How to Win and Lose the Abortion Debate (at the Same Time)

How to Lose the Abortion Debate While Winning It

As leak after leak from the United States Supreme Court indicates, the Roe v. Wade decision that has legalized abortion for nearly 50 years likely will soon be gone.

The question of where a pro-life ethic goes from here won’t be decided by courts or even legislatures, but by the state of the church in America—and that’s a far more complex realm. In fact, for pro-life Christians like me, the warning should be that it is possible to “win” and “lose” a culture of life at the very same time.

Both sides of the abortion debate have voices warning their compatriots of overreach. Some pro-life governors seem unprepared to talk in interviews about exceptions for rape and incest or the legality of IUDs and other contraceptive devices.

And many are warning pro-choice activists that they are in danger of losing public opinion by protesting at the homes of justices or seeking to pass wildly expansive bills at the state level guaranteeing nine months of legal abortion for any reason.

For decades, some of us have argued that a “hearts and minds” strategy alone is not enough to deal with this issue. One cannot make the case that unborn children are our neighbors without seeking to protect their most basic rights by law. And those of us who are so-called “whole life” advocates have argued that a hearts-and-minds strategy toward women in crisis alone is not enough.

We must have real action, from advocating for a government safety net to supporting church congregations willing to care for the poor and their children. In so doing, we oppose the idea we see often with some on racial injustice questions—“Just get people saved, and racial issues will take care of themselves.”

But while we need more than just a hearts-and-minds strategy, we also need nothing less. If the American people don’t care about the humanity of their imperiled neighbor—whether the pregnant woman or the preborn child—no set of laws will hold for long.

Perhaps the greatest danger here is not what focus groups or polling data say about abortion, but something that has nothing to do with abortion at all—the moral credibility of the American church.

To see a model of how possible it can be to “win” and “lose” a cultural debate at the same time, we need only look across the Atlantic to Ireland.

A recent book by historian Fintan O’Toole examines the seemingly sudden collapse of Catholic cultural influence in the land of Saint Patrick, in ways that could be a premonition of what could happen to evangelical America.

O’Toole writes, for instance, about the unchallenged influence of the long-serving archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid. This influence was such that the archbishop could call a radio network to account for playing a song by Cole Porter—the lyrics of which (“I’m always true to you, darling, in my fashion”) the cleric found to represent a “circumscribed morality.”

One reviewer frames the matter bluntly, writing, “The only circumscribed morality McQuaid was prepared to tolerate was the abuse of young boys and girls by priests, and of women from many backgrounds by nuns in the infamous Magdalene Laundries.”

The church’s influence was unquestionable—Ireland stood apart from the rest of Western Europe on the moral matters of abortion, contraception, divorce, and so on.

And yet, as O’Toole argues, the church’s influence was far-reaching in other ways too. He writes that when numerous instances of molestation by clergy were discovered, the parents of the children harmed seemed inclined to apologize to the church for the “difficulties” these abusive priests faced.

“This was the church’s great achievement in Ireland,” O’Toole writes. “It had so successfully disabled a society’s capacity to think for itself about right and wrong that it was the parents of an abused child, not the bishop who enabled that abuse, who were ‘quite apologetic.’

“It had managed to create a flock who, in the face of an outrageous violation of trust, would be concerned as much about the abuser than those he had abused and might continue to abuse in the future,” he continues. “It had inserted its system of control and power so deeply into the minds of the faithful that they could scarcely even feel angry about the perpetration of disgusting crimes on their own children.”

Although some evangelical leaders would tell us that language of “gaslighting” and “spiritual abuse” are just vague therapeutic slogans for the deconstructing, these terms describe perfectly what O’Toole saw in the abusive church systems in Ireland—and they just as easily describe what many have experienced in American evangelical contexts.

The end result—perhaps for born-again America as for Catholic Ireland—is a church with an inordinately powerful force of cultural influence, if not moral authority, that finds itself suddenly without the credibility to enforce its orthodoxy at all.

The reason? People could not withstand what O’Toole calls the “most shocking realization of all,” which was “the recognition by most of the faithful that they were in fact much holier than their preachers, that they had a clearer sense of right and wrong, a more honest and intimate sense of love and compassion and decency.”

The church in Ireland is now a hollow presence culturally compared to what it once was. Abortion is now legal in Ireland, after a popular referendum in 2018 repealed the laws preventing it. Abortions are, in fact, free through the nation’s public health service. Divorce, as of 2019, is liberalized as well.

Did these massive and unpredictably sudden changes happen because of dramatically improved mobilization or messaging tactics by the (to use an American framing) “cultural left”? No.

Many researchers believe that the cultural shifts in Ireland were due, in large part, to a backlash against the church itself. Was this backlash because of cultural forces of secularization warring against the church? No. It was because people who once revered the church came to realize that the church did not itself believe what it taught.

