Both Catholics and the religious right like to frame abortion, in their public rhetoric, as a war between Christians and atheists, believers against secularists.
It is not that simple.
Dr. George Tiller, who performed abortions in the last trimester of pregnancy, was was shot and killed in his own church (Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas) as he welcomed latecomers on Pentecost Sunday.
He had been so vilified by the anti-abortion movement and so regularly attacked by right-wing commentators that many people regarded him as completely without ethics, a “baby killer.” The fact that he was murdered in church has caused some unease among anti-abortion leaders; what if people suddenly realize that there are many Christians who are pro-choice? How could an abortion provider be a Lutheran in good standing?
As a Lutheran pastor who has studied these matters extensively, and participated in a bioethics committee of a major metropolitan hospital for several years, I will try to explain something about Lutheran theology and the Lutheran approach to ethical issues—which is quite different from either the Catholic tradition or those churches with Calvinist roots, such as Baptists and Presbyterians.
I will also try to explain how abortion cannot be understood today without the political dimension. Abortion is not simply a moral issue; it has been very highly politicized by groups who have much larger motivations and agendas than abortion itself.
The Terrified Conscience
I have not studied Dr. Tiller’s particular religious views. Rather I focus on the ethos of Lutheranism, the patterns of attitudes and beliefs, the habits of thought and common practices, that are likely to characterize most Lutheran congregations, and which likely influenced Dr. Tiller. Lutherans have always taken theology and ethics seriously, and we enjoy an open tradition, alive to the uniqueness of the present moment and the future, not closed in systems of absolute law or dead language, as we try to interpret the teachings of Martin Luther for our own times.
Martin Luther came to believe that the Roman Catholic Church of his time was an oppressive religious system that terrified the consciences of the people. As a monk he experienced the terror of fear of hell, never finding a gracious God even though he tried with all his might to follow the beliefs and practices of the church at that time. Luther came to teach that justification of the sinner before God was the result of faith alone; not moral behavior, not intellectual effort, not assenting to right doctrine. Salvation is something God does for us, not something we can do for God. Lutherans such as Dr. George Tiller hear this sort of gospel message again and again in sermons.
It is important to understand where this salvation occurs, it happens in the internal subjectivity of the human self. God acts directly on the internal self through actual words of gospel preaching and participation in the sacraments. In worship, an actual intersubjective relationship between God and the believer is experienced; and this relationship makes real the meaning of the word salvation. Luther became a fierce critic of the Catholic hierarchy because it placed itself between the believer and God, and used its power over people for its own ends.
To increase its own institutional power, the Catholic Church terrified the internal consciences of the people—it can be argued that the Church is doing the same thing today in its false teachings about abortion.
Vocation in the Secular World
It is difficult to overestimate the revolutionary changes in society that followed Luther’s preaching and teaching. He himself was relatively conservative in his social teachings about family and government, but his attack on the institutional power of the church led to great changes. Enormous numbers of people were “professional” religious. Luther urged them to stop trying to save their own souls: they should leave the monastery, go into the community and bake some bread, make some shoes, teach in a public school, build up the life of the community by serving the neighbor.
Luther rejected the distinction between divine church and secular world, the world was as much the realm of God's grace and preservation as the church—the whole world is the place of God's creation. So Lutherans hear in sermons again and again that they are sent into the world to love the neighbor, to carry out their vocation in the world.
The secular is not the place where God is absent, it is the place where Lutherans are called to serve, just as Dr. Tiller was doing in his medical practice. It is just this encouragement which may have under girded his dedication to serve the needs of women who faced desperate circumstances in their pregnancies, even in the face of constant vilification and hatred by those who attacked him on a daily basis outside his clinic.
Free From All, Free For All
One of Luther’s most popular writings is his pamphlet called “The Freedom of a Christian,” in which he declares that a Christian is free from all earthly authority through the power of the gospel, which establishes a reconciled relationship with God—a quite subversive political orientation since it relativizes all earthly authority. At the same time, this gospel creates in the believer a desire to serve the neighbor, not to satisfy any law or demand, but out of thanksgiving for the grace and mercy of a loving God.
Luther taught that good people engage in good behavior. The gospel creates good people, free from fear, anger, or guilt, people able to act to meet the concrete need of the neighbor known through practical reason. It does not take complicated moral reasoning to see the concrete need of the neighbor. The institutional church, with its detailed moral prescriptions, gets in the way of the ordinary Christian acting out of love for the neighbor, directly responsible before God for that action.
Lutherans live and worship within a community where such is the ethos. If Dr. Tiller had asked his pastor for help in making medical decisions, his pastor (if functioning from Lutheran tradition) would finally have told him that he had to make his decision within the context of his own relationship before God.
In other words, the significance of the subjective relationship extends to ethics as well as worship. The community of believers may help one another in moral deliberation, but each individual is the bearer of moral agency in Lutheran understanding. It is not an isolated individual making a choice outside of relationships (which is the tendency of liberal theory), but, indeed, it is living and choosing in the midst of concrete, intersubjective relationships with both God and neighbor.
From what I have read about Dr. Tiller’s relationships with his patients, he treated them with the utmost courtesy and compassionate understanding; entering into their ethical dilemmas rather than standing over and apart from them in self-righteous condemnation, respecting their own capacity for moral judgment.
Natural Law: Theology Alert!
Natural law is the shorthand term for the idea that God puts into the minds of all human beings a sense of right and wrong. The law revealed in the Bible is summarized in the ten commandments or in Jesus’ words: “love God and neighbor.” But even if a person has not heard of the Bible, according to natural law theory, he or she has been given a moral sense of right and wrong. Luther and John Calvin believed this was true, but Luther especially taught that natural law in the human mind is clouded by sin. That is why government is needed so that human beings are forced to live within some basic order for the good of all, and so that the church has time to do its work of preaching the gospel.
The distinction between natural and revealed law is important to understand in relation to those on the religious right who have been influenced by Calvinist traditions and who place primary authority in both scripture itself and the idea that the law presented in scripture, including detailed prescriptions, is absolute.
John Calvin in Geneva even had committees set up to study the Bible to determine how best to build the city’s sewer system!
Martin Luther did not see it this way; he saw the Bible as absolutely authoritative concerning the gospel, but detailed legal prescriptions in the Bible were for the people of that time. For Luther, ethical imperatives come from each person’s direct relationship with God (strange as that concept is for many people today).
Those in the religious right like to try to claim that they find prohibition against abortion in the Bible, but it is obvious that the people of that time had no detailed knowledge of the reproductive process. There is no convincing argument from the Bible about abortion.
And that may be one reason Catholics have especially become so enamored of the natural law argument. Since explicit religious or Bible-based doctrine cannot be used as authoritative within a democracy like ours, they argue on the basis of natural law—which applies to everybody, Christian or not. But then they insist that they themselves are the ones who know what natural law is. In fact, the Pope ultimately reserves the authority to interpret natural law. Lutherans disagree with both these claims: the manner in which Catholics have traditionally conceived of natural law and the authority of the Pope to be its final arbiter.
These differences have everything to do with the question of abortion.
And yes, it is possible to be an abortion doctor and a good Lutheran.
A key distinction needs to be kept in mind between natural law and nature itself. Natural law, to the degree it exists, exists inside the subjectivity of the human mind and gives us a sense of right and wrong. The term nature refers to the external world. How our internal minds conceive of external nature is a matter of great philosophical debate. But the distinction is important to be able to evaluate the assumptions made in writing and thinking about abortion and biology.
One of the most prominent current proponents of Catholic natural law theory, both in the academy and in Washington, is Robert P. George of Princeton University. In a paper before the American Political Science Association, he discusses his view of abortion, one based on Aristotle via the Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas. The basis for his view is the idea that there is a rational structure beneath everything we see, and that the human mind can come to know this structure through reason.
