Welcome back to the Flip Away podcast. We have just finished our episode series on abortion. But as with all seasons, as soon as I finished that, I recognized that the the series was incomplete. And and I'm sure after this episode, it'll still be incomplete. And that's just the nature of learning things and continuing to think about things is that there's always something to add.

There's always a new angle, something to correct, more information, whatever. But this particular thing that I'm going to talk about today so important that I couldn't really put it off and swing back to it. I really wanted to add it right as soon as the season ended. So in this episode, I want to discuss the Tarnas history of the evangelical relationship to the issue of abortion, and how even many of the most conservative evangelicals were at one time pro abortion. And that's gonna be a vital discussion for us to have as we move forward into the culture and discuss this issue with other people, and perhaps even more importantly as we are introspective and reflect on our own motives and rationales.

Before moving into specifics, I do want to make it clear that the historical position of evangelicals or conservative Christians has little to no bearing on my position against abortion. You might hear me saying that the evangelical church was was not always against abortion. Well, does that completely undermine the 10 case, the the 10 episodes that I that I discussed abortion and and the rationale against it and and the moral case for choosing life? No. Not at all.

The the historical evangelical position doesn't at all undermine that. Just as evangelicals, many evangelicals were racist or pro slavery or pro segregation or whatever it is that they were, because I believe that morality is objective, I can look back and say, Those individuals were objectively wrong, and somebody's stance has no bearing on the truthfulness of something. The case against abortion doesn't rely on moral consistency or consistent values. That being said, one of the reasons I do want to highlight the change of position of the evangelical church is because oftentimes a change in values can indicate some things. There are usually three things that might be indicated by a change in values.

The first is that there's a change in information. It is possible to learn something about an issue which may make an action more clearly moral or more clearly immoral. So the addition of information can be important. Second, there could be a prophetic call to repentance and a conviction to change from the wrong. So this is what I would see happening in something like slavery or desegregation.

Yeah, sure, there was there was government pressure on on certain places, but at this point, most Christians are going to say that our forefathers were wrong in in their positions on slavery and segregation. So, we can have a change of conviction and hopefully a change of conviction which aligns one with the truth of the morally objective principle. The third possibility is that there could be an external motivator which causes a change in position. So something outside of the group that's motivating. Whether that's the government with negative motivation saying, hey, you better do this or else, or whether it is some positive motivator like, hey, if we change our position, we can get something good for ourselves.

Whatever it is, there can be an external motivator that really has nothing to do with the issue itself. Whereas, the first two things, a change in information and a prophetic called repentance, have to deal with the truthfulness or the information in a case. The third reason that values sometimes change has nothing to do with the truthfulness of a position. It has to do with the motivations for holding a particular position. And of course, it's possible for all of these things to change at once.

So, for the slavery issue for instance, as there's a change in information and let's say we come into genetics and we realize that whether you're white or black or whatever, that your genetic information is pretty much identical, like you are definitely human, right? There's no degree of humanity between the races. And at the same time, there's a prophetic call to repentance and you have people who recognize what the Bible is saying and how it does not defend the subjugation of humans. And then at the same time, you have the government saying you are going to get benefits for desegregating, you know, you'll be able to get government funding, while at the same time, if you don't desegregate, we're gonna call on the National Guard. So you can have all three things at once in play for sure.

Now, when we look at the evangelical flip flop on abortion in the nineteen seventies, '1 could strongly argue that evangelicals didn't change positions due to new information or due to a call to repentance. The early church was was very much against abortion before they even knew the complexities of life that we know. If anything, the information that we had in in the seventies and eighties should have upheld that earliest church tradition. In fact, Catholicism was was against abortion and they were consistently against abortion while the evangelical church was not. So there was there was no new information added into the system which would make evangelicals change their minds.

Or if there was any new information, it was not substantial. At the same time, there there wasn't a call to repentance. What we see more develop in evangelical circles is a villainization, a polarization of us versus them. So the abortion issue didn't start as a, Hey, wow, I realized that our position on this was wrong. It was all of a sudden implemented as a quick policy change which began to contribute towards the villainization of others, of other groups.

Rather than a repentance for a wrongly held stance, there all of a sudden was a pointing and a judgmentalism of those outside of the walls of evangelicalism. So, I would argue that what we seem to see in the change of the evangelical stance towards abortion had to be some external motivator. By and large, that's what changed the evangelical position. It was this desire, subconscious or conscious, to create or exaggerate the us versus them mentality. There was some external motivator that caused us to do that.

