3 Ways the Pro Life Movement is Changing in Evangelicalism

Conversations That Matter podcast, I'm your host John Harris, here to talk about the abortion debate in evangelical circles, the abortion debate in evangelical circles.

I think just about all my examples are pulling from Southern Baptist sources because I've had my mind focused a lot on Southern Baptist stuff this week, given the convention was last week and a lot of the reaction and fallout from it is also this week.

In fact, there's a lot of things I wanted to talk about that I don't know if I will be able to talk about concerning the Southern Baptist because I really need to get to and want to get to other things that are happening out there.

In fact, the PCA General Assembly is meeting right now. We have the Christian Reform Church met last week, made some important decisions.

I know there's some things going on in Lutheran denominations as well, and I wanna get to this stuff.

And I know Southern Baptist, it's kind of the big gorilla, it's the big denomination, but there's other denominations that are also very important.

And so I will get to those, but I think I need to do one or two more shows that are at least focused in part on Southern Baptist.

This one has a broader reach. I think this is affecting more than just the Southern Baptist, but a lot of the examples

I'm gonna pull from are gonna be SBC. But the abortion debate, of course, has changed over the last few years, especially in reaction to the social justice movement.

And I think broadly speaking, what I'd say is there's been a watering down of pro -life. I remember when I was at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2000, it was my ethics class, so I think this was 2015, if I'm not mistaken.

It was around that time. I remember speaking to my ethics professor, and he told me that he noticed a huge change in students.

And this was at that time, that they had, at that time, and what she was telling me, they become less pro -life than they were before.

And I said, wait, what do you mean they're less pro -life? I thought everyone who came here, I was naive, I was really naive.

I remember other stories of me sitting in class and hearing Darwinian evolution stuff, and I was like, wait a minute, whoa,

I thought none of us believed that. And then I realize a lot more now. But anyway, on this issue,

I said, what do you mean not as pro -life? And I said, of course they're pro -life. I thought everyone was pro -life here. And he said, well, it's not that they couldn't, they wouldn't say that they're not, they wouldn't tell you they're not pro -life necessarily, but they're just not, it doesn't motivate them.

And it's not really, they don't think about it much. It's not a conviction that they hold. It's more of something maybe by default that they've inherited.

And this didn't characterize all the students. He said that he's seen a gradual progression or a regression in just a drop -off of support.

They're less motivated, it's less important to them. And I thought, well, that's not good to hear.

And of course, I'm sure now it's probably even more so that way.

Even though I hear from a lot of pro -life organizations that we're the pro -life generation, this is the generation that's gonna end abortion.

And I think the ultrasound has made a huge difference in showing people you have a life inside you.

I think, and this is just me, I don't have stats in front of me on this point. I actually wasn't expecting to open the show with this.

But I think that there's a lot more callousness also in the current generation than there ever has been.

Callousness towards violence, towards human worth. And so I think we're actually approaching a point where it's gonna be interesting because you're gonna have,

I think, the lie before and the lie even still to some extent is that it's not a child, it's not a human being.

But I think we might be approaching a new paradigm in which it doesn't matter if it's not a human being.

In other words, you can convince someone that's a human being and it won't make a huge difference to them. Okay, yeah, it's a human being.

So what, why does that mean I shouldn't be able to end the life of this human being? Now that's not, certainly at this point,

I think across the board, and certainly that's not something I think most people would say that they would support.

But if what my ethics professor told me is true, and if just by my own observations, what

I'm seeing just generally in culture, the callousness that people have towards human life in general, even just the violence on movie screens and stuff,

I mean, shows me that. I remember I was sitting in 2003, I don't remember.

When was the first Lord of the Rings come out? I was sitting in the theater and I remember there was a decapitation scene and the whole audience gasped.

Well, however many years it was that the Hobbit came out and there was a decapitation scene, which was even more gruesome, and the audience laughed.

I mean, that's what I'm talking about with the callousness, the coarseness of society. Anyways, I wanna talk about the pro -life stuff.

What I've seen broadly speaking, I think, in evangelical circles is exactly what that ethics professor told me.

There seems to be a dilution of the pro -life movement by inserting other causes, quality of life concerns, into the category of murder, euthanasia, ending life.

