Saturday, February 2, 2013

Protestants and Abortion

The American Spectator ^ | 1/31/2013 | Mark Tooley

Southern Baptists have changed their mind about Roe. When will United Methodists join them?
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...
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...”
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. 
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...

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