Robert George argues that the human mind, using reason, “naturally” sees the essence and purpose of human life in the meeting of the sperm and the egg. In other words, to conclude that life begins at conception, Robert George asks us to accept Aristotle’s view of reason and the human mind. And he goes on to say that if we are not willing to do so we do not care about the sacredness of human life.
But Professor George goes further. He argues that modern biological science proves the idea of natural law.
Here George is, I believe, making a huge intellectual mistake, placing himself in the camp of fundamentalists and others who try to use science to prove biblical or theological claims. Biology itself, as a science, cannot determine when God acts. One can believe and understand the whole process as part of God’s creative activity, but there is no absolute scientific method by which to make the claim that everything centers on conception as the point that God uniquely acts to create a human being deserving of legal protection. For Robert George to claim that science proves when God acts is an act of hubris, not careful reasoning.
Martin Luther didn’t like Aristotle at all. He saw this philosophy as part of the oppressive religious system against which he was fighting. He did not like that the institutional structures of the Catholic Church used abstract reasoning to intimidate and confound the conscience of the faithful and justify the power of the Church over the individual. Luther was not a philosopher or systematic theologian; he was a biblical scholar and preacher concerned with the direct relationship between the believer and God. He believed each person could hear and respond to the gospel of God’s gracious love, and then go into the world and see the concrete need of the neighbor.
That is exactly what Dr. George Tiller did. After earning his medical degree, he helped his father in his medical practice and discovered that his father was asked sometimes to perform abortions for women in need. George Tiller was likely not using Aristotelian moral reasoning; he saw the practical need of his patients and acted to relieve their suffering.
Both Luther and Calvin maintained a strong sense of the holiness and otherness of God beyond human rational comprehension. This is one reason Lutherans are hesitant to make large claims about knowing the will of God in specific instances. God is God.
Humans are fallible creatures who are constantly disobeying the first commandment not to worship other gods. The way people like Robert George talk about the biological process makes it seem as if the biology itself is a sort of divine power. They worship the biology rather than the source of life itself.
But one of the most important traditions of all Christian faith is that the world, including the biology, is broken. Indeed, for that reason the historic church has supported the use of medical arts for healing.
Women coming to Dr. Tiller did so as a last resort when the biological process was somehow broken. Medical technology now makes it possible for women to know the status of the fetus before birth; to learn, for example, that a fetus will be born without a brain with no chance of viability. Dr. Tiller would perform an abortion for such a woman out of compassion and care. He wanted to use his medical knowledge for the benefit of women so that they could see new possibilities for their lives in the future.
Open Future for Creation
The implication of law is that the future will be more of the same as the past. Everyone follows the “law” which never changes. Lutherans are quite suspicious of law in this sense. Rather, Luther taught, the gospel is a “living word” which opens life to be lived in the power of the spirit. Law is needed because of sin, but the promise of the gospel is new life, full, real, throbbing life.
Fundamentalism teaches that human beings need to make a decision to accept the gifts of God in adult baptism, or a “born anew” experience. Then they speak of the providence of God as if God mechanically controls every earthly process, where human beings have little actual freedom. Luther taught the opposite. He says we have no choices about the grace of God. But on the other hand, human beings are completely free to use their rational capacity to decide how best to live within the world. That is why their vocation in the world is so important.
But as Lutherans engage in their vocation in the world, they are not promised to be able to know any better than non-Christians what is right or wrong, good or bad. This is why Lutherans cannot, on the basis of any secret or specialized revelation, seek to tell the world how to run its business. This is why Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian killed by the Nazis just before the end of the second world war, says there is no distinct Christian or Lutheran ethics.
A non-Christian ruler may well be wiser than a foolish Christian. Wisdom is not a gift given only to Christians. The God worshipped by Christians is the same God who has created all other human beings, and so Christians participate with them to determine how to order life together in community.
This is why Lutherans today like to think of themselves as a “public church,” a church not of an exclusive God, but a God who is the source of life for all. This means that as Lutherans enter the life of the world they do so with a certain humility, willing to learn from the wisdom of all others in the world. This is quite a different stance than that of either Catholics, who think they know natural law better than others, or fundamentalists, who think everyone should follow their interpretation of the Bible.
Dr. Tiller refused to give in to the extremist voices and actions that the religious right and those inspired by Catholic natural law rhetoric organized against him. The man had the courage of his convictions even if others associated him with atheists and secularists and attacked him in every way they could.
Racism, Civil Rights, and the Politics of Abortion
Catholics have not provided the primary energy for the anti-abortion movement, though their thinking has provided that movement with a certain intellectual respectability. The real energy of that movement comes from what is known as the religious right, constituted primarily of Southern religious groups, such as the Southern Baptists and Pentecostals; especially the television preachers who emerged in the 1980s during the era of Ronald Reagan.
Jerry Falwell, now dead, was a Southern Baptist, as is Rick Warren. Pat Robertson is Pentecostal. Using methods pioneered by Billy Graham, also a Southern Baptist, the so-called “evangelical” movement has put together a formula for building large churches that is less informed by the theology of the Reformation than a desire for cultural power, big audiences, nativistic religion, and a prosperity gospel (lots of money in the offering plates). The religious right has become an Americanized and commercialized form of religion, far from the historic traditions of the Protestant Reformation. It has over these past decades aligned itself with a particular political party in this country, the Republican Party, which has dominated politics since the 1968 election of Richard Nixon.
Abortion as a moral issue cannot be understood without the realization that it has been, and continues to be, primarily a political issue promoted by religious groups with a far larger agenda than simply abortion—and driven by an energy that goes far deeper into the racial history of the country than most Americans want to admit.
After the Civil War in the 1860s, the white South was able to keep former black slaves from full participation in society for another 100 years. Only in the 1960s were African Americans given full legal rights in public life.
Then in 1968 came the election of Nixon with his “Southern Strategy.” Ronald Reagan was the first president to explicitly seek the vote of a religious right, now emerging as part of a white backlash against the gains of black citizens in the 1960s. It must be recognized that the South was forced to dramatically change its patterns of discrimination and segregation by the federal government. The Supreme Court had forced school integration in 1954. White churches set up their own religious schools rather than send their children to integrated public schools. This is the origin of the hatred of the religious right for public education which continues today.
In 1973 the Supreme Court—the same Supreme Court—made abortion legal. The white South, which already hated the Supreme Court, now had another rallying cry: abortion. It turned out to be a handy emotional issue, one which gave Southern religion a sense of moral superiority over Northern liberals who had forced integration upon the South.
The energy of the cultural wars, then—in addition to many key political fights of the past decades—is drawn from the single most important original sin of the United States: slavery and racism. Abortion, for these folks, has little to do with the idea of natural law; what was right and wrong in the minds of white Southerners was determined by their history as slave owners and their sense of themselves as racially and morally superior to blacks. As historian George Marsden has argued, the idea of inerrancy of the Bible (a fundamentalist tenet) emerged in a South which insisted on using the Bible to support the institution of slavery.
The racism in the public consciousness of the white South has been, and continues to this day to be, a major factor in politics. The only area of the country unable to vote for a black president in 2008 was the white South.
I have provided just enough of this political history to demonstrate that abortion is less a moral issue than a political issue and that the energy for it lies in backlash politics more than moral reflection.
It gives me great pain and sadness to say that too many leaders of the Catholic Church have (for what they construe to be moral reasons) sided with religious right expressions, rather than with those Protestants, such as Lutherans, who do indeed consider moral questions to be important; including the moral issue of racism, support for family life, economic justice, and concern for the environmental sustainability of the earth itself.
Lutherans organized in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America have put together a social statement for its members in which abortion can be morally justified in certain conditions with a focus on the role of the woman as an agent of moral responsibility. Dr. George Tiller probably knew this statement well, for it supported his compassionate work as a physician who took seriously his moral responsibility to love the neighbor, just as Jesus said.
