Last week about 100,000 or more marched in the annual March for
Life in Washington, D.C. This year they commemorated 40 years since
the 1973 Supreme Court decision constitutionalizing abortion on
demand.
Supporting the march and the pro-life cause were leaders of
America’s two largest religious communions, the 68 million-member
Roman Catholic Church and the 16 million-member Southern Baptist
Convention. Meanwhile, agencies for the third largest, the United
Methodist Church, crafted a news release virtually celebrating
Roe v. Wade. But 40 years ago, both Southern Baptists and
United Methodists, at least officially, backed abortion rights.
A recent analysis from Baptist Press, the official news
service for the Southern Baptist Convention, recalled that their
1971 convention had backed laws permitting abortion in cases such
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.” So the
Southern Baptists essentially endorsed abortion on demand. A
Baptist Press report two years later after Roe
enthused that the court decision had “advanced the cause of
religious liberty, human equality and justice.”
The head of the Southern Baptist public policy agency in the
1970s, then called the Christian Life Commission, backed
government-funded abortions and supported, along with United
Methodists and other Protestant denominational agencies, the
Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights. By the late 1970s,
conservative Southern Baptists, alarmed that their church was
following the liberal path of Mainline Protestants, began to
organize their eventually successful ascendancy over the
convention. In 1980, the Southern Baptist Convention backed a
constitutional amendment banning abortion except to save the
mother’s life. In 1988, conservative Richard Land became the new
head of the Christian Life Commission, replacing a pro-abortion
rights liberal. At the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade in
2003, the Southern Baptist Convention repentantly declared: “[W]e
lament and renounce statements and actions by previous Conventions
and previous denominational leadership that offered support to the
abortion culture.”
“I feel good that Southern Baptists are the most pro-life
denomination of any size in the country,” Land recently told
Baptist Press. “But I don’t feel good in the sense that I
think we should always be doing more to help people understand the
pro-life issue and how it relates not only to abortion but to
euthanasia and end-of-life issues, which, of course, are going to
become a more and more compelling issue in the immediate decades
ahead.” Land is retiring this year as head of his church’s public
policy agency after 25 years.
In 1971, the Southern Baptist Convention had 11.8 million
members. Today it has just over 16 million. In 1971 the United
Methodist Church had 10.5 million members, and today it has 7.5
million in the U.S. Some conservative Southern Baptists credit the
abortion issue for motivating many conservatives in their battle
for governance of the church, which conservatives had largely won
by the late 1980s.
United Methodism first officially addressed abortion at its 1970
General Conference, when it backed abortion rights after a
20-minute debate among delegates. “The equality of our lives is
increasingly threatened as the exploding population growth places
staggering burdens upon societies unable to solve even their
present growth problems,” it declared when urging state
legislatures to permit abortion “upon request.” An earlier draft,
proposed by the church’s Board of Social Concerns, but not
approved, had even asserted that the “fetus is not a person, but
rather tissue, with the potentiality in most cases for becoming a
person, also recognizing that personhood is not possible without
physical form.”
Fiercely opposing the abortion rights stance at the 1970 General
Conference was the church’s then most distinguished theologian,
Albert Outler of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, who later
warned: “How long can we meaningfully say that all men are created
equal while the innocent unborn are sacrificed to personal whim,
convenience, or that new test of Americanism in our increasingly
technological and impersonal age: The qualification of being
perfect, or being wanted, or being viable?”
The 1972 United Methodist General Conference acknowledged the
“sanctity of unborn human life,” while claiming that “in continuity
with past Christian teaching, we recognize tragic conflicts of life
with life that may justify abortion.” In 1973, after Roe v.
Wade, the United Methodist Board of Church and Society and
United Methodist Women’s Division helped to found the Religious
Coalition for Abortion Rights, which remained headquartered in the
United Methodist Building on Capitol Hill for 20 years. After a
close vote at the 1992 General Conference that nearly withdrew the
church from the abortion coalition, it relocated to new space. It
also eventually changed its name to the Religious Coalition for
Reproductive Choice. Episcopal, Presbyterian Church (USA), and
United Church of Christ agencies still belong to it. Mostly using
the churches’ names as a façade, it gets little if any church
funding, instead relying on secular liberal philanthropies.
Last year’s United Methodist General Conference was prepared to
accept a committee recommendation to withdraw from the abortion
coalition until a legislative logjam and liberal maneuvers
prevented a floor vote. In 2000, the United Methodist Church did
oppose partial-birth abortion and has over the years backed other
limits on abortion. But the church agencies belonging to the
abortion coalition remain uncompromisingly pro-abortion rights. For
Roe v. Wade’s 40th anniversary, they expressed
no sadness over the more than 50 million abortions since
1973.
Instead, officials for the United Methodist Board of Church and
Society and United Methodist Women’s Division jointly declared: “In
the wilderness of political posturing and divisive blaming and
shaming, we seek to be a voice crying out to prepare the way for
the Lord to bring about a new era of reproductive justice for our
families and communities. We actively await the realization of
God’s Kingdom on earth, a kingdom in which all pregnancies are
intended, sexuality is safe and celebrated, and families are
healthy and secure.”
In contrast to likening abortion rights to the Kingdom of God,
Southern Baptist spokesman Richard Land surmised: “I won’t feel
‘good’ — in the sense of good with quotation marks around it —
until every Southern Baptist is pro-life and honors the Baptist
Faith and Message commitment to defend ‘the sanctity of all human
life from conception to natural death.’”
As Africans and U.S. evangelicals gain a majority within the
United Methodist Church, the abortion rights stance almost
certainly will fall. And someday soon, United Methodists may
formally repent of their past, long-time official support for
unrestricted abortion on demand.
Photo: UPI