So eating cheeseburgers and smoking and racial issues and all kinds of other things end up being packed into, well, those are pro -life concerns as well.

And so that's happening. You have the dilution of pro -life. And I think there's probably various motivations.

I can't help but think that a lot of this has to do with trying to appeal to the left or trying to import the left.

Either way, trying to somehow create an alliance or connection with people that are more on the socialist side so that we can then look at them and say, well, you have something in common with us.

We can recruit you to our side and we'll give you some recruits because we believe that some of your causes are important as well.

And in fact, sometimes just as important. So that's one of the things, one of the areas that I see a dilution going on.

And I think this is a way to try to get younger people motivated for pro -life, categorizing it as a social justice concern.

Hey, pro -life social justice. So you're all motivated and marching in the streets for anti -racism and for the

Me Too movement and maybe the environment and other issues. Why don't you come join us? We march as well for the pro -life cause.

So then you have the other thing that's happening, the other dynamic. And I'll show you videos to back all this up.

The other dynamic is you have other issues.

So like I said, there's all these other issues being brought in under the pro -life umbrella, but it's not just that they're being brought under the pro -life umbrella.

It's that there's a moral equivalency between them and pro -life. That's the second thing. So you could say police shootings are just as important trying to rectify the problems pertaining to police shootings as the legalized killing of babies in the womb at clinics by doctors and women who choose to go and have these procedures.

You could say that those two things are morally equivalent somehow. And that's,

I think, another way. And in some ways, we might have done this to ourselves a little bit. I think the pro -life movement, at least since I've been around, has really liked to make the connection that they're just like the abolitionists of the 18th or 19th century.

And I could probably do a whole episode on why I think that's probably not the best road to go down. Actually, when

I've debated this issue publicly, I've made the Nazi Germany connection more because I think that's a more accurate apples to apples comparison.

But I think there's this hunger to try to hitch our wagon into the civil rights movement and to anti -slavery.

And that will give us more legitimacy or something, or the left will see, oh, okay, yeah, you're the...

And of course, the left doesn't really usually see things that way, so it doesn't usually work. But I think what we've done is we've also kind of diluted that issue because as much as we wouldn't want slavery and we want personal responsibility and all of that, and we don't like what happened in the 19th century, that still isn't the legalized murder of human beings.

And now I think there's all these other current social justice concerns that are being imported into pro -life.

And so it's hard to know how do you respond to that when we've already been making, we've been kind of opening the door for that to some extent.

And so anyway, you have that going on where these issues are morally equivalent.

And then you have a third issue going on right now, and that's the issue of whether or not the woman or the mother is culpable if she opts for an abortion.

So all of that, those are the three, and there's probably more that you could add to this list, exceptions for rape and incest and laws, that kind of thing.

But these are the three big ones in my mind. I just wanna survey the landscape here for everyone.

I wanna show you some examples of this from evangelical world, so you know what

I'm talking about. First, here's what happened, here's what's happening actually right now, but this is this morning at the

Supreme Court building, as people are getting ready for what they thought that today might be the day that a decision is rendered on the

Dobbs case. Now, of course, a decision was not rendered on the Dobbs case today. And my guess would probably be next

Monday when they do this, but the issue that was decided, one of the issues at least today, was on gun rights in New York.

And without getting into a huge rabbit trail on this, I'm probably in the way big minority on this particular one as a conservative.

And I think, though, that I'm more paleo -conservative on this, I think more constitutional.

I just don't believe, I don't think incorporation was ever right, the incorporation doctrine.

And so I don't think the Bill of Rights, honestly, ever was intended to apply to the states. I think it was supposed to apply to the federal government.

So in a way, I live in New York right now, part of me benefits from this, and I like it because I'm like, hey, there's the process by which one has to go through all the hoops you have to jump through to get an application for concealed carry, and I think it's more in New York City.

But those have been struck down, or to some extent, I'm not sure, I haven't read the whole decision.

So the federal government has now inserted itself based on the

Second Amendment into this particular area of New York State law. But this should honestly be a

New York State thing. I think a consistent conservative, or at least a constitutional conservative who believes in original intent would have to say that that's not an area the

Supreme Court should be inserting itself. But in some ways, I guess it's to my advantage as being a

New Yorker currently. And so I'm not gonna complain too much, but I know that this gets into,

I mean, we don't like it when the Supreme Court inserts itself into state issues and then pushes the needle to the left, which it most often does.