It is time for religious leaders to stop using inflammatory language in public. The Pope himself has stopped trying to get an anti-abortion law passed in Italy; the people there simply will not do so. The only reason the Catholic Church is making such a political effort in the United States is the political presence of the religious right with its central energy coming from a racist history. That is not a good partner for Catholics.
It is time to stop terrorizing the minds and hearts of the people over abortion.
Tags: abortion, fundamentalism, george tiller, luther, murder, politics, racism, religious right
That you for this excellent article. You voice much that I find hard to share. I love Catholicism but the equation of abortion with murder is nonsense.
Some people seem to want "supreme leaders" to set civil society in place. The reaction of the largest religious denomination in the United States to the establishment of health and reproductive rights for women dismays me. The fundamentalist attack on those same rights dismays me.
The reality the bishops affirm and seek to force on the rest of us went out of existence over 500 years ago.
Thank you again for this excellent post.
Utter Nonsense... As for Tiller, a classic case of reaping what you sow. The fact that if took place in his church, speaks volumes! JEHOVAH GOD is the author of life and death...In other words, HE is the creator and substainor of all life. He ultimately decides if it is to begin or end...It all moves according to HIS Divine Will! When foolish men and women (supreme court justices') give the right to end a poor innocent unborn child's life to all women for whatever reason...they have usurped the authority of "Almight God."
America is cursed by the blood of over 50,000,000 "poor innocent girls and boys" who have been "sacrificed on the altar of a woman's right to choose to the god of selfishness." Less than 1% of those abortion were for reason of rape or incest. Less the 20% of those abortions were done because of medical reasons. The blood of those poor innocent children cry out unto GOD from the ground!
Psalm 106:37-41 37 "They even sacrificed their sons And their daughters to demons,
38 And shed innocent blood, The blood of their sons and daughters, Whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan; And the land was polluted with blood. 39 Thus they were defiled by their own works,And played the harlot by their own deeds. 40 Therefore the wrath of the LORD was kindled against His people, So that He abhorred His own inheritance. 41 And He gave them into the hand of the Gentiles, And those who hated them ruled over them."
America's future will be Israel's past! There is nothing new under the sun!
Until this legalized murder against of poor innocent children is stopped, America will continue to experience economic and moral distruction! So it is written, so it shall be done!
James's comment is an example of how NOT to make a convincing argument in defense of the right to life. We will not get anywhere with this debate unless people on both sides get off their respective high horses and engage with each other's arguments rather than sniping at each other with ad hominem attacks like this. I am also horrified by the statement that Tiller reaped what he sowed, as if people are rejoicing over his death. Really, what kind of Christian charity is that? "Love one's enemies?" Doesn't sound like it. Though I strongly oppose doctors performing abortions, it is also wrong to treat Dr. Tiller like the two-dimensional demon that so many anti-abortionists made him out to be. He was a human being and I think his family and friends would define him as much more than simply someone who performed abortions. Two wrongs do not make a right. Tiller's murder should be condemned as much as the death of the unborn.
There is no high horse here buddy. As for your two wrongs do not make a right, correction...the count is 50,000,000 wrongs that have not been made right! God is a God of "Love and Justice." It is the Justice of God people like you have a problem with. God's Word and His principles of "Life and Godliness" are clear as a bell. You are horrified because Tiller reaped what he sowed? Where is your sympathy for the 50,000,000 poor innocent children who could not defend themselves and died a horrific death at the hand of people like Tiller. I never said anything about rejoicing because Tiller reaped what he sowed. However, he can not longer take the innocent life of God's creation. (the unborn child) Now that's a good thing! There is no argument to be made here....Either you believe that GOD is Almighty Creator of the universe or you don't. Either you believe what He says concerning the shedding of innocent blood or you don't. No doubt Tiller was murdered! However, so were the 50,000,000 poor innocent children the legal system has failed to protect... they did no harm to anyone. On the other hand Tiller murdered at least 60,000 of them. Who deserves my sympathy and support the most? It's a no brainer for all of those who are of sound mind, whose conscience is not seared with a hot iron!
There is no high horse here Johnathan Chow. The truth is... I have discernment in this issue and you don't! As for your two wrongs do not make a right... correction...the count is 50,000,000 wrongs that have not been made right! God is a God of "Love and Justice." It is the Justice of God people like you have a problem with. Tiller was not my enemy...However, he was an enemy of the unborn child. By his own doing, he may have made himself an enemy of God. "For we know Him who said, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. And again, “The LORD will judge His people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Heb 10:30-31). Just as It was God's permissive will that allowed the Jews to crucify the Lord Jesus Christ thereby fulfilling God's untimate plan for all of humanity, it was God's will that Tiller die in the manner that he did, ending his reign of terror against the innocent unborn child. God's Word and His principles of "Life and Godliness" are clear as a bell. You are horrified because Tiller reaped what he sowed? Where is your sympathy for the 50,000,000 poor innocent children who could not defend themselves and died a horrific death (an act of terror) at the hand of people like Tiller. I never said anything about rejoicing because Tiller reaped what he sowed. However, he can no longer take the innocent life of God's creation. (the unborn child) Now that's a good thing! There is no argument to be made here....Either you believe that GOD is Almighty Creator of the universe or you don't. Either you believe what He says concerning the shedding of innocent blood or you don't. You either believe that to end an innocent life and call it legalized abortion is "murder" or you have bought into lie that it is a woman's right to choose. The "choice" is yours! No doubt Tiller was murdered! However, so were the 50,000,000 poor innocent children the legal system has failed to protect... they did no harm to anyone. On the other hand Tiller murdered at least 60,000 of them. Who deserves my sympathy and support the most? It's a no brainer for all of those who are of sound mind, whose conscience is not seared with a hot iron!
The "unborn" is a macabre new word. It connotes the "undead" of vampire movie fame. It is the kind of silly emotional trigger with no history that demagogues like Luke Newton Gingrich use to manipulate political opinion. It is empty rheotical speech that does not help discussion but throws it off track.
I enjoyed the article but I think Rev.Knudson is presenting a very idealized picture of Lutheranism. There are many Lutherans who are stridently opposed to abortion, and the idea of inerrancy in the Bible is surely older than 19tn Century Southern slavery. And the Catholic world is a more nuanced one than the pastor would have us believe. Still his article is a welcome call for reason and tolerance.
This comment is inaccurate:
"Both Catholics and the religious right like to frame abortion, in their public rhetoric, as a war between Christians and atheists, believers against secularists."
My wife and I are Church-going Roman Catholics. We, as well as many of our Catholic friends and family are just about all pro-choice.
The author should be more careful and not generalize about American Catholics who are basically pro-choice. It is the hierarchy that is almost completely opposed to reproductive rights.
Reverend Knudson, thank you for this article. You make some very interesting points, most of which I will proceed to disagree with. I hope that you will not take offense and I look forward to continuing this discussion on or off the boards. My response will come in multiple parts as RD only allows me to post a few hundred characters at a time.
While I agree that abortion has become heavily politicized, it is a fallacy to draw the conclusion that abortion is any LESS of a moral issue. Politicization may change the way people perceive abortion and which issues they associate it with, but that by itself does not change the moral valence of the act itself. Catholic doctrine teaches that for an act to be morally good, the intent AND the means must be good. If I shoot an innocent bystander in cold blood, I might be able to get together a whole bunch of people who thought that the victim was making everyone’s lives miserable and that we were better off without him. We might be able to put together a convincing political movement to justify the victim’s death and generate a political consensus. We could say that the victim was a vile racist who oppressed minorities (and it might even be true). None of that would change the fact that shooting someone in cold blood is murder and thus immoral. Circumstances might PARTIALLY MITIGATE the immorality of the act, but they can never completely change something evil into something good. Regardless of how heavily politicized abortion is, the moral dimension cannot be dismissed out of hand.
