Pro-Life Pulpit

Preaching and the Challenge of Abortion

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• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9781498271158
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Over one million unborn children are intentionally aborted every year in North America. Voiceless and helpless, their blood cries out. Will those of us who serve as pastors and preachers respond from our pulpits? Silence is not an option. We cannot keep quiet while thousands of our neighbors, made in the image of God, are being led to the slaughter every day. But neither should we condemn and vilify those who are complicit in their deaths. A truly pro-life pulpit ministry opposes the injustice of abortion with truth, courage and understanding. Tears mingled with hope, overflowing with grace. After all, the Christian faith is rooted in the good news of a Messiah who was once an embryo. Nine months before he was born, Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and for the next forty weeks he lived and grew in the womb of an unwed teenaged mother. He is at the heart of our preaching, and this book will show you how to confront the sin of abortion by proclaiming the God who became abortable in order to save sinners.

Part One

Why Preach Against Abortion

1

What’s At Stake?

A community which regards and treats its weak members as a hindrance, and even proceeds to their extermination, is on the verge of collapse. The killing of the weak for the sake of others hampered by their weakness can rest only on a misconception of the life which in its specific form, and therefore even in its weakness, is always given by God and should therefore be an object of respect to others.

—Karl Barth

During one of our regular meetings over coffee, John, a friend of mine who pastors a local church, told me he was feeling a burden to tell his congregation about the horrors of abortion. “I just don’t know where to start,” he confessed. “It’s such a delicate and controversial subject. I don’t want people to think I’m getting on some moral high horse and passing judgment. I don’t want them to think this is nothing more than me on my soapbox. But at the same time . . .” His voice trailed off. “I don’t know. It’s just . . . I think abortion is wrong. I know it is. I think I need to do something about it. I want to. I know I need to preach on it. But I just don’t know where to begin.”

Where to begin. That’s the subject of this chapter. If you’re like my friend John, you may be feeling an increasing weight of conviction to preach against abortion, but are unsure of where to start. The best place to begin is by getting educated, and that starts with learning about the issue. The theme song to the old G. I. Joe cartoon series was right. Knowing is half the battle. And preaching against abortion is to enter into a battlefield of ideas and the emotions that come with them. We need to be well-equipped.

This means you need to have at least a rudimentary knowledge of embryology and fetal physiology.1 Don’t be concerned if you don’t have a science degree. You don’t need to be a doctor or a biologist to be able to read and understand the relevant medical literature. What’s more, excellent resources written for lay audiences abound.2 In addition to the scientific facts, you should also be familiar with the socio-cultural world of those who choose abortions. Who gets them and why? And finally, you’ll need to be familiar with some of the most common pro-choice arguments and how to refute them.3 As you begin preaching against abortion, the same questions and objections will come up again and again. You need to know how to address them.

Certainly, you don’t need to be an expert in any of these areas. But you do need to be informed. Here are just a few reasons why:

1. The more you know about the issue, the more credible you’ll be. Your congregation may look to you as the resident expert (or at least an informed thinker). They want to trust what you have to say.

2. Someone listening to you may challenge you after the sermon. You need to be ready to respond.

3. Learning about abortion will lead you to understand more about the women who have them, why they have them, and offer ideas on homiletic approaches you might, otherwise, not think of.

4. If you’re going to empathize with your listeners, a good number of whom will have had at least one abortion, it’s helpful to learn about what they went through and continue to endure, both physically and emotionally.

5. The better you understand the issue, the better you’ll be able to love and serve your congregation and the unborn.

There is a lot to know about abortion, and those of you just getting started may feel overwhelmed. Take heart. This chapter will help you get oriented.

Embryology and Fetal Physiology

The argument that abortion should remain legal because biologists aren’t sure when human life begins is bunk. Life begins at conception. Embryologists are in complete agreement about this. A survey of the leading textbooks bears this out. “The infant develops progressively from the single-cell fertilized egg to a highly complex multicellular organism,” writes Susan Tucker Blackburn. “The genetic constitution of the individual is established at the time of fertilization.”4 Translation: life begins as a single-cell and, if not interfered with, develops in complexity into multicellular life. But there is no change in species. Our DNA is determined at conception. It doesn’t change over time. Blackburn is hardly alone in her assessment. “Human development is a continuous process,” say Keith Moore and T. V. N. Persaud, “that begins when an oocyte (ovum) from a female is fertilized by a sperm (or spermatozoon) from a male.”5 On the beginning of individual human life they say:

Although it is customary to divide human development into prenatal (before birth) and postnatal (after birth) periods, birth is merely a dramatic event during development resulting in a change in environment. Development does not stop at birth. Important changes, in addition to growth, occur after birth (e.g., development of teeth and female breasts).6

Birth is certainly a milestone. We note it on birth certificates and celebrate it each year. But birth does not mark the beginning of human life. In case there’s any doubt that this is what Moore and Persaud mean, they make their claim explicit: “A zygote [which results from the union of an oocyte and sperm] is the beginning of a new human being”7 and “The intricate processes by which a baby develops from a single cell are miraculous.”8 Miraculous! Their point is not to be missed. Your life didn’t begin eight weeks after you were conceived. Or six months after you were conceived. And it certainly didn’t begin when you were born. You began as a single cell.

Human life—however small, however undeveloped—begins at conception. To say it doesn’t is to be ignorant of the facts. Moreover, to acknowledge that life begins at conception but then to say that the still-developing life of the embryo or fetus is less valuable or significant than that of the pregnant woman is to misunderstand that development is a continual process. Yes, it’s true that a fetus is less developed than a newborn infant. But the newborn is less developed than a toddler, who in turn is less developed than she will be as a teenager. Physical development, to say nothing of psychological and spiritual growth, continues long after birth. And this development commences once sperm fertilizes egg. Consider, for instance, that by day eighteen of conception the embryo’s nervous system and cardiovascular system already begin to develop. By day twenty-four the digestive, skeletal, vascular, and genitourinary systems are forming. Arm and leg buds appear by day twenty-eight, by which time the respiratory system has also begun developing.9

This is why embryologists Ronan O’Rahilly and Fabiola Müller suggest, “The status of the early human embryo is an evaluation rather than a scientific question.”10 Those who disagree on abortion do so based on differences of belief over the value and worth of the unborn child and the role God plays in pregnancy, not whether or not the child is alive. Consider, for instance, the candid confession of a doctor in Nebraska who performs late-term abortions. He’s honest about the evil that he does. “We do kill fetuses. It dies because we give an injection into the fetus that causes the heart to just slowdown.”11 We do kill fetuses. We kill them. They die. The science is indisputable: life begins at conception. The fetus is most definitely human. What is being debated in the public realm is how to define terms like “human being” and “person,” and what value to...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue
• Part One: Why Preach Against Abortion
• Chapter 1: What’s At Stake?
• Chapter 2: What Does the Bible Say?
• Chapter 3: What Has the Church Said?
• Part Two: Who’s Preaching, Who’s Listening
• Chapter 4: Abortion and the Preacher
• Chapter 5: Abortion and the Congregation
• Chapter 6: Abortion and Pop Culture
• Part Three: How to Preach Against Abortion
• Chapter 7: Conception and Gestation
• Chapter 8: Labor and Delivery
• Chapter 9: Two Sermons
• Epilogue
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Bibliography