And in that, we see the creation and rise of the religious right with abortion being probably the most unifying force for that group. In fact, today, that still stands. Most Christians, evangelical conservative white Christians are one issue voters and that's the issue of abortion. It doesn't matter what's on the Republican ticket because the Democrats have abortion on their ticket, we can't vote for them. So as we go through this, I want you to to be thinking, was there an addition of information?

Was there a call to repentance or are there external motivators? And that's gonna gonna be insightful as it helps you to figure out why there was a position change on the issue of abortion in evangelical circles. But, you you might be asking at this point, why should we even talk about all of this at at all? Because if it doesn't change my position on abortion, who cares? I would say first, this this topic today is going to be important for our authenticity and honesty because those those things, people outside the church can smell hypocrisy and fear and just all of the bad things that that the evangelical community is portraying especially now.

And authenticity and honesty is important for our witness. It's important for reliability and the perception of our intent. Are we just judgmental and pointing fingers? Or are we truly seeking to help and love and care on this issue? Secondly, knowing about this issue is going to help us to see our own historic blindness to issues.

And that's going to allow us to empathize with those who aren't that different than where we were. Right? If if the church used to be for abortion and we were blind on that and now we call people who abort baby killers, Don't you think there should be a little bit more humility there in recognizing, oh yeah, we changed our position on that too. We should probably be loving towards other people because we're not very different than them. And finally, understanding this issue is going to help us to recognize our proclivity towards ulterior motives, namely the motivation of grasping power.

When we understand at least one of the reasons, if not the main reason or the sole reason why evangelicals switched over towards being against abortion, when we start to understand that and that this was a power grasp, and that really it has a lot of connection to race and and, that issue that we've had for our our whole existence in The United States. It's just this perpetual issue. When we understand that, we're going be able to see that we're not that different than our ancestors and that we always have to be digging deeper to test the motives for why we we are doing something. And that may hopefully help us to be introspective about how we may be doing that very thing today whether it's on this issue or other issues. So, after all of those caveats, ten minutes worth of caveats, let's go ahead and look at the purported history of the abortion issue in evangelical circles.

I'm I'm sure that there are more facets to this issue than what my amateur research and experience has has grasped. So I I do wanna challenge you to look at the sources and research this on your own. But while I'm sure the story is more complex than it is simple, I have no doubt in my mind that there are regrettable and reprehensible aspects of of this issue and our position change that we need to not acknowledge. So let's dive in here. Roe versus Wade is supposedly the landmark case in which the corrupt anti Christian world prevailed against the bulwark of incorruptible Christian values.

The religious right is supposedly in large part born out of this case. We just couldn't take it any longer that abortion was, was legalized and we just had to protect all of the precious, innocent, unborn babies. However, Roe versus Wade was decided in 1973, yet we see evangelicals very clearly contradicting anti abortion thought earlier than Roe. In fact, one of the best places to look because first of all, it's it's two years earlier than Roe. And secondly, because it comes from one of the more conservative brands of evangelical Christianity, the Southern Baptist.

That's gonna be be important for helping us to see what what some mainstream Christian thought was. In 1971, the Southern Baptists had a resolution at I think it was their like group committee where they they all get together. I don't know what you call it, assembly. But here's here's what they decided about abortion on that issue. Quote, therefore, be it resolved that this convention expressed the belief that society has a responsibility to affirm through the laws of the state a high view of the sanctity of human life, including fetal life, in order to protect those who cannot protect themselves.

And be it further resolved that we call upon Southern Baptist to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother. Now I got that straight from the Southern Baptist website with a a link provided in the comments below. But what you'll clearly notice is that while it was good that they they affirmed the value of fetal life, It wasn't completely valuable because rape, incest, and fetal deformity could cause the child to lose its right to life according to the Southern Baptist Convention. And if there was likely like the likelihood of damage to the mother's emotional, mental, and physical health, then they said, yeah, go ahead, abort it. And this is 1971, '2 years before Roe versus Wade.

And here's another quote from one of the articles linked below that I think helps to to shine more light on on how broad this this idea was. Quote, when the Roe decision was handed down, W. A. Criswell, the the Southern Baptist Convention's former president and pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, TX, also one of the most famous fundamentalists of the twentieth century, was pleased. I have always felt that this was only after a child was born and had a life to separate life separate from the mother that it became an individual person, he said.