So anyway, that's just my little take on that. But this is what was happening this morning in anticipation of the truly controversial decision that may be rendered soon.

And as you can see, a lot of protesters and some counter -protesters there. This is not a nightmare,

Richard O. We can put the fighters up and let those mobsters get the vote.

We have to draw the line now and say hell no.

We are the majority. We have the power to stop them. We have the power to put the enemy straight.

Now clearly, this is controversial. This is gonna be a big deal. This is the kind of thing, honestly, someone told me earlier today that, hey,

I have to travel. If this happens today, I'm not gonna travel. I'm gonna rearrange my plans because there's a fear that there's gonna be protesters out there and not just protesters, rioters, that will be shutting down roads, burning down buildings, that kind of thing.

Now, I don't know what the future holds, but I can understand that sentiment because we've seen that on other issues.

And so, this is the temperature in our society right now on this issue, and this could be the big issue for this summer.

Now, as we look at the evangelical world, you're gonna find, at least in the formerly conservative evangelical circles, there's going to be universal admission that one is pro -life.

People are gonna confess this, I am pro -life. What does that mean, though, today? That's the question.

What does that mean to be pro -life? Here's what Ron Sider, who was speaking at the

Ethics and Religious Liberty Convention for the Southern Baptist Convention in 2016, that's when Russell Moore was heading it up, here's what he said at one of their conferences about being pro -life.

But I am certain that we would be far more successful in persuading others to join us in this important cause if we were widely known as the people who also led the effort to combat poverty, which kills millions of people, if we were also leading the effort to combat death by smoking, if we were also leading the struggle to stop the deadly effects of racism, if we were also leading the movement to prevent millions of poor people from dying from the effects of climate change, and if we were also leading the campaign to insist that even murderers are still persons made in the image of God, and therefore, their lives should be respected even as we protect society from their deadly actions.

That kind of completely pro -life movement, I believe, would profoundly reshape

American society. So now things like even smoking can be pro -life issues. Now Ron Sider's been marketing this since the 80s at least, and I think now it's finally catching on, though, in more evangelical circles.

You had the populist movements, well, populist movement, the religious right, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Francis Schaefer.

I mean, they were kind of stealing the headlines, and you didn't have people like Ron Sider or Jim Wallace getting all the traction, but today people are echoing current evangelical leaders their sentiments in many ways.

Here's one example of that. I wanna give you a just clip from a very recently shown or a recently broadcasted, they call it a debate, but it's kind of a debate, kind of a discussion, but it's a debate between Karen Swallow Pryor and Scott Klusendorf, and Karen Swallow Pryor advocates for this completely pro -life position.

Here's what she says. Now she's not as specific in this presentation, perhaps, as Ron Sider was, but in other places she has been, and there are many others in the evangelical world who also have been, and so here's what

Karen Swallow Pryor has to say about being pro -life. When I came to be pro -life many years ago, it was drilled into me that we were pro -life from womb to tomb.

This meant that we opposed not only abortion, but also infanticide and euthanasia, anything that would be a direct physical attack against a human being, but between the womb and the tomb, there are countless ways to breed a culture of death, a spirit that is anti -life and therefore anti -Christ.

The racial conversation as a part of being a pro -life, part of the pro -life holistically movement, what do you say to that?

I mean, I think that that's central. Scott brought up slavery, which our country, that was the pressing issue for our country a century and a half ago, and there are obviously huge differences between these two issues, but there are some strong parallels.

So for example, if one were simply against the institution of slavery, but not for the image of God of these

African -Americans that were either kidnapped and brought here or were born here because of earlier kidnappings, if we just simply oppose the institution of slavery and set these people free with no care for them, no love for them, no concern for what happens next, then we would be in the same situation that we're in about abortion, if we just want to outlaw abortion and not provide any support.

And I think that we are actually seeing some of the results of opposition to slavery that really wasn't holistic.

We're still dealing with those ripple effects today. And you can see right there how she tries to use the chattel slavery issue from the 19th century as a way to convince people that other issues like racial justice issues today are also related to or categorized as a pro -life issue.