Your argument that the anti-abortion movement is merely the tool of southern right-wingers who got burned by desegregation relies too much on suggestive association than hard evidence. You argue that Southern evangelical movements have provided much of the political firepower behind the anti-abortion movement. I agree with that. But for the next seven paragraphs, you shift gears and say that the anti-abortion movement is all about Southern resentment against the liberal Northern courts. The linchpin of your argument is this paragraph:
“In 1973 the Supreme Court, the same Supreme Court [that mandated desegregation], made abortion legal. The white South already hated the Supreme Court, now it had another issue to fight about: abortion. It turned out to be a handy emotional issue, one which gave Southern religion a sense of moral superiority over Northern liberals who had forced integration upon the South.”
That’s all. You reify the entire white South as an undifferentiated mass of liberal-hating sore losers. Are you saying that morality doesn’t play into this at all? Are you suggesting that people aren’t really being motivated by outrage over the deaths of thousands of unborn babies? Forgive me if I am going out on a limb here, but are you implying that if white Southerners hadn’t been so racist, they would not be so rabid about abortion? If so, I am not convinced by the scanty evidence that you have provided. (Cont'd.)
The data I have found suggest a more complicated picture. In a 1992 sociological study of the relationship among religion, race, regionalism and views on abortion in the United States, political scientist Clyde Wilcox found that throughout the 1970s and 1980s, southern blacks were consistently LESS likely than southern whites to support abortion. Moreover, black Christians were more likely to be orthodox, conservative and biblically literalist than white Christians. (Clyde Wilcox. “Race, Religion, Region and Abortion Attitudes”, Sociological Analysis 53:1 (1992)) So if the southern-based anti-abortion movement of the 1980s was underpinned by racism, then shouldn’t we have expected southern blacks to be MORE supportive of abortion than whites, not less?
A more recent study (Carin Robinson. “From Every Tribe and Nation? Blacks and the Christian Right”, Social Science Quarterly 87:3 (2006)) used data from 1996 and 2000 and found that the only significant differences between blacks who supported the political aims of the Christian Right and those who did not were that the former were more likely to read their Bibles every day and self-identify as born-again, suggesting that religiosity drove their attitudes. This tracks well with a Gallup study conducted with 2000-01 data (see the graphs) showing that blacks are MORE likely to support major restrictions on abortion than whites, and that higher religiosity is strongly correlated with greater opposition to abortion. So it seems that for black Christians, at least, support for the Christian Right and opposition to abortion are primarily functions of religiosity. Clearly, not all evangelicals are against abortion because they have a racist axe to grind!
All right, enough about the racism angle. Let me turn to your characterization of Robert George’s argument. According to you, he says that “modern biological science proves the idea of natural law.” Can you please quote me the passage where he says that? That was not how I interpreted his argument. The thrust of George’s argument as I understood it is that human development is continuous rather than discrete. A fertilized embryo develops into a blastocyst, then a fetus, an infant, a child, and an adult. George never says that “ensoulment happens at Point X”. I suspect he would agree with your assertion that there is no way we can scientifically know that. However, we DO know that a newborn one second out of the womb is a human being and not merely a collection of cells. George’s point is that that same newborn developed continuously from a fertilized embryo. There was no point during gestation at which it “crossed over” from being non-human to being human, except when the sperm fertilized the egg. Therefore, he argues, abortion is the termination of human life and the debate shifts to whether it is ethical to end a human life. Far from “worshiping” biology, as you so indelicately put it, George is using logic to arrive at grounds from which we can make an ethical determination.
My last point: I think that your characterization of the Catholic Church is grossly oversimplified and verges on caricature. You suggest that Catholicism is obsessed with law and fixed morality and contrast it with Lutheranism’s proclamation of the Gospel as “ ‘living word’ which opens life to be lived in the power of the spirit.” This is a false dichotomy. Catholics also believe that the Gospel is the LIVING Word of God. The Church is tasked with the responsibility of reading the signs of the times and interpreting the Gospel in light of that. Like Lutherans, Catholics do not adopt a literalist reading of the Bible. But lest we forget, Jesus also states in Matthew 5:17-20 that “I have not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets…but to fulfill them. […] Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” (NIV). While Jesus railed against a fundamentalist view of the Law that made no room for love of God or one’s neighbor, he made sure to indicate that his followers were still bound by the law. Faith in God demands that the believer approach God’s commandments with trust—not blind trust, but a charitable willingness to seriously consider and integrate them into one’s life.
Sorry for the length of this post. As you can see, it prompted a great deal of reflection and thought on my part--I've spent the better part of the morning writing it. I take that to be a good thing :-) Thank you for your thought-provoking thoughts!
To Jonathan T. Chow:
You may like to view a presentation of Robert George at Catholic University of America which was also broadcast on C-Span the Saturday night beore the killing of Dr. Tiller. His presentation is inflammatory because he says again and again in various ways that his version of natural law theory is associated with respect for life, whereas if one disagrees with this view then one supports killing of a human being. You can see there how he talks about modern biological science and claims it is conclusively in support of his view against abortion.
The fact is the current view of the Catholic Church is itself "modern." That is, Thomas Aquinas taught that life began with the quickening of the fetus, not conception, a view from early Greek philosophers. The early church never had a definitive philosophical view on this matter. Yes, Christians always have fully supported the importance of biological reproduction and children as a gift of God's grace. However, it has not had a detailed description of when life began. So only with modern biological science has the issue become so contested. You say George is just providing the "logic" of the matter. Well, most philosophy these days does not embrace the natural law argument finally resting on Aristotle; in fact, most philosophy does not support the kind of "foundational" or metaphysical theories of the ancient Greeks.
Concerning your research on the abortion views of blacks in social science literature, I am not sure how it applies to my argument. The whole matter is certainly more complicated than I was able to present in a brief paper, but I tried to present enough of recent political history to show the clear association of the religious right with Southern religion and racism as a powerful political element in the debates of the last decades. The fact is that the phrase "White South" does, indeed, refer to a clearly identifiable set of beliefs and practices that continue today, often hidden in code words and issues since explicit racism is no longer allowed in the public media. If you don't believe it just look up the name "Lee Atwater" to see how the Republican Party has systematically used racism and the abortion issue, along with the gay rights issue, to win elections.
Jonathan, a generalized poll on attitudes provides very limited information on most moral questions. Things are much more complex in the internal subjective consciousness of human beings than external opinion polls can uncover. On abortion, take any black or white congregation of any religious or political group which articulates a strong anti-abortion stance. Then, imagine a particular individual member of that group experiencing the trauma of having their eleven year old daughter raped and impregnated by a criminal. Do you know what having a baby does to an eleven year old girl? Can you call such a thing an act of God? Does the biology always trump everything? I believe that the father and mother of such a girl will tend to agree that in this case an abortion is not a killing of a baby, despite what their larger group believes. They will quietly arrange for an abortion for their daughter and no one will know the difference, it won't be reported on any social science research poll. Be careful basing your own moral judgments on generalized views of others; do your own thinking based on engagement in real life experiences. Things are never as easy as they may appear from abstract reasoning.
Thank you for your willingness to discuss these matters.
Reverend Knudson,
Thank you for your comprehensive reply to my comment. Let me respond to your points individually.
On the “inflammatory” nature of George’s speech, you write, “[George’s] presentation is inflammatory because he says again and again in various ways that his version of natural law theory is associated with respect for life, whereas if one disagrees with this view then one supports killing of a human being.” I do not know what constitutes your definition of “inflammatory”, but it seems that you and I have very different notions of what the word means. “Inflammatory” connotes a firing up of the passions and an appeal to irrational and especially violent emotion rather than reason. An inflammatory statement might be, “Obama is a blasphemer and a heretic! Bring God’s wrath upon him!” or “Abortionists will burn in hell!”. These are statements designed to override rationality and stir up violent thoughts and deeds.