And it has always therefore seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed, end quote. And here's a quote from from another one of the articles linked below. Although a few evangelical voices including Christianity Today magazine, mildly criticized the ruling of Roe versus Wade, the overwhelming response was silence, even approval. Baptist in particular applauded the decision as an appropriate articulation of the division between church and state, between personal morality and state regulation of individual behavior. Religious liberty, human equality, and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision, wrote W.

Barry Garrett of Baptist Press. In another article, Jonathan Dudley said, in 1968, Christianity Today published a special issue on contraception and abortion, encapsulating the consensus among evangelical thinkers at the time. In the leading article, professor Bruce Waltke of the fam of famously conservative Dallas Theological Seminary explained the Bible plainly teaches that life begins at birth. God does not regard the fetus as a soul no matter how far gestation has progressed. The law plainly exacts, if a man kills any human life, he will be put to death, Leviticus twenty four seventeen.

But according to Exodus twenty one twenty two through 24, the destruction of the fetus is not a capital offense. Clearly then, in contrast to the mother, the fetus is not reckoned as a soul. The magazine Christian Life agreed insisting the Bible definitely pinpoints a difference in the value of a fetus and an adult. If you are anti abortion, then, and you and you are a conservative Christian, those statements should be very troubling because some of the most conservative people and including magazines, right, run by Billy Graham nineteen sixty eight or started by him. And we've got we've got some serious, serious shifts in in, ideology from 1968 and, all the way through the late nineteen seventies until the formation of the religious right.

We've got some major, major shifts in ideology that come about. Some of those things would be appalled at any democrat who made any of those statements that were just mentioned by very conservative evangelical Christians. So what does that show us? By and large, abortion was viewed as a largely Catholic issue and evangelicals had little concern with it back before Roe and even even after Roe for a couple years. So what inspired the change of positions for evangelicals?

Well, doesn't seem like a recognition of a wrong or a change of information. And what a lot of people are gonna argue is that the issue of abortion was politically conscripted to support an ulterior issue, an issue centering around race. Around 1970, the courts began to rule that private schools which failed to integrate and continue to maintain racist practices will lose their tax exempt status. Institutions like Bob Jones University and Falwell's Liberty risk losing a lot of money in the seventies. And viewing or spinning this in their their minds as persecution created the religious right.

A conservative Christian entity which polarized politics as an Us versus them fight for religious freedom. Problem was, those institutions and those individuals, they knew that race would not be able to unify everyone in the country because there were a lot of people who recognized that race just is it's unjust to have segregation and those sorts of things. And so, the religious right had to kind of find another unifying factor that was going to allow them to basically get get a party or a a political voice which got them what they wanted. And so we see with the religious right, we start to get polarization in in politics as things become more packaged. Right?

So now, it doesn't matter if the alt right and white nationalists identify themselves with the Republican Party. Because we're against abortion, we have to align ourselves with the Republican Party. It's a one issue issue thing, one issue choice. And that's basically what the religious right recognized. We're not going to get people on board if we package this as a race issue.

So we have to find something that's gonna unify people and and seal the deal for our political agenda. And abortion came in handy because it's a fight, became a fight for the innocent and helpless life. A very, very mo morally polarizing issue because you can you can couch it as just this this extreme oppression and it's it can become very emotionally stirring. And you can see this this pretty clearly because while I do think there are very good logical philosophical moral arguments out there against abortion, most are naturally drawn towards the moral vehemence welled up by using extreme pictures or language. Right?

The picture of the the fetal parts in a dish. That's what what just appalls Christians. And and I mean, I it is appalling and it it does make things more tangible and and I do understand the emotion that it stirs. But that's not what makes it wrong but that's what wells up all the emotion and anger and vehemence. And, most Christians that I know who are against abortion can't really make a good argument.

And in fact, when you I I could probably, with a lot of Christians, I could probably make a much better case for abortion than they could make against it because people just don't know. It's it's emotionally it's an emotionally charged argument most of the time in Christian circles. So the change in abortion. Why? Well, not because there was all of sudden some new argument, but because, it was race issues which caused the religious right to be formed and they just conscripted the issue of abortion as a as a useful useful issue which could help to polarize people.