Now, I've been pretty clear on this, I think, over the last few years as I podcast it.

I believe the pro -life movement, its intention, at least in its popular form, the form I recognize, the form that has marched in Washington every year is specifically about murder.

It's about the fact that the government of the United States allows murder to take place without any consequences in certain circumstances.

Now, on the state level, there are some places where euthanasia is also legalized, and I think that would certainly qualify.

But broadly speaking, on a national level, at this point, as I'm recording this, abortion for the unborn, killing them, ending their lives, ending the lives of human beings in sometimes even horrific ways, this has been legal.

No one's going to arrest you if you do these things. This is an acceptable thing. And so that's why there has been a march on Washington.

That's why there's a pro -life movement. And that's why, and I know there was an abolitionist, an abortion abolitionist who told me, don't use that word pro -life.

And so I'm trying to, I'm using it because some of the pro -life people use it about themselves. But we can call it anti -abortion movement, really, if we want to call it that, because the pro -life industry has become so much more than just anti -abortion, as demonstrated even in these videos.

But I always grew up thinking, and I think most of us, what even got us involved in this was because we oppose abortion.

We're anti -abortion, and that's what we meant by pro -life. That's what we thought this was about. When you start broadening it, you run a risk of a few things.

What you do is you can take the limited resources available to the anti -abortion cause, and now those limited resources are being invested in other areas.

Now, it's not that all these other areas are necessarily bad. I think most of them probably are bad. Most of them are coming from socialist or leftist understandings, and so now we're putting all these resources into the evangelical immigration table.

Russell Moore's made that point for years. Being pro -life means we have to respect the image of God in the migrants who come here.

But translation, we shouldn't have strong border security. We should never deport anyone. We should roll out the red carpet and say, come on in.

I mean, this is kind of where things end up going eventually. And so is that pro -life?

Well, this has nothing to do with murdering someone. This has everything to do with access to the benefits that would be there for someone who is from the

United States, was raised here. There's certain benefits that come with that, and it's because our fathers and forefathers sacrificed and built and passed down a legacy.

But other people who aren't part of that, who live outside the confines of this country, don't have access to those things, and that's not fair in a social justice mindset.

That's unequal. So we need to let everyone in. Of course, then your ship sinks because you can't take on that much weight and still remain afloat.

So it's impossible. I mean, if your economy tanks and everyone's in poverty, you can't solve poverty.

So poverty being a pro -life issue, gun control being a pro -life issue, the death penalty being a pro -life issue.

I mean, all these things end up getting somehow factored into the pro -life cause, but it's not anti -abortion and it's not anti -murder to be more basic or fundamental here.

And that's the issue with this whole thing is you take those limited resources, you put them in the other areas.

Then you also, secondly, confuse the issue. You confuse things because now you end up, and we're gonna get to this in a second, but you end up giving the impression that there's all these other things that are morally equivalent.

Quality of life issues are morally equivalent to murdering. And that's just not the case.

Eating a cheeseburger and killing yourself through, what, 10 ,000 cheeseburgers, or probably more than that it would take, right?

So you eat 300 ,000 cheeseburgers and eventually you have a heart attack and you die. Well, that's bad because you died from it.

Well, that's a lot different than the willful murder of another human being that's sanctioned by law.

Being a bad steward of your body, being negligent with your body, those kinds of things, not good.

You should treat your body with respect. We know there's times of feasting, but gluttony, of course, is a sin and there's lifestyles that are not the healthiest.

However, I mean, we are going to do things in life that will cost us our health.

Paul poured himself out as a drink offering. He got beaten. I mean, being a Christian today can even cause you stress on the job, possibly.

It can cause you to be out of a job. I mean, could we make the argument that that's pro -life, that we are endangering ourselves by being so actively

Christian that we need to cut down the stress because that's going to take away years of our lives?

I mean, you could get into convoluted areas like this and it's just silly. Hopefully people see that this is silly.

That's much different than murder, than actually willfully ending someone's life, than taking an action, putting yourself in the seat of God in an unjustified way.

We're not talking about military defense. We're not talking about the police work or anything like that. We're not talking about defending yourself when someone comes into your house to rob you.