But George is making a logical statement. According to you, he says that if adhering to his view of natural law respects life, then not adhering to it supports taking life. How is this different from a statement claiming, “If you adhere to my view that says murder is always wrong, then not adhering to it means that you support murder (in at least some circumstances)?” These are logical statements. If statements like these are inflammatory and, by implication, to be excluded from the category of civil discourse, then is there any statement opposing abortion that is NOT inflammatory? What you seem to be saying is that the POSITION opposing abortion on the grounds of natural law is inflammatory and not the MANNER in which it is expressed. This strikes me as dangerous territory. It is one thing to oppose hate speech and violence, but quite another to dismiss as inflammatory those who respectfully and civilly disagree with you on moral issues.
On your criticism of George’s logic, you say that “most philosophy these days” rejects natural law theory and ancient Greek philosophy. Forgive me for being blunt, but that is an extraordinarily weak argument. Most ancient astronomers believed that the sun revolved around the earth. Most modern societies believed until very recently that women were intellectually inferior to men, or blacks inferior to whites. Were they right? Of course not. Just because most modern philosophers reject natural law does not mean that natural law is wrong.
Regarding the abortion views of blacks, what I was trying to do—albeit in an oblique manner—was challenge the notion that the anti-abortion movement is primarily fueled by racist motives. If that were the case, wouldn’t you expect African Americans to be more pro-choice? Instead, they are actually more strongly opposed to abortion than white southerners. The anti-abortion movement is not just a white southern phenomenon but one that cuts across racial lines, united by shared religious and ethical beliefs. Arguing that it is just a racial dividing line all too conveniently overlooks the fact that many people believe that a baby is a baby from the moment of conception (or at least during the second and third trimester) and that ending its life is morally equivalent to intentionally ending anyone’s life against their will—namely, murder. (Cont'd.)
(Cont'd. from previous) I acknowledge that there are grey areas. The rape and impregnation of the 11-year old child in Brazil is one such case. Not knowing all the circumstances I hesitate to make a definitive pronouncement, but assuming that the child would have died giving birth, the doctors had to make a very tough judgment call. I would not have excommunicated them. But this strikes me as an exceptional case. You are right in that we have to look at cases individually, but it does NOT follow that we cannot formulate some guiding principles. We can only use our consciences if they have been informed ahead of time, and that means some kind of abstract reasoning, which we call ethics and morals.
This brings me to my final point: you write of Dr. Tiller, “He was a courageous and compassionate physician carrying out his vocation in the world. Why do we not lift him up as a hero and now even a martyr for the faith?” It is adherence to ethical and moral principles derived from a power higher than ourselves that makes heroes and martyrs. Without that adherence to a higher power we would all just be rationalizing our own desires. Tell me, on what biblical and theological principles is abortion praiseworthy? What lesson should we teach our children about the heroic abortion doctor? Who would dare to praise abortion and in the same breath proclaim Jesus’s exhortation in Matthew 19:14 – “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these”? As I said, I believe that the murder of Dr. Tiller was a heinous crime and I reject the positions of those who would welcome his death. But to call Dr. Tiller a hero and a martyr for the faith because of his willingness to stand up for the right to have an abortion goes much too far. In certain cases, abortion may be a necessary evil, as revroth so clearly put it, but we should never forget that it is still an evil.
Link to the graphs I mentioned. Sorry for not including the link. I can't seem to get the link HTML working here so here's the URL: http://www.gallup.com/poll/9904/ Public-Opinion-About-Abortion-InDepth-Review.aspx#8".
I am a Southerner, who supports reproductive freedom. All of my mother's great grandfathers fought with the Army of Northern Virginia (also a descendent of abolitionists).
I am a conservative who abhors the intrusion of rule of religious bigots over the reproductive lives of women. It is not acceptable that the bishops hide behind their terrorist followers.
The Catholic Church is the same outfit that opposes masturbation and birth control. They want to impose their bizarre ideas on everyone. They have a right to their view, but their misuse of language to equate abortion and murder is despicable.
The current Republican Party is to the old Southern Democratic parties as the Catholic Church is to the White Citizens Council as the murders of physicians and bombers of medical clinics are to the Klan. It is just that awful.
Thank you very much Pastor Knudson.
I want to thank those who commented on my article both for and against. Some qualifying sentances and paragraphs had to be removed from the article due to length. So it does seem that I refer to "Catholics" and the "White South" in too general a way. In a polemical piece such as this some misunderstanding is maybe unavoidable. I very much applaud the work and courage of Catholic leaders such as Frances Kissling. I strongly urge all Catholic laypeople who are opposed to the way some bishops are conducting themselves in public to do what they can to change that behavior. I do believe that Catholic rhetoric from these bishops and others helps justify the language of "baby killing" and thus the death of Dr. Tiller. To accuse others of having no respect for the sacredness of human life if they disagree with Catholic natural law theory is not only disrespectful but inflammatory for the public dialog on these matters. The post by James is an indication of the degree to which this is true. I am happy that Jonathon T. Chow believes comments like those of James are not helpful to the discussion.
Chow thinks that I am dismissing the moral dimension by speaking about the politics of abortion. Not at all. I was lifting up the moral dimension to a very high level by saying that we make our moral decisions in the context of our relationship with God. Neither law nor utilitarian calculation are primary for Lutherans, but our relation to God both in worship and ethics. This does not mean that both these aspects of moral philosophy are not important as we as Lutherans enter the public debate, but for Dr. Tiller and each of us in our own personal actions the relationship with God is a crucial factor.
Dr. Tiller did abortions for women in terrible circumstances where the biology was broken. He was a courageous and compassionate physician carrying out his vocation in the world. Why do we not lift him up as a hero and now even a martyr for the faith?
I have tried to write about two reasons, a wrong type of natural law theory and a politics rooted in racism. A third factor is a romanticized view of nature. A "romantic" view is one which creates an image of perfection and then evaluates reality against that idealized image. Nature is so romanticized by anti-abortion advocates, and so is history. Before 1973 there were many abortions. If abortion were outlawed there would still be many abortions, and women dying in back alleys. Nature and people are not perfect. It is the religious right that especially lifts up the idea of perfect nature which is not a Christian, but a liberal idea. That's one reason I say the religious right does not represent historic Protestant faith. It is, actually, hyper-liberal. It was Thomas Jefferson who wrote of "nature and nature's God" in the Declaration of Independence. To worship perfect nature is not Christianity which acknowledges that the world is fundamentally broken. In such a world Christians should bring a word of hope and possibility, not hate and hostility.
To those who said I have an idealized view of Lutherans, I did not mean to say Lutherans were by any means perfect or of one mind on abortion. Not at all. I was just trying to show how from the ethos of Lutheranism Dr. Tiller may have understood his life and work. As a body, however, Lutherans cannot be associated with the religious right. I hope my article at least began to explain why this is so.
ED Knudson, this rehtoric about Catholic Natural Law theory, Christian right, hyper liberal, politics rooted in racism and historic Protestant faith is all smoke screen. Let's take off the mask and deal with the truth...
What about what the Word of God says about these issues: Prov 6:16-19
16 There are six things the LORD hates,
seven that are detestable to him: 17 haughty eyes, a lying tongue, "hands that shed innocent blood," 18 a heart that devises wicked schemes, (the gruesome partial birth abortion precedure fits here) feet that are quick to rush into evil, 19 a false witness who pours out lies (the marketeering of abortion in 1973) and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers.