So regardless of where you stand, whether you think that the religious right was all evil, only a little bit evil, or or perfectly justified in in doing what they did, a few things are very clear. First, the group has a very racist past. Check out the Mark Knoll resources at the bottom for for pretty good objective history. And Knoll is, I believe, an evangelical. And having listened to some of his histories, particularly the one on religion in America and and the one about the civil war and the one about race, it's it's really helpful.

He just gives you kind of some facts. He gives you primary source quotations, all kinds of things. And as you're as you're listening to him talk about what Christians said and believed, I mean, it's it's atrocious. We've got a a terribly racist past. And if you take a look at the the one article that goes into detail about the change in abortion and the religious right, I mean you get some pretty clear resources there about, I think it was Bob Jones in particular and how they hired a black one black student to get around some of the segregation things.

I mean, it's pretty clear that we have a racist past. Now, don't know anything about Bob Jones or Liberty today, and so they may have changed and that that would be fantastic. And and I would I would love to see that there has been repentance, for that. So I'm not at all trying to bring up that that these institutions are necessarily evil today, but quite clearly, there's a racist past that we have to deal with and recognize, the things that have come out of that and the the remnants that might still be there but under the surface. The second thing that very clearly comes out of this is that the religious right definitely wasn't against abortion or in line with the early church teaching until something sparked that change, which most likely seems to be racism.

So what are the implications of all of this? First, I think conservatives are extremely dismissive of race issues today, yet our past shows us that we have a horrible, horrible history on issues of injustice towards the weak, especially in The United States and especially when it comes to race. This should make us wary of our die hard commitment to abortion. Not because abortion is good or it can't be argued against, but because it might be an issue exaggerated in order to drown out other injustices that we're we have perpetuated and are continuing to perpetuate. Now this should make us ask the question, why we are so vocal and vehement about the abortion issue, but not about other issues like race issues?

Why why is abortion a one ticket issue, but race isn't? We're okay if a candidate's a bit racist, but not if they're a bit pro choice. I don't know. That that's a tough question. Why does the quip that we are pro life until birth stings so much?

Because it's true? I think it's true. I see it in a lot of areas and it does sting because it it rings true. And this in in no way diminishes the atrocity that that is abortion, but it rather calls us to acknowledge that our stance on abortion doesn't counterbalance our failures to love and act on other justice issues And certainly makes the political landscape a bit more diverse and complex than just, well, my candidate's for abortion so or against abortion so I'm good. I'm I'm moral in my voting here.

And that that brings us to the second point. I think this issue should make us rethink our party line voting. I already struggle with how to handle politics, and abstention from the system at the moment is what what seems best to me. Not propping up this this terrible system, not allowing anybody to get away with it, but withdrawing my vote. However, I know that most don't have that conviction, so I would argue that if if you're figuring out where to vote, abortion cannot be your silver bullet.

How do you compare the evils of abortion to centuries of direct and systemic injustice which enslaved, raped, sold, beat, and murdered people? And it's still doing some of those things by circumventing the the shat shaddle system and replacing it with with the unjust justice system. Okay. We might not have a market to sell African slaves here, but we've got laws that we passed that put them in prison. I mean, it's basically the same sort of thing.

We just can't do it directly. We have to do it through euphemism and, ligertamine. Abortion may kill directly in a moment, but systemic injustice dams tens of millions of people to a lifetime of suffering before the circumstances for which were largely responsible caused them to put a bullet in their own brain, Dirty needle in their own arm or a gun to their neighbor's head. That's what we do. Okay.

We might not kill them directly. We might allow them to be born because we're pro life before birth. But then once they are born, they're on their own and we contribute to, unjust systems. We prop up unjust systems. We create unjust laws that that just destroy their lives.

But because we don't do that directly, we don't suction out their brains and we don't, we don't kill them with chemicals while they're inside our bodies, we think that that what we do to them is okay, and what we allow is okay. But it's not. It's not different than than abortion. We're still culpable. Giving people a lifetime to make a choice contrary to the circumstances we put them in, and then blaming their miserable lives and deaths on them doesn't excuse us for our continuing attempt to abort a race or a group.

Just because we take more time to do it and do it indirectly doesn't make it more kouth. So don't think that abortion is the one issue solution for your decision to vote Republican. Republicans historically and currently are politicians who are just as devious, self interested, and evil as their counterparts. And there's a third implication I think we can draw from this. This issue should lead us to repentance.