We're talking about actively murdering someone. And generally it's for the sake of convenience, selfish lifestyles.

And that is what has motivated millions of Americans to oppose abortion.

And if we just say, well, yeah, that's just like police shootings or something like that. We are minimizing the extent to it.

I mean, look, police shootings aren't, it's not legal for a policeman to have a racially motivated shooting or something like that, or a police department to have racially motivated shootings.

There's no Supreme Court decision saying that that is protected. That's a huge difference right there.

And there's a lot of other differences too, but that right there is a huge, huge one. So anyway, we confuse things.

And I think what we do is we take young pro -life individuals, people raised in these homes where they were against abortion, and now they are being corralled into the arms of social justice activists because they somehow think, well, that's the same thing.

No, it's not. It's not the same thing. And there might be some causes we can get behind that are quality of life issues, but they don't approach the legalized sanctioned murder that exists in our country right now.

And that's the issue. So this is the other thing. Now, here's the moral equivalency stuff though.

I'll show you a little bit of that. Let's play this clip. This is from Kevin Smith. Kevin Smith, of course, made an appearance on the podcast a few days ago because he was the one who was saying that Trump voters in the

Southern Baptist Convention were, and he picked some colorful language. He called them whores.

He said this publicly about, he says it was a private conversation. It was at a public

Nine Marks event at the Southern Baptist Convention. Kevin Smith is on all kinds of boards.

I think he's on the board for the ERLC right now, if I'm not mistaken. He was the Maryland -Delaware State Convention President.

He's very active and high up in the Southern Baptist Convention. And he said this. Well, here's what he said in 2020 in the presence of Al Mohler and a bunch of others.

Danny Akin was there. And this is what he says about abortion and racial insensitivity.

It is fine to say the most important thing for me is the life of a unborn baby.

But I think it's also biblically fine for me to say the most important for me is politicians who don't call me the

N -word and don't think I'm the N -word. So I mean, I think both of those, you can't say, well, one is more image of God than the other.

No, you can't. And so we need a little bit of liberty in how we come into these discussions of politics because they don't have exegetical definites and we need to act like that's the case.

Now his sentiment isn't any different than a number of other sentiments you can find in evangelicalism today.

David Platt wrote a book called Before You Vote. I think it was in 2020.

And he said that, I'll just quote him. He said, now let's consider Christian Z. She weighs biblical clarity on abortion just as Christian Y does.

But when Christian Z considers the practical consequences on this issue, while she desperately wants to save children in the womb, she doesn't believe voting for a

Republican candidate will change the law of the land. Of course, now we're seeing voting for a Republican candidate actually did give the opportunity to appoint

Supreme Court justices that are now making the possible decision to end Roe v. Wade.

But I do digress here. In fact, based on the history, Christian Z is suspicious of the idea that a

Republican candidate will be able to stop abortion. She believes that even if Roe v. Wade is overturned, the issue might still go back to the states where locations that already have a high number of abortions will continue to perform them.

So she weighs the practical consequences of voting for either a Republican or Democrat candidate much lower than Christian Y does on the issue of abortion.

This is page 61 to 62 of his book, Before You Vote. Now, David Platt, in context here, is making a moral equivalent argument with someone

Christian Y is, let's see, Christian Z, rather, is more on the left.

And racial justice and these things motivate her. So she's gonna vote for a Democrat that matches her beliefs because she thinks, well, a

Republican isn't gonna get it done anyway on the abortion issue. And there's other issues that are more important that maybe something can be done about.

And so it's perfectly fine in David Platt's mind to use this logic. Now, obviously, the current situation is showing this logic is flawed, that actually voting for Republicans can make a difference in this.

Not just Republicans, though, but Republicans who actually care about appointing good judges who will define a rule according to what the

Constitution states and not necessarily are beholden to the kinds of precedents that have been passed down over the last 50 years that are not originalist.

So if you appoint good Supreme Court justices, if you are active in your opposition to abortion, then it does make a difference.

So that's flawed here. But secondly, you're also telling people that you can vote for someone whose moral compass is this broken when you have the option of voting for someone who doesn't have a morally broken compass.

If someone who's pro -life or anti -abortion, we'll use that term, and you're gonna assume that, well, actually, the person who is okay with murdering children has the moral upper hand for pragmatic reasons, because they can get more done.