Your statement: "Before 1973 there were many abortions. If abortion were outlawed there would still be many abortions, and women dying in back alleys." (untrue)
Here are the facts:
ABORTIONS PRECEDURES, FACTS AND STATISTICS
The Consequences of Roe v. Wade
49,915,605
Total abortions since 1973
Based on numbers reported by the Alan Guttmacher Institute 1973-2003 with estimates of 1,287,000 for 2004-2007. AGI estimates a possible 3% under reporting rate, which is factored into the total.
http://www.tnrtl.org/images/hysterotomy_abort...
http://www.tnrtl.org/human_life_issues/human_...
http://www.tnrtl.org/images/suction_aspiratio...
http://www.tnrtl.org/images/d&c_abortion1...
http://www.tnrtl.org/images/d&e_abortion1...
http://www.tnrtl.org/images/saline_abortion1....
What do we know now about the impact of abortion that we did not know when it was legalized in 1973? We did not know that the number of abortions performed nationally would skyrocket.
The number of reported abortions in the U.S. more than doubled in the first two decades after legalization, reaching more than one million each year.
1. We did not know that promises of less child abuse and fewer out-of-wedlock births were false.
After legalization, the reported number of child abuse cases more than quintupled, reaching more than 870,000 in 2004. The number of births to unmarried women more than tripled, with more than 1.4 million births reported in 2004.
2. We did not know about the prevalence of repeat abortions. In 2003, 43 percent of women who had abortions in the U.S. had at least one previous abortion.
3. We did not know that the vast majority of abortions would be for reasons other than rape, incest and the life of the mother, or that most would be among single women.
These “hard case” categories represent approximately 1 percent of all U.S. abortions.
More than three-quarters (80%) of all abortions are among unmarried women.
4. We did not know that abortion advocates would knowingly exaggerate the number of illegal abortion deaths prior to 1973 in order to boost their political case for repealing abortion prohibitions. You’ve probably heard that tens of thousand of American women died in illegal abortions before 1973, the year that abortion was legalized in all 50 states. Bernard Nathanson, an early leader in the abortion rights movement and an abortionist for many years, tells a different story in this excerpt from his book, Aborting America:” How many deaths were we talking about when abortion was illegal? In N.A.R.A.L. (The National Abortion Rights Action League) we generally emphasized the drama of the individual case, not the mass statistics, but when we spoke of the latter is was always ‘5,000 to 10,000 deaths a year.’ I confess that I knew the figures were totally false, and I suppose the others did too if they stopped to think of it.
(continued)
But in the ‘morality’ of our revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our wa y to correct it with honest statistics.”
5.Nathanson’s admission of purposefully padding the abortion death numbers is confirmed by fellow early abortion advocate Lucinda Cisler, writing before legalization in 1973:“Another statistic that is bandied about for all the right reasons – but with much unwarranted confidence – is the figure of 10,000 U.S. abortion deaths per year. A study made in the 1930’s, before the development of antibiotics made even illegal abortion less deadly than it used to be, came up with this number of 10,000 deaths; but it is no longer anywhere near the truth and has no place in any serious discussion about abortion. The most accurate estimates are that 500-1,000 deaths occur each year because of septic abortions, and this range takes false reporting strongly into account.”
6. We did not know the physical and mental health risks associated with abortion. Women face a number of possible physical complications including hemorrhage requiring transfusion, perforation of the uterus, cardiac arrest, major unintended surgery, infection resulting in hospitalization, convulsions, undiagnosed ectopic (tubal) pregnancy, cervical laceration, uterine rupture, and death.
7. All women, especially young teenagers, are at risk for damage to their cervix during an abortion, which can lead to complications with later pregnancies.
8. A Finnish study of suicide after pregnancy found that “the suicide rate after an abortion was three times the general suicide rate and six times that associated with birth.”
9. Women who ended their first pregnancy by abortion are five times more likely to report subsequent substance abuse than women who carried the pregnancy to term, and four times more likely to report substance abuse compared to those whose first pregnancy ended naturally.
10. We did not know that abortionists would develop barbaric late-term abortion methods, such as “partial-birth abortion.” Partial-birth abortion involves the partial delivery of a living child in order to puncture and crush the baby’s skull.
11. We did not know that medical advances would allow physicians to perform surgery on pre-born children in the womb.
For an example, see story and photograph of “Baby Samuel”
http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/b/babysamuel.htm
We did not know that developments in obstetric imaging resulting in 4D-ultrasound technology would allow us to come face to face with preborn children before birth.
For an example of this imaging, see www.gemedicalsystems.com/rad/us/4d/
We did not know that the two women listed as plaintiffs in the U.S. Supreme Court cases that resulted in legalized abortion, Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, would later regret their involvement and ask that these landmark cases be reversed.
For details on their legal request to overturn these decisions, see http://writ.news.findlaw.com/lazarus/20040916.html
Now — three decades and more than 49 million abortions later — we know!
Your discourse in support of Tiller does not line up with God's Word concerning life and godliness. And you are right, my comments will not be helpful if you expect my reasoning to be in line with the foolish darkened minds of those who give no credence to God's principles of "life and godliness." My reasoning will be in line with God's Word which is: Heb 4:12 For the word of God is living and active.
continued--
Rev. Knudsen, for the most part I appreciate your analysis. But, sometimes it seems that you romanticize abortion. I realize that there is no Biblical material specifically about abortion, but I seem to recall that the early church's position was "Christians do not abort." This doesn't advocate for a law against in the civil realm, but only indicates that early Christians held themselves to a higher standard. As well, some former abortion advocates (such as Bernard Nathanson) changed his position based on medical advances, such as sonograms, which showed the development of the fetus.
I remain, as a Lutheran, pro-choice, but think of it more as a "necessary evil" than anything else. As a Lutheran, I feel that one of my neighborly responsibilities is to work with things such as health care reform, so that more options are open to women.
I think that the ethical difficulty comes when some advocates are able to see the woman as the neighbor, some only seem to see the unborn child as the neighbor; very few seem able to take both into account.
This is my critism of most (not all) abortion opponents; they are considering the unborn child as their neighbor, but not necessarily the good of the woman.
I don't see that Rev. Knudson romanticises abortion. I appreciate your comment about considering the good of women.
Over hald a century ago, Erwin Goodenough noted, "But it is obvious that nature itself, or the scientific study of nature, does not tell us what this Right is. All formuations of Right have been human creations, however much men in different civilizatoins have constructed myths or revelation to guarantee the truth of their morla and scientific traditons." "Toward a Mature Faith" (New York, 1955), p. 87.
A bit less hubris and a bit more tolerance would help all of us.
I noticed that you Tiller supporters do not use the Word of God...what am I thinking, how could you without twisting it to say something that it does not. We really should not be surprised. Exactly where do you get these false assumptions? God gave His people His Word as a guide for successful living. There is no subject on earth that He does not cover. He has given us a standard to live by and guide us. Why are you pretending to be something that you are not? I guess Christian imposters come from all denominations and walks of life. You seem to support the works of Satan (evil) and hate Jehovah God? Is that why you support Tiller who specialized in the "gruesome partial birth abortion precedure" which has Satan's depraved finger prints all over it? You are in reality Anti-Christ? Are you pastors and leaders of one of many apostate churches? Your words would suggest so... I understand that witchcraft and satanic worship is a form of religion. The unborn child is more than a neighbor...he or she is a helpless creation of God that can not speak or defend it's self against a depraved society that think's it knows better than Almighty God. Most of you have more repect for dogs and creeping things than you do for the innocent unborn child. It is apparent that you and Tiller never had a personal relationship with The Lord Jesus Christ. Otherwise, we would not be having this conversation! To be a Christian in reality is to be in full support of the Word of God and what He says about life and godliness! You will be held accountable by Almighty God! You will be held accountable for being in cooperation with the murdering of over 50,000,000 poor innocent unborn children. The land is polluted with their blood. It is my prayer that God will cause you to smell the innocent blood before you leave this life.