Go ahead and read Isaiah 58. I think I put it in the show notes here, but Isaiah 58 is a beautiful call to deal with injustice. And it it talks about how God will heal our land and and what our responsibility is to other and what what empty religiosity looks like. You know, God often tells us that if we repent, he hears our cries. And I know that that's true today.

Me and my group, like most humans, we hate acknowledging our sins. It makes us it makes us feel gross to think about acknowledging our sins. And since we're individualists, we hate even more acknowledging the sins of our ancestors and the way in which we have collectively harmed others and perpetuate those systems of injustice through our failure to acknowledge them. And to to mask over our individual sins and our our group sins, my group, conservative white evangelicals, we spend a lot of time condemning others and bemoaning sin out there in the world. But the most of the prophets with Jesus being the greatest among them, and not an exception to the general rule, most prophets call out the injustice of God's people first and foremost and the loudest.

Revival and mercy begin not out there, but begin in the people of God. It's easy for us to to sit back and damn those baby killers, but how many owe their demise to us and our ancestors who directly or indirectly harm the weak, the foreigner, the outcast, and the oppressed? And how many of those quote baby killers are in a position that they're in in large part or in part at all because of us and because of our ancestors? And my group wants to talk about how terrible abortion is and and how racist it is because, you know, people like Margaret Sanger wanted contraception and things in large part to harm, not harm, but diminish the black community or the minorities. And so in that we recognize that or or people say that it disproportionately affects poor minorities, a a lot of them being black.

If that's true, we have to then ask ourselves why is why are the statistics so disproportionate? Why are there so many minorities who feel that they're in a position where abortion is the only option? And we can blame Sanger for introducing abortion to the black community, but why is the black community in the position that they're in where they're more apt to disproportionately abort? And that's on you and me. That's on our ancestors.

Our group's the one who who created this injustice with slavery and who continue to perpetuate systemic injustice by refusal to acknowledge it even, and then refusing to fix it and continuing to make unjust laws. So if we're gonna say that it disproportionately affects black people, then we've got quite a few fingers pointing back at us and our responsibility there. But we can duck that issue because everything's about abortion. Race isn't an issue that that matters on on our party ticket. It's abortion.

All the while, we bemoan abortion and talk about how God's gonna judge us for, I mean, pretty much it's always because of the sin of abortion. And and homosexuality, that's the other one. Right? Because of those two things, God is going to judge our nation. I say no.

That that's a load of hogwash. If he judges it, if he judges our nation, it's because we've been unjust for centuries. We we created a culture of injustice that that, just kills the natives in our way or subjugates the, Africans who are inhuman or, either takes advantage of the immigrant and puts them puts them to work, and and abuses them or refuses to let them in and give them harbor. Alright. Whatever it is, we our culture has has just been thoroughly unjust and I can guarantee you that if we are judged, abortion might be a part of that but we are long overdue for judgment based on, in large part, my Christian community's sins of injustice and continuing to perpetuate them.

Conservatives wanna say that we're a Christian nation for the majority of our history, then we need to own our history. It's Christians who enslaved Africans, sold them, beat them, murdered them, bred them, and raped them, all while using the Bible to justify their actions. It's Christians who viewed it as God's will for us, the righteous, to inherit the new Israel and expand our borders. In God's name, we annihilated natives, forcefully ripped their children away, and, enculturated them in in schools and put them on reservations. It's Christians who tortured and lynched many many blacks including, most horrifically, Jesse Washington.

It's Christians who ran Jim Crow, the KKK, segregation. And that's the very short list. And now, in one of our future episodes, I'll be listing a lot more. I think our special July 4 episode will I think that's the one where I'll get there. We've done horrendous, terrible things and a lot of that has been done by Christians, led by Christians and perpetuated by Christians and now largely ignored by Christians.

Most of the injustice in our history is on our backs, the Christian backs, not the backs of the unbeliever. If God judges us, it will be for the way his people have produced a culture of injustice and refuse to correct that, in large part because we refuse to repent. We now need a huge dose of humility and a large measure of repentance. If you are a conservative Christian like me, I hope you realize that we are not the good guys. We're just like everyone else, but we don't have to be.

We have the spirit who lives within us to conform us to Christ and the prophetic tradition which calls us to repentance and change. So repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.