The abortion holocaust in America has now continued for more than five decades. In the face of this holocaust, the church in our nation and her leaders have been far too silent, and the slaughter has only persisted as a result.
American pastors must carefully consider how they are opposing the slaughter of our pre-born neighbors in both the explicit and implicit aspects of their local church ministries.
The crushed skulls, severed limbs, and broken bodies of countless millions of pre-born children testify that Christians have failed to be salt and light in our nation, despite the incredible Christian heritage we have historically enjoyed.
God meanwhile hears the blood of our own children crying from the ground for justice, and that justice, one way or another, will be established.
Some of us are, by the grace of God, increasingly awakening from our slumber. As we view the current landscape with fresh eyes, we see the failure of the church and the need to awaken her in service to her Lord, the resurrected and ascended Jesus Christ, for the abolition of abortion.
Many have observed such a need, and yet confusion abounds in the conversation about the role of the church, and especially her shepherds, in the most urgent moral crisis of our day.
The terminology of this conversation often produces confusion before the discussion even starts. When believers assert that the church needs to become more involved in ending abortion, some are referring to the people of God who compose the body of Christ in our nation, and others are referring to local churches or denominations as institutions.
The first emphasis should be uncontroversial. Christians as a class of people should not only be involved with opposing abortion, but should serve as the vanguard toward opposing abortion in America.
American pastors must carefully consider how they are opposing the slaughter of our pre-born neighbors in both the explicit and implicit aspects of their local church ministries.
The second emphasis is also centered on a legitimate question, but in many cases, the matter of how church leaders should be opposing abortion has been answered poorly.
On the one hand, some believers expect for their pastors to serve as the primary organizers in political efforts to end abortion, including those which extend beyond the scope of their ministries. Perhaps they are expected to host rallies or lead political lobbying efforts.
In such cases, what starts as a recognition that pastors should be more outspoken about abortion becomes overapplied, possibly because of an insufficient understanding about the nature of pastoral ministry.
While pastors should indeed function as prophetic voices in our culture, they need not remove themselves from their critically important duties, such as teaching the word, administering the sacraments, or organizing the liturgy, with political work outside of their calling.
This is not to say that pastors should abstain from the political process or remove their voices from the public square, but that they need not divert a significant amount of their energies into such efforts. Most pastors are not even trained to work in politics, and such work is likely more suitable for other members of the church with relevant expertise.
But such cases of pastoral overinvolvement are easily the minority of cases, and are usually present only in very specific circles, such as the politically conservative charismatic movement.
On the other hand, some believers see that their pastors hardly display any noticeable opposition to abortion, which is much more likely to be the case in the broader Protestant and evangelical world.
The default evangelical belief system in America separates the authority of Jesus from our civic life. Because of our anemic theology regarding the resurrection, ascension, and dominion of our Lord, we do not recognize Jesus as the enthroned King of Kings.
Any believer who asserts the authority of Jesus is likely to be chided with a number of pithy sayings to support our novel twentieth-century outlook on civil government.
Such believers are admonished that Jesus said his “Kingdom is not of this world,” or that “this world is not our home.” In some cases, particularly in certain dispensationalist circles, they are even told that “polishing brass on a sinking ship” is useless since we should expect the world to decay before an imminent rapture anyway.
These cliches point toward an embarrassing failure to think in biblical categories. By encouraging pietism and inaction within the church, such cliches are the means through which the body of Christ in our nation has removed herself from opposing grave national sins such as abortion.
The refusal to address abortion not only fails to prevent abortions, but also fails to apply gospel healing to those in our midst who have murdered their children.
While some pastors and individual believers may sincerely and yet mistakenly believe these cliches, others use them as a cover for inaction and an excuse for a life of materialistic comfort.
In the same vein, some evangelical pastors fail to address the issue of abortion to avoid offending the culture. Many have absorbed the assumptions of the seeker-sensitive movement, which teaches that confronting sin and converting sinners are mutually exclusive tasks.
This movement produces avoidance rather than engagement of cultural sins to decrease the risk of causing offense. The attendees of such churches, even the most sincere Christians within them, are therefore left with a lackluster understanding of Christian sexual ethics, including the urgent reality of abortion.
Given that a substantial share of American women will have at least one abortion while they are of reproductive age, with some estimates placing the statistic as shockingly high as one in four women, there are countless women and men in our churches who have obtained abortions or supported others in obtaining them. In other words, the refusal to address abortion not only fails to prevent abortions, but also fails to apply gospel healing to those in our midst who have murdered their children.
In order to address the reality of abortion within the culture, and even within the walls of the church, the pastor must simply fulfill his already existing ministry in a courageous and comprehensive manner.
The first and most important step centers on the pulpit. Those entrusted with the ministry of preaching and teaching must proclaim the whole counsel of God, as well as practically apply that counsel to the lives of those in their congregations and their broader cultural contexts.
Because abortion is prevalent both inside and outside the church, pastors simply cannot ignore abortion. In the same way that the apostle Paul could not ignore the sexual degeneracy at Corinth or the idleness which abounded in Thessalonica, the pastor of the typical American church cannot ignore sins in the culture which beset their congregations and threaten to capsize their faith.
When passages with clear applications to the issue of abortion are preached, those applications must be presented with conviction, even if a pastor could experience blowback from certain factions within the church. The word must be preached in season and out of season, and the truth of God must never be restrained.
The natural outworking of such faithful preaching and teaching may even be Christians who are called by the Lord to work for the abolition of abortion in their vocations, whether through the political process or some form of outreach ministry.
Because abortion is prevalent both inside and outside the church, pastors simply cannot ignore abortion.
The second step centers on cultural formation within the church. Beyond upholding the whole counsel of God, ranging from biblical life ethics to the role of the civil magistrate in restraining evil, pastors should mold the culture of their churches by publicly commending the work of congregants who oppose abortion.
When members participate in sidewalk counseling, plan lobbying days at the state legislature, or host donation drives for needy mothers tempted toward abortion, pastors should be eager to publicly highlight and encourage such efforts.
Whether they announce such ministry opportunities from the pulpit before worship, post about them on personal or church social media accounts, or even involve themselves in such efforts as time allows, the mere example of a pastor publicly approving of work within his church to oppose abortion helps to form the culture and norms of the congregation.
Christians rightly recognize that their pastors should be primary voices against the murder of our preborn neighbors. When pastors are preaching the whole counsel of God and equipping the saints for the work of ministry, with a specific eye toward the particular sins and deceptions that beset our unique time and place, a robust Christian opposition to the abortion holocaust inevitably arises.
May the Lord call such faithful shepherds to fulfill their ministries with courage and conviction, molding a nation of Christians against which even the very gates of hell cannot stand.