I don't recall Karl Barth's views on abortion. I learned much from Barth in my youth.
Well James, it is only your opinion that the Bible is God's word. Albeit many share that opinion, many believed the earth was flat, that the sun circled the earth, and that the earth is a mere 6000 years old.
So this diatribe you go on is all based on believing a mere opinion. I rather laughed, and sort of didn't. I laughed because your opinion has led you to be rather caustic, which I find ironically humorous in light of loving your neighbor. Your command of the language not withstanding, your message did nothing to convict me of anything other than that you are emotionally led about by whatever lies broadcast from the pulpit you worship at. It did not convict me of your humility, love, or truth.
There are many of us "supporters" who see the hypocrisy of christian conservatism in this murder of a human that your alleged god created.That can hardly be anything less than what your ilk accuses Tiller of. So how do you use "the word of god" to justify it?
First though, how do you justify calling the Bible the word of god? It is hardly inerrant, and we have no idea really what the original copies actually said. And considering that the historically narrow minded path of the "church" is bathed in innocent blood, I am rather interested in hearing how you justify that as well. Or shall we conclude by knowing the tree by it's fruits?
If you really believe this crap that you wrote, explain why you are hanging around a website entitled ReligionDispatches.org? Oh, forgive me, you are probably a devil worshipper or some other type of cult that lies and calls its self Christian. I will not respond to personally...I will let the Word of God do that. Here is what The Word of God says about you: Romans I:18-32
18The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
21For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
24Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
28Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
I have no power to convict you. It is an act of God! I need no preacher to instruct me. I have the Spirit of God and His Word! And your fruits? How many children have you had murderd? Have you committed acts of perversion? It is my guess that you have had ample opportunity to accept the risen Savior. Some folks are destined for eternal damnation by choice. I'm not trying to stand in your way. Some of you will die on your death bed cursing God. Perhaps you are one of them. However, make no mistake every knee will bow...no! I take that back, everyone will fall on their face and give an account before The Lord JESUS CHRIST! Including you!! Doesn't matter to me whether you believe it or not! The truth is still the truth. It does not matter what you believe!
What you belive matters when what you believe encourages terrorists to murder physicians who provide vital medical care to women in need.
Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. 13Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
Therefore, when I refer to the Word of God it will make you and others uncomfortable. It will be offensive to anti-christs and all haters! You tend to place Christians' in categories such as race and geographical location. How ridiculous! Here are some facts for you: I am Christian, a member of the Family of God, an adopted Son of JEHOVAH God, a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ who believes in the inerrancy of The Holy Bible...and the least of all, a Black American.
Here is what the Word of God says about people who peddle the crap you have been peddling: II Cor 11:13-15
13For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. 14And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. 15It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness.
Their end will be what their actions deserve.
The church is responsible for not holding Tiller accountable for his actions. If he was Catholic he should have been Excommunicated until he repented from his tortureous, saddistic reign of murder against the poor innocent unborn children via the barbaric "Partial Birth Abortion" execution.
The Lutheran Church was partly the blame for the murder of Tiller (and the 60,000 children he murdered) by allowing him to remain a member of their church in a leadership position, in good standing without any type of reprimand. His membership should have been revoked until he repented from his deeds of darkness. The Lutheran Church: The passages in Gal 6:1-10 call the Christians to do good by all:
1Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. 2Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. 3If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. 4Each one should test his own actions. Then he can take pride in himself, without comparing himself to somebody else, 5for each one should carry his own load.
6Anyone who receives instruction in the word must share all good things with his instructor.
7Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. 8The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature[a]will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. 9Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. 10Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.
The government: Romans 13:1-10 we see that the goverment is ordained by God to restrain evil. Our government failed in its God ordained responsibilities. (The supreme court has the blood of over 50,000,000 innocent unborn children on their hands also).
1Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
2Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.
3For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same:
4For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.
5Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.
6For for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God's ministers, attending continually upon this very thing.
7Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.
8Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.
9For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
10Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
"Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: therefore love is the fulfilling of the love."
Interesting that those who would justify the murder of Dr. Tiller use this quote.
I wish that abortion were as simple as you want it to be. You quote scripture, but it appears that your heart is full of hate.
You do not know anything about any of the women who had to decide what to do when they heard that their babies would not live, had no brain, had defects inconsistent with life.
There is no hate here...It is you and those who shed the blood of the poor innocent unborn child who are the haters of God! If you call God's principles of life and godlines hate, it may be because you have become vain in your imaginations and your foolish heart has become darkened, professing to be wise you have become a fool. The Word of God is a sword...it cuts you to the quick!
"You do not know anything about any of the women who had to decide what to do when they heard that their babies would not live, had no brain, had defects inconsistent with life."
This category you mention above pertains to less than 1% of the 50,000,000 lives lost!
They are not the problem!
How do you know the reasons for medical care that Dr. Tiller provided his patients? From where did you get that percentage?
Can't answer it? Just some of your hot air?
Sorry.
One of my favorite teachers (a renowned Catholic philosopher) said, "The arguments of fundamentalists are clear, simple, mechanical, and wrong. You go argue with them."
James, your arguments are not simple or clear. Neither are they intelligible. I don’t understand how anyone can argue with you—you simple make no sense.
If you do not discern that all abortions are legalized murder, I can not expect you to comprehend or understand anything expressed by Holy God!
As for your so called "renowned Catholic philosopher and you," I suppose your comprehension difficulties would be best described in 1 Corinthians 2:14...
The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.
You are not alone the churches are filled with people like you!
Do you mean that disagreeing with you is lack of discernment? Don’t you find that arrogant? By what authority do tell me that I lack judgement? Your posts illustrate the arrogance of opponents of reproductive freedom and women's healthcare. You sound as vain as the television prechers and the bishops of America's largest Christian denomination.
Quite the contrary! Disagreeing with God and what He has said about this issue is not only lack of discernment...it is rebellion and akin to witchcraft.
Would you or those women you support be willing to exchange places with those children Tiller executed? (partial birth aborted) Reproductive rights start with restraint...for instance not lying down with that woman or that man.
God's Word is clear for the Christian...1 Corinthians 6:18-20
18Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. 19Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.
The truth is hard for you to swallow! When our Lord walked the streets of Jerusalem He was called arrogant, a lunatic, a blasphemer and the lot.
It is a common practice by those of you on the left to vilify those you disagree with by calling them arrogant, homophobic, etc.
Let's be honest about this, if you can. Your disagreement is with Holy God and His guide book for righteous living, the Holy Bible.
My disagreement is with people who confuse themselves with God--people who think that they have an absolute claim on the opinions and behavior of other human beings.
You sound like Pope Benedict XVI. If Roman Catholics want him to be the authoritative spokesman (and that is the correct word for his role in his denomination) for their denomination, that is fine, but, when they expect all Christians to take his opinions and teaching as authoritative, they have stepped over the line.
You step over the line when you incessantly tell me what I ought to do and think. Abortion has a place in life. It is not you duty to tell any woman what to do with her body.
But enough of playing with you. This is neither the time nor the place for making fun of you. I just wanted to point out how people like you are the reason a mademan killed Dr. Tiller.
It's a never ending battle with people like you...I point out what God says about an issue and you attack me the messenger!
The principle of reaping and sowing comes from God not me! If you sow murder...chances are you will reap murder!
Stop blaming others for Tillers' ultimate "self destruction."
Try single handily being responsible for the death and gruesome torture of 60,000 innocent lives and see what happens to you!
By what authority do you point out anything about God to me? Scripture barely mentions abortion and certainly does not tell us whether it is right or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable. I have not attacked you. I simply ask you to defend your rules.
Is that a death threat? It sounds like one to me.