It makes no sense in my mind. It'd be one thing if you had two people, let's say you had

Giuliani running as a Republican against a Democrat who is pro -abortion. Now you have two pro -abortion candidates, let's say, and maybe you could write it in third party, or if you wanna vote for the candidate you think is going to win, then

I could see someone trying to make the case, well, this Giuliani might be a little better because even though he's got a morally broken compass on this, he gets a few other things right, maybe.

But you're not even talking about that. You are talking about a situation where you have a pro -life or anti -abortion candidate running against someone who's pro -abortion.

And David Platt justifies voting for the pro -abortion candidate because of practical, pragmatic reasons.

What makes you think that the person who's for murder or okay with it has a leg up morally?

You wanna vote for someone who's qualified, and we haven't had a lot of those lately. We're doing our best with the most qualified,

I guess we can, but it's been pretty dismal out there. And so, anyway, David Platt is contributing to that by giving people the justification in the church to vote for Democrat candidates who are in favor of abortion.

So that's the other issue here is this whole idea of moral equivalency.

And now, so we have holistic pro -life, we have moral equivalency. This is the one though that seems to be, especially last week, tearing the

Southern Baptist Convention apart a little bit. And it's the idea of the mother's culpability, the mother's culpability.

If a mother opts to go get an abortion, is she culpable or liable for that?

Can she be punished? Should she be punished by the civil magistrate? Here's what

Al Mohler said, and I wanna start, actually, let's not start with Al Mohler, let's start here.

This is in 2021, this is just last year at the Southern Baptist Convention. Here's what the resolutions committee chair had to say.

On the final resolved section, I would like to strike the words saying, love, care for, and minister to women who are victimized by the unjust abortion industry and replace with preach the gospel and urge repentance from all men and women guilty or complicit in the sin of abortion.

Is there a second? Second, do you wish to speak to your amendment? Yes, Mr.

President. I think that the language, first of all,

I should say, I'm grateful for the refutation of the Hyatt Amendment, which is extremely unjust and wicked, but I do think the final resolved language interferes with the gospel by softening sin and therefore eliminating the ability of the law to tutor the need for confession and repentance.

Let me be clear, women who obtain abortions, although their situation may be tragic and horrible, they are by the law murderers and therefore should seek repentance and we should not be so arrogant to presume that their circumstance excuses their need for salvation from their sins.

I share your passion for ending the moral scourge of abortion. And pardon me if I get emotional talking about this.

I've spent a great portion of my life sitting in small rooms counseling women in a

Christian pregnancy center in my hometown of Dothan, Alabama. It's called Wiregrass Hope Group.

Before I entered into that task, I would have been very tempted to adopt language more in line with what you just proposed.

And so I sympathize with the position that you hold. However, what the

Lord has shown me sitting in those rooms across from broken women is that so many of them have been victimized by the sin of others, by generational sin, by parents who never took them to church and preached the gospel to them the way mine did to me.

And yes, abortion is sin. And one of the things we impart to those women when we love them, care for them, and minister to them is the gospel of Jesus Christ, is the truth about the sin of abortion, and we do call them to repentance.

But I am also telling you that when we take a punitive and hard -hearted position toward women who are at a crossroads that usually a whole lot of people's sin brought them to, we are not having the mind of Christ toward those women.

Now let's fast forward a little bit and let's talk about what happened this year with this particular issue because it came up again.

And you had Brent Leatherwood, the head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention, and he has a similar question.

And first I'll read you a tweet from him. This is in May. He is responding to someone on Twitter, and he talks about, and I talk about this on the podcast, this was the

Louisiana pro -life anti -abortion law that they were passing, and he joined with 70 other leaders in the pro -life movement, he says, and wrote to all state legislators across the country, not just Louisiana, but he said, here's the gist, ban abortion, save lives, protect mothers, go after abortionists.

And of course, we went deep into this and showed that actually they were trying to take some of the teeth out of this bill, and one of their main concerns was we can't treat, if we treat abortion as murder, which is all the bill really did, that it's gonna be, it's now categorized as murder, that that immediately kicks in that you could have mothers that are gonna be in trouble who opt to get abortions.

