Scenario
Imagine that you are an elected representative in the lower house of your state legislature. You ran as a prolife candidate and decided to introduce a bill to outlaw abortion in your state. Furthermore, you have decided to include criminal sanctions on abortionists in your legislation. Such a law has not been proposed before in your state. You feel that while this bill will be controversial, that it is the right thing to do.
After hearing about your bill, a prolife group from out of state says they are coming to lobby in support of your legislation.
Once the out of state group arrives, they read your legislation and then publicly call you a baby killer and murderer. They denounce your idea. They call you a Judas and hater of God. They also label you an enemy of life and of the unborn. Their main complaints are that there are no criminal sanctions in your bill to punish women that have abortions and your bill doesn’t outlaw abortion drugs sent via mail or other delivery services. The group lights you up on social media and via local television stations.
The prolife group uses scorched earth tactics and vilifies anyone that opposes them. They claim to represent God and his Word. Furthermore, they don’t want to educate churches or Christians and persuade them to strengthen local laws. They want their point of view enshrined into state law and then they will go back to their respective states until the next opportunity comes along.
The legislator is dumbfounded by this treatment. Not too many years ago, his bill would have been called a cutting-edge idea, and he would have been called a maverick of the prolife movement. Now his so-called brothers in Christ are stopping just short of burning him at the stake.
Oh, the scenario above is being played out right now in the state of Iowa.
Just Like the CRA
This sounds eerily familiar to me. I was once part of a similar and equally zealous group, the California Republican Assembly. Yep, I was personally recruited by Barbara Alby in the narthex of Capital Christian Center in Sacramento to be part of her evangelical army of Republicans fighting against the devil and taking back our state for Christ. I was told that the liberals were the tools of the devil and that any opposition was because those opposing us were his minions. This was Frank Peretti’s spiritual warfare writ large, and I had a chance to make a difference.
Well, we ran the infidels out of the CRA and then used various chapters to capture county central committees across the state. In a few short years we captured the California Republican Party. After Barbara and her fellow travelers took over the State Party, they kicked CRA to the curb. From the time Barbara Alby took an interest in CRA until she won election to the California Assembly (the lower house of the California legislature), CRA went from a membership of just over 80,000 to about 15,000. Purity and fidelity have their cost.
Those Ignorant of History …
Oh, while the Abolitionists are running their campaign in Iowa, they are also taking to the Internet and denouncing the evils of the Roman Catholic Church on Facebook. This is more proof that they are ignorant and not really prolife.
Folks, it is an undisputable fact that without the Roman Catholic Church, the prolife movement in the United States would never have existed. Yes, I have doctrinal differences with Rome, but the Catholic Church was the only religious group consistently opposing abortion in our country during the time that Roe v Wade was the Supreme Law of the land.
Furthermore, it is a fact that the so-called “mainstream” Protestant churches—Methodist, Presbyterian, and Episcopal—were advocating for legalized abortion in the 1960’s and early 70’s and even allowing abortion clinics to operate on church property. Abortion was welcomed by these Protestant groups as an expression of Christian charity and love for the poor.
Evangelicals were “fair weather’ opponents of abortion and sporadically opposed it. Also, they were very late to get involved in the issue.
Lastly, it was Roman Catholics on the US Supreme Court that finally overturned Roe v Wade. (The Court’s make-up in recent decades skews Catholic & conservative or Jewish & liberal.)
Biden’s token black appointee may claim to be protestant (I really don’t know) but since she still doesn’t know how to define what a woman is, I can’t take her seriously on anything.
Going Scorched Earth
Oh, not that it will move the needle, but I have occasionally tried to tell the Abolitionist folks that in the political world, it is ok to make incremental changes to the law. Change what you can now and try for more next year; however, they dismiss the idea of incrementalism and want an all or nothing result.
As a result, Abolitionists have denounced and ridiculed Students for Life (a large nationwide group of mostly college aged students) for this exact reason. Abolitionists view their mission as a holy war, and anything less than total victory is compromise with evil.
I also have repeatedly suggested to Abolitionists that they need bottom-up solutions that begin by educating the church, then local communities and then trying to change the law. Top-down solutions are not biblical and will not last. Dr. Gary North and a host of others have said this since at least the 1980’s. North was critical of Falwell’s Moral Majority for these same reasons.
Failure is Guaranteed
The Abolitionists will fail because they are doing it the wrong way. They are trying to mimic the world’s way of doing things and not the Bible’s. They think the Bible doesn’t address or speak to God’s response to Power Religion, but it does. However, Abolitionists would rather shoot now and aim later.
Like socialism, Abolitionists just think the right people haven’t tried their tactics yet.
Sorry dudes, we tried it almost 40 years ago and screwed the pooch. California is a one-party state because evangelical Christians tried the same exact tactics that you are using now and destroyed everything we touched with our scorched earth tactics. We killed the California Republican Assembly, the Republican Party in California and created the circumstances that allowed Charles Munger Jr. to take over the Republican Party.
I know. I was there. I had a front row seat to the whole thing. I made it possible. I regret it deeply and have for many years.
Final Comments
The Abolitionist movement will fail. Been there, done that. They will unchurch everyone that disagrees with their jihad tactics and do more harm to the cause of life as a result. More babies will die because of their demand for all or nothing legislation. Abolitionists don’t want to do the hard work of changing hearts and minds. They want to use the power of the sword to do it for them.