As someone who is certainly not a theologian but is a "lifelong Lutheran" I thank you for this excellent article. I am saddened that so many that I know who profess to be Lutheran have fallen into the fundamentalist "trap" and are so sure that the church supports their idea of what is good and what is evil and how the church supports their politics. This article should be more widely distributed in more general Lutheran publications (The Lutheran, for example). Thank you for such clear reasoning.
(One point, I did think it was perhaps a bit of a stretch to so clearly connect the abortion debate with the racial debate. I'm sure there is probably a connection, but as with most things, it is probably one strand among many that tangled abortion to politics).
It is the Word of God that sets the standard for what is good and what is evil!
I respect you, but you refuse to respect me and other pro-choice Christians. I play with your posts to pry you away from your intolerance of women and their rigth to privacy about their abortion decisions.
Never mind respecting me...this is not about me!
What about the right and choice of life of the 50,000,000 poor innocent girls and boys who could not choose for themselves?
I disagree. You are the subject of this sub-thread. I do respect that you oppose the rights of women to privacy and healthcare. I understand that you do not respect the rights of wowmen. That is why this sub-thread in response to your rants is all about you.
You keep claiming your conclusion that medical care for women is murder. You have not once clarified why you have a right to deny a woman medical care or reproductive privacy. You refuse to defend your opinion. You simply assert it repeatedly as if mere repetition made your opinion unassailable. At least, the popes and bishops imagine that they argue their opposition to medical care and privacy for women. They do not argue their point-of-view well, but, at least, they presume that they do. You do not bother. Your disregard for the privacy and medical rights of women is a serious problem.
Under what conditions would you support a woman’s right to control her own body? Is she to die because her act to save her life offends your religious point-of-view? How do you know the circumdtances behind the abortion care that Dr. Tiller provided his patients? What do you know and how do you know what you know about the private medical records of Dr. Tiller's patients?
Never mind respecting me...Say what you will about me...this is not about me!
What about the right and choice of life of the 50,000,000 poor innocent girls and boys who could not choose for themselves?
When will we consider the rights of the poor innocent unborn child?
Of course, I do consider life in the uterus. What makes you think that I do not? What I want to know is what concern do we own a pregnant woman? Under what conditions do you support abortion rights?
That is a simple question. Why do you refuse to respond to it?
Look my friend, I am not your enemy...I wish you no harm. Our nation makes itself the enemy of the unborn by continuing to slaughter them and call it a "woman's right to choose."
Our nation makes its self the enemy of God when we usurp His authority by passing laws giving women the right to destroy an innocent life on demand.
Reproductive Rights:
1) No sex = no pregnancy
2) condoms and other means of birth control
3) Tubal ligation for the women
4) vesectomy for the men
The list above shows that women and men have numerous options. To destroy a life should never be one of them!
If rape or incest is a factor then perhaps the personal option to abort should be made available or if the life of the mother is a factor then of course abortion is a no brainer.
50,000,000 poor innocent unborn children, don't you have a little compassion for them?
Can you imagine how it felt to them to have their limbs ripped from their bodies? Some were poked in the head with forceps (partial birth abortion) opening the wound by spreading the forceps wide then having their brains suctioned out and then, their life less body is thrown in the trash (a clear example of torture).
Some of them survive the abortion only to be left in a cold dark room to die all alone.
Are you not saddened and ashamed of this disregard for human life?
The life of the mother is the bottom line measure for me. She ought not have to endure harassment from religious zealots calling her a murderer.
Abortion after incest or rape seems to violate your measure that the fetus is a human being. I think you have some problems there. Thanks for the post.
I am out of here on this matter. Thanks for responding.
It is obvious that you are heartless when it comes to the rights of the poor innocent unborn child!
As the Word of God says, "Your conscience has been seared with a hot iron."
A poor, decaying dead fetus whose contaminants poison and kill its twin and their mother? Where is your pity?
And who are you to judge me for supporting that mother’s right to medical treatment without a mob of religious bigots torture her in the worst moment of her life? May God have pity on you. What kind of disgusting voice says such things from the dark an annomous post? Have you a name and the courage to say it?
Of the 50 million murdered, what percentage of this number would you say were aborted for medical reasons? I am not judging you...just para-phrasing your statements. Most people who do their home work concerning this crime against humanity know most of the facts. Either you don't know them or you are in denial.
Who knows? The people who throw out these numbers know as little as I do. That is became medical care ought to be private in most cases.
I don't support abortion except early in pregnancy unless medical conditions come to light later in the pregnancy, defined by pregnant women and their physicians under strict medical guidelines.
The opponents of abortion often seem to oppose any abortion. That is the problem. I am profoundly respectful of life and I am respectful of the rights of women not to be harassed by terrorists who haunt women’s clinics.
How can you care for one life and not the other? Sound deceitful to me.
Thank you James. I find it hard to believe that so many people do not understand that it was an evil act to make abortion on demand the law of the land. If only they could comprehend the consequences we face as a nation. Thanks for standing up for the children.
Thank you for your article. I am a Lutheran and was once involved in a pro-life group, one of the more quiet groups. I left because I didn't want to engage in behavior I thought was unchristian. They would make false accusations against family doctors without any knowledge or evidence for such charges. They were very autocratic, wanting to force women with ectopic pregnancies to have the embryo transplanted into the uterus, if medical science could figure out a way to do it. They attempted to legally insert themselves into medical decisions of other people. They wouldn't consider reforming the health care system--the whole idea was too socialistic, which was worse to them than unaffordable medical care. Some got pregnant as a kind of political statement. There was a strong desire to be considered martyrs. Some of the donations to some of the affiliated pro-life groups were supposedly going to support apartheid in South Africa. Now after reading your article, all this makes some sense.
My understanding of pagan culture in Old Testament times is that the struggle between men and women over inheritance rights resulted in either the woman attempting to control inheritance by attempting abortion, or the man controlling it by infanticide. Only women were punished. I would suspect that Christians and Jews of the time didn't practice either since they had a completely different view of inheritance that encompassed all of God's gifts from creation. A wife was a gift of God to man. The fruit of the land and of the womb of both animal and man were also gifts. I don't see any verse that says that abortion is murder, much less one that punishes women for it as the pagans did. Based on my reading of the Old Testament, it seems to me that if it is a sin, it is not murder, but throwing a gift back in His face, which isn't a trivial thing. I don't think I would care to throw that stone at anyone, since I have probably thrown some of God's gifts back in his face as well. As for a pregnancy in a medical crisis, the Jews in Old Testament times seemed to treat it as the thing it was, a tragedy and a crisis that had to be dealt with medically as best as possible.
The anger at others and inflammatory rhetoric that is so much a part of such zealotry does not seem to me to bring about the kind of righteous life that God desires. What they don't see is that it is more often carnal, mixed with hostility and hatred for people they believe are taking away what used to be the good old days, which actually betrays a weakness in their faith. In some cases they deliberately desire to punish and hurt and sometimes destroy other people who are perceived to be the worst sinners. In other cases, they prefer moralistic legalisms over compassion and mercy for those who seek abortions the way an animal gnaws off its leg to get out of a steel trap.
What troubles me the most about the results of our pro-life activities is that they had very little impact on the people we sought to influence, other than terrorizing them, and in some cases made it impossible to witness to others.
To disagree with the other side is always portrayed as terrorizing them and having little impact.
The truth will and must be presented nevertheless!
What about the real acts of terror committed on the poor innocent child called "abortion on demand?"
I enjoyed the article but I think Rev.Knudson is presenting a very idealized picture of Lutheranism.
Regards,
Jules Jurgensen
The pastor needs to read the statement he references. Dr. Tiller aborted viable fetuses. The ELCA statement states: "... this church (ELCA) supports legislation that prohibits abortions that are performed after the fetus is determined to be viable, except when the mother's life is threatened or when lethal abnormalities indicate the prospective newborn will die very soon."
Pastor Knudsen- You make me sad with your twisted logic. I fear for your flock and your sanity.
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