And so they oppose it. Well, here's what you have him saying from the floor of the Southern Baptist Convention just last week on this very topic.

The reality, you're not going to get me to say that I want to throw mothers behind bars.

That's not the view of this entity. That is not the view of this convention. It is not the view of the pro -life movement.

That was proven yet again today. I believe the same principles that Jesus used in John 4 and John 8 apply right here.

Maybe instead of rushing in like a mob, we instead rush in with the truth given to us by the author of life, showing we are able to bear the burdens of others and offer the healing that comes with grace, just as has been poured out for us.

So I don't think this comes as any surprise to most of us. We also have the ERLC, they have a conference, you can see it here,

Uniting to Make Abortion Unnecessary. That's the conference they have coming up. They were advertising it last week.

It's the Ethics and Religious Liberty Convention of which Leatherwood is over, is having this weird wording for their conference.

Making abortion unnecessary, right. They don't say illegal. Now, I think they probably have articles about this, but the foot forward that they're choosing to step forward with is the wording unnecessary.

And this, of course, in more liberal circles, like mainline denominations, this would be something that would unite pro -life, quote unquote, with pro -choice people.

Because there's a lot of, quote, quote, pro -choice people who want to make abortion unnecessary, they just don't want to make it illegal.

So this just broadened, and like I said, the pro -life movement is getting diluted, it's getting broadened.

It's under attack, and I don't think people realize to what extent it is under attack. Now, Al Mohler's changed his position on this thing, on this issue, to some extent.

You can hear this. I'm gonna play two clips in a row. One is from 2016. This is right after Donald Trump, actually,

Donald Trump, made the statement that he thought mothers who opted to get an abortion should be punished. Imagine that.

Donald Trump had better moral reasoning, in many ways, than a lot of the Southern Baptists out there.

Because it just makes sense, logically. If murder is murder, the person who's in charge of the army and says, charge, to the soldiers, is just as morally responsible as the soldiers who are doing the shooting.

In fact, the argument, generally, is that the soldiers are just obeying orders, right? I'm just obeying orders.

Where do those orders come from? Well, if there's a woman going into an abortion clinic, and this is, I mean, obviously, there's pressure sometimes.

I have sympathy for this. I really do. There's horrible situations, confusing moral situations, where you have boyfriends, and sometimes parents, and mothers, most especially, it seems, giving advice, pressuring them to go get an abortion, and they're confused.

I mean, that's a horrible situation. But we all, deep down, know murder's wrong. We all have a law in our hearts that God's put there.

And to go against your conscience, and to go ahead and go do it anyway, is evil. Here's the thing, though.

God offers forgiveness for that. That's what Jesus came for. And who out there has not hated, in some way?

We've all committed murder in our hearts, to some extent. It's not the same as murdering. I'm not saying it is the same, in the sense that, you know, it's not as, there's other hoops you jump through to go to the point of actually killing another baby, but, or a human.

But this is something that's common to man. And so you confess it, and you move on. The Lord forgives you of these kinds of things.

You confess that, and you never do it again. You go and sin no more. But, and so that's a beautiful thing.

Christianity offers that. Other religions do not. You don't have to pay for your sin. Jesus paid for it.

Just repent, and put your faith in Him. But it doesn't get you off the hook, morally, as far as if there are legal penalties associated with this.

I mean, that's in the jurisdiction of the civil government. And so you have to go, and you have to make sure, well, you deserve punishment for that.

That's, the government does not bear the sword in vain. Now, Al Mohler made some statements in 2016, after Donald Trump said this, that basically contradicted

Donald Trump on this. That, well, the mother's not the one that's actually doing it. Then he kinda changes a little bit, which is very typical for Al Mohler.

Al Mohler does this on a lot of things, if you haven't noticed. If you've been paying attention over the years, Al Mohler tends to play both sides of issues, switch positions, give kind of vague answers, a lot of word salads.

And he's done this on critical race theory, like crazy. He's just pushed so many elements of it, and then, oh,

I'm not for that. And he's done this on the COVID narrative, to some extent.

He's done this, I'm trying to think what else. There's actually, I know there's a bunch of stuff out there that he's taken different positions on.

But anyway, this is one of them. So here's Al Mohler in 2016, and then right after that, Al Mohler just last week.

