The Pro-Life Movement will only truly succeed when we as Believers repent of our corporate sins and those of our forefathers and foremothers, and recognize that sins of racism and sins of murdering the unborn are one and the same. You cannot be selectively pro-life.
There are some Pro-Lifers that preach a single note. They say the only issue we are to be fighting for today is the cause of the unborn. What they don’t understand is how much the issue of racism affects our inability to fight the plight of the in-womb child.
Prior to 1973, most white Evangelical Christians (there were exceptions) did not engage in the Civil Rights movement. Many actively opposed it even. For whatever reason, the American Evangelical Church turned a deaf and fearful ear on the move toward racial equality in this nation, preferring to concentrate on more “spiritual” matters.
There were raging debates behind secretive ecclesiastical doors in the 1950s as to whether blacks should be ordained in our (white) churches. Some preachers even stood on the steps of their churches to keep blacks out (not that very many were pushing to get in).
A few leaders like Billy Graham, who had gone along with racially segregated rallies earlier in his ministry, began to change and even take action. Graham started pushing integration in certain denominations by inviting people of color from those denominations to join his evangelistic team. In at least one of those cases, the offending denomination quickly and quietly moved to ordain the newly anointed team member.
But as has oft been said, racism cannot be legislated out. And so racism has persisted. Conservative white Christians disappeared out of the ranks of the Democratic Party from the mid-60s through the early 1980s as that party embraced the Civil Rights movement and blacks en masse. The Christian whites largely fled with their unrepentant racism to the Party of Lincoln, much to the harm of that party.
It could be argued that this shift came because the Republican Party embraced the Pro-Life movement – and that did play a role. But they fled the Democratic Party just as they had fled their old neighborhoods when the blacks moved in.
I watched all this and I documented it and found opportunities to preach about it. But I struggled with what more to do, sad that I had been born too late to be involved in the marches of the 1960s. I clung to my faith, having learned that all the questions don’t have to be answered for faith to be embraced. But I needed a solid foundation on which to support that faith. And like Gandhi, I wrestled with a Church and a Christ in polar contrast.
I have come to the conclusion that hypocrisy is no excuse for abandoning faith. At the same time I firmly believe that hypocrisy is always inexcusable and must be confronted wherever and whenever it raises its ugly head, especially when that hypocrisy is found in the house of faith.
Many Evangelicals are quick to say that racism is no longer an issue we need to deal with. We’ve had our ceremonial foot washings and have opened our doors to people of color. We’ve moved passed all that and it is time to move on.
In this they are dead wrong. Witness the Willie Horton affect in the 1988 Presidential Campaign or the not-so-subtle racial undertones in this most recent election. Witness the way in which white Christians still hesitate to see racism as a spiritual matter, one that the Church, especially their church, should speak out on, let alone do anything about. Witness the subtle ways in which the white church continues to keep people of color selectively at arms length or at a safe ceremonial distance.
Present sins or no, the racial sins of the American Christian past are heavy enough weights alone on the cause for Pro-Life today. Until we repent and get proactive about how we as believers value human life, we will never be able to convince a “heathen” nation that an unborn child has value.
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