O’Toole points to the previous cultural necessity of obtaining an annulment by a church board to end a marriage. He notes that one of the church’s board members was a priest credibly accused of sexual predation on minors—and under the authority of leaders who were credibly accused of covering up the abuse.

The corruption of any institution does not, of course, decide the morality or immorality of any action, nor the rightness or wrongness of any belief. Martin Luther believed the medieval Roman church was wrong about indulgences and purgatory but right about the efficacy of the sacraments and the existence of a heaven and a hell. And yet, as Richard Riss describes Jesus’ words, “Woe to those through whom the stumbling blocks come” (Luke 17:1).

I wrote above that the cultural collapse of the Irish church was the “end result” of their very public hypocrisies and scandals, but that isn’t quite right. As a Christian, I do not believe the “end result” is Ireland’s turn away from the church, or any other sociological or historical shift.

Rather, the true end result is the judgment of God. And while that is far less quantifiable, it should be far more terrifying.

What the pro-life movement needs most from American evangelicalism is not more of our cultural or political influence. Indeed, much of what must be done to achieve that sort of influence is itself part of the crisis of our credibility.

Short-term cultural influence without moral authority can lead to some gains. But long-term, those gains cannot be sustained. More importantly, what can be lost by an influential but carnal church is far more than what can be gained—and that which is lost can be very difficult to recover.

What the world needs most from evangelical America is that we be a people who really believe what we say. Whether the world agrees or disagrees with us on abortion, or any other matter, they need to see us love vulnerable children—whether in the womb, in abusive homes, in foster care, or in our own pews.

They need us to stand for justice not only in the public arena but, more importantly, by holding ourselves to a high standard of integrity and accountability.

They need us to demonstrate what we say we believe—that all of life is lived before the face of God and nothing can be covered up before the judgment seat of Christ. They need to witness the testimony that the new birth we claim is more than just a brand.

Influence can be important, if it is used the right way. But credibility is more important still. And the next generation, born and unborn, is counting on us to recover it.

How to Care for Those Who Lost Ministries Due to Politics

Two brilliantly written but viscerally depressing pieces appeared in the media this week, both about the perils faced by pastors in a time of hyperpoliticization and polarization. One, by Ruth Graham in The New York Times, looks at an Arkansas pastor and the loss of his pulpit. Graham traces this back to such matters as the pastor citing Tom Hanks in an illustration, not realizing that this would become a skirmish over (false) online conspiracy theories about Hanks as part of a sex-trafficking ring. The other, by Tim Alberta at The Atlantic, is a deep dive on how politics is tearing apart evangelical churches all over the country.

In the midst of all of this, someone asked me—thinking I might have some experience with such matters—on how, for friends of pastors in situations such as these, to care for them. Here are some thoughts:

1. Keep in mind that, in many cases, these leaders feel that they’ve lost more than a job. For some of them, there’s an entire sense of identity that was tied to a church or a network or a denomination.

2. Be aware that some of these leaders, who left voluntarily, will feel guilt over leaving for a long time, thinking of the people who stood with them and supported them that they “left behind.”

3. Realize that gaslighting is real, and some of these leaders may constantly question whether they are crazy, especially if they’ve been in toxic situations for a long time.

4. Love the spouses and children, when applicable, of these leaders. Sometimes they are hurting even more because they feel more powerless in the situations.

5. Don’t be ashamed to be around that person. He or she will feel “radioactive,” even (maybe especially) in a small-church or small-town situation. Many who they thought were close friends will turn out to have been only allies, and will distance themselves from the person now that he or she is controversial. Sometimes these “allies” will be mentors and people previously believed to be spiritual fathers or mothers. Demonstrate that you love this person for who the person is, not for his or her gifts or job.

6. Persist in caring for that person, even—especially—if he or she withdraws. One of the things that comes with this sort of loss is a kind of shame, even when the person is not one bit confused about whether he or she was right or wrong. The shame isn’t cognitive; it’s deeper. And lots of people in that situation think they are “healing up” when they are really isolating. Be the persistent widow, to use a biblical metaphor, in connecting with that person.

7. Sometimes that shame makes it hard for people hurting like this to pray. Understand that, and tell them you will pray on their behalf, for as long as necessary. Maybe, paradoxically, taking away the guilt the person feels for God seeming so distant can be the exact prompt to get that person back to praying again.

8. If you have the kind of relationship with this person, remind him or her of the basics—Jesus hasn’t gone anywhere.

9. Don’t tell the person all the latest news about the negative things people are saying about him or her. In most cases, the problem is that this person cares too much about what those people think. He or she needs to see that there are other people out there, whom he or she is called to serve. As long as this person is still checking his or her “approval numbers”—whether on social media or on the gossip circuit at the Hardee’s breakfast table—he or she is still held captive to all of that.