But here's where the pro -life movement returns back to say, who is the guilty party in an abortion? It is the person who brings about the death of the child.

The woman seeking the abortion is not without moral responsibility, but she is not herself bringing about the death of the unborn human baby.

That's the crucial issue here, and that's why the pro -life movement has consistently sought to criminalize abortion at the level of the person performing the abortion.

That is, unlike what Nicholas Kristof argues here, a morally consistent argument, and it has been consistent over time.

I understand what you're asking, and we understand homicide is the death or the killing of a human being.

An unborn baby, I believe from the moment of conception until natural death, is a human being deserving of that protection.

The law has means of making discernments and distinctions in agency, and that means moral responsibility, and in context.

How we make that apply in a question of abortion where even in terms of, say, a miscarriage, things may be difficult sometimes medically to define,

I believe the law is capable of making those distinctions. In the same way we have different degrees of murder, we have different kinds of indictments possible in criminal charges.

So in other words, I believe that there are many cases in which demonstrably, there is not just an abortionist who should face criminal consequences, but a woman seeking an abortion.

So that is something that we believe the law should pursue. We also understand that that is not something that is likely to come in all 50 states.

So that's Al Mohler's position. This brings us to Bart Barber on the culpability, mother's culpability.

I talked about this in the episode yesterday, but Bart Barber, long story short, says that in an abortion clinic, the mother is never the one doing the killing and is often also not the one doing the hiring.

Abortions are sometimes paid for by other parties. So a mother who walks into a clinic and opts to get this procedure done is not the one doing the killing.

And this is more consistent with Al Mohler's position from 2016. And so this is,

I would say Bart Barber is part of this. I mean, he has this whole thread on incrementalism and how great it is, and he's definitely against the abolitionist stuff.

And he's in line with, I think, the effort that's been happening now at least over a decade in evangelical circles, this effort to kind of, well, it's really actually over a decade now that I think about it.

I mean, this has been perhaps, I think abolitionists would say this is probably one of the historic flaws of the pro -life movement is that they didn't wanna take a public stand on this.

But I think what I really wanna say is that this obstinance or this stubbornness on this issue, this willing to stick up for this issue of women are not morally culpable.

Women are not the ones doing the killing. Women are off the hook. Mothers who do this are not responsible.

This kind of rhetoric, though, I think is being amped up. And that's what I really wanna say. In the last five, six years, that rhetoric has been amped up quite a bit more.

We're for the mothers, we're pro -mothers, and there's a big resistance to now the more conservative,

I would say, wing of the anti -abortion movement that's trying to be consistent about this.

Say, look, murder is murder. This is wrong. God's law is very clear on this.

And if you're paying someone to do it, then it doesn't make you, you're still morally culpable.

So is the person that is doing the procedure. But, and perhaps, in the case of someone, let's say, let me just give you a scenario if it's a 13 -year -old, and she's being pressured by her mom, and she's the one that she's driven to the clinic by her mom and told to do this.

And normally, children, right, you know, obey your parents. And the abortion, the abortionist does his deed, and it's over with, and this has happened.

There is still a consent that that 13 -year -old must have in order to allow that procedure to take place.

So there's still some moral culpability there. Is it as much as, let's say, the 27 -year -old who is a prostitute, and no one's driven her there.

She's going in, and this is the third one she's having. And that's a lot different. And I think we can parse that out and make distinctions in what the penalties for these kinds of things would be.

But, and of course, you know, the mother who's pressuring this, I think that's, you're an accessory now.

So there's gonna be, I think, distinctions that we can make. But it doesn't take away the fact that you are, you are part of a murder scenario here.

You, I think the term murderer is a fine term to use for someone who actually, and this is seen as really hard and cold by some.

In fact, I can think of people high up in conservative evangelicalism, like on, you know, staunchly against social justice and all that, and they think that this is the death knell of their position on anti -abortion.

And they don't, they really, they're afraid of abolitionists. They're afraid of, or just people who are, don't take that title, but they're just strongly anti -abortion and wanna be consistent on this.

I think that we just follow God's law, and we don't have to apologize for God's law ever.

And if that makes, if that's unpopular, then so be it, you know, it doesn't really matter.

I'd be curious to hear your comments in the info section, but