the church to the local Pregnancy Resource Center so that they have the option of a friend walking them through the whole process is another way to be the hands and feet of Christ in this situation.

Update 7/13/18: One of the women I recently interviewed for a future book made a great point about baby showers: The pregnant woman would likely be a lot more comfortable with a baby shower with only people she knows, as opposed to a church-wide version. A baby shower thrown by her small group or a specific group of her friends at the church would usually be the best way to do this, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t assist with some of the logistics from behind the scenes.

Anna’s Story

While interviewing people for this article, I ended up talking to Shannon Campbell, a Client Advocate at the Fresno Pregnancy Care Center. She told me a story about a woman she knows who we will call “Anna.” Anna was 21, involved in ministry at the church, and preparing to graduate from college. She spoke to Shannon because she had just taken a positive pregnancy test, and she wasn’t married to her boyfriend. (It turned out to be a false positive, but Anna didn’t know that at the time.) Anna was considering abortion, because she was afraid of what would happen when her parents, her friends, and her church found out. Shannon told me that she personally knew Anna’s pastor, and that he was very pro-life and would have supported Anna well in this difficult time. But Anna didn’t know that.

After Shannon told me this story, I said to her, “Imagine an alternative universe where everything else is exactly the same, except Anna’s pastor had heard this idea, and had been telling his congregation for the last two years how their church would respond to an unwed, pregnant mother. Would that have made a difference for Anna, or would she still have been too scared to choose life?”

Shannon replied, “Yes, I think that would have given Anna what she needed to choose life.”

Imagine if thousands of pastors and parish priests across the world pledged to do that very thing. I believe the Christian abortion rate would drop significantly.

So I am asking pastors and parish priests to do that very thing. I’ve embedded a pledge form below. I will also be embedding a Google Map soon with pins for all of the churches who have taken the pledge. Those pins will be known as safe places for unwed mothers in the church.

If you are excited about this idea, please forward this article to every pastor and parish priest you know, or, better yet, meet with them personally first. If your pastor is already convinced to take the pledge, you can send him to EqualRightsInstitute.com/Pastor, which has a shorter page that skips the article and gets right to the pledge.

My dream is that eventually the map below will have thousands of pins on it. Would you help me make that dream a reality?

If your church is ready to take a further step for unborn children, ERI recommends joining CareNet’s wonderful Making Life Disciples program. This program has a very similar ethos to ERI’s and includes training on how a small group of pro-life advocates at your church can provide relational care to men and women facing pregnancy decisions.

Endnotes

[1] While high school students used to be the third largest age demographic having abortions, it has since become number four. Here are the latest stats from the Guttmacher Institute (opens a PDF) on the percentage of women having abortions from each age group:

• <20 years old: 11.9%
• 20-24: 33.6%
• 25-29: 26.5%
• 30-34: 15.9%

Please tweet this article!

• Tweet: One Thing Every Pastor Can Do to Prevent Abortions in Their Congregation
• Tweet: I’d like to suggest one minimal (and not even controversial) leadership decision that pastors can make that is likely to save lives within their congregations.
• Tweet: There is one thing that I believe every pastor ought to do: make a public commitment on behalf of the whole church that they will treat women who become pregnant with grace and compassion instead of shame and rejection.
• Tweet: Forward this article to every pastor and parish priest you know!

The post “One Thing Every Pastor Can Do to Prevent Abortions in Their Congregation” 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 Josh 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 (Josh 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 One Thing Every Pastor Can Do to Prevent Abortions in Their Congregation appeared first on Equal Rights Institute Blog - Clear Pro-Life Thinking.