This is all off the top of my head, and as soon as I hit “send” I will think of nine more. If you’ve been in this situation, what were the best ways people who loved you encouraged you through it? Or if you’ve cared for somebody through this kind of thing, what would you recommend? Let me know at questions@russellmoore.com.

What an Unsuccessful Rock Band Can Teach the Church

One of the newsletters I love to receive each week is that of Baylor University’s Alan Jacobs. This week he sent out a musing comparing the relative influence of a Harvard Business School professor with poet-farmer Wendell Berry. Despite Berry’s lack of institutional “platform,” Jacobs concludes, he has had the more influence. What was fascinating to me was why this might be the case.

Jacobs points to a quote attributed to music producer Brian Eno about the 1960s- and 1970s-era rock band the Velvet Underground. Its first album only sold 30,000 copies in its first five years, he quipped, but everybody who bought it started a band.

Jacobs writes that Berry’s work isn’t commercially best-selling, and his “platform” institutionally isn’t that impressive, “but his work—combined with his example—has caused a number of readers to change their lives, and not many writers can say that.”

Eugene Peterson’s books (with the exception of The Message) weren’t written to rocket to the tops of the charts, and his church was never that big by “Christian celebrity” standards. Aren’t we glad of that? Would those of us blessed by his ministry trade the Eugene Peterson we had for one that would have “fit” the Christian publishing or American megachurch markets?

Some of you, I know from the notes you send, are wondering whether you are making a difference in your callings. Some of you aren’t seeing results, and you’re discouraged. Maybe you’re measuring the wrong things. And by that I don’t just mean what we all know—that spiritually we will only see eternal “results” from the perspective of eternity. I mean that, even by earthly standards, your work just might be prompting some people you don’t expect to consider what is possible in following Jesus, to “start bands” of their own.

Be encouraged. Onward.

This week’s submission comes from reader Kaleb Ware, who writes, “These 10 books are a selection of writings that are perhaps not the ‘best’ books I’ve ever read, but they are definitely many of my favorites that I reread and recommend again and again.”

Timeline by Michael Crichton—Such a fun premise by a great author. Who doesn’t love archeologists traveling via quantum physics to medieval France!

Pontius Pilate by Paul L. Maier—An interesting historical fiction novel written by a professor at Western Michigan University. I enjoy its detailed recounting of Roman history and culture but within a biblical context.

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky—Such images in your head Dostoevsky can create! The scene of murderer Raskolnikov and prostitute Sonia reading the biblical story of Lazarus brought me to tears.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy—My absolute favorite book, hands down. A random pick-up at a bookstore in college that changed forever what I consider good writing. No one writes characters like Tolstoy.

The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy—An excellent novella that opens your mind to the sadness of a complacent life. It always reminds me to reflect on what’s most important!

Letters and Papers from Prison by Dietrich Bonhoeffer—What a great way to learn the heart of one of my favorite authors. I was spiritually encouraged reading about his trust in God despite his worries and fears while in a German prison.

The Space Trilogy by C. S. Lewis—A great combination of theology with some good old-fashioned sci-fi/fantasy elements.

Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis—So unlike Lewis’s other fictional works. I’m continuing to glean things from this novel after several passes. Such an interesting way to write a story: biblical truths woven in a pagan context.

The Big Fisherman by Lloyd C. Douglas—A lesser-known book by the author of The Robe that tells the story of the apostle Peter.

Smoke on the Mountain by Joy Davidman—Still a worthy addition to the list even if not in the photo. Written by C. S. Lewis’s wife, it contains interesting meditations on the Ten Commandments that pushes me to think about the Old Testament in less narrow-minded ways. What else would you expect from an ex-Communist, American screenwriter?

Thanks, Kaleb! Readers, what do you think? Send me your Desert Island Playlist (of songs) or your Desert Island Bookshelf (of books). If a playlist, choose between five to fifteen songs, excluding hymns or worship songs (we’ll do those later).

If a bookshelf, ask yourself if you could have one bookshelf with you to last you the rest of your life, what volumes would you choose? Send a picture to me with as much or as little explanation of your choices as you would like.

Send either or both to questions@russellmoore.com.

Quote of the Moment

I sometimes hear old people, including Christian people who should know better, say, “I don’t want to be a burden to anyone else. I’m happy to carry on living so long as I can look after myself, but as soon as I become a burden I would rather die.” But this is wrong. We are all designed to be a burden to others. You are designed to be a burden to me and I am designed to be a burden to you. And the life of the family, including the life of the local church family, should be one of “mutual burdensomeness.”

—John Stott, in The Radical Disciple

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Onward,
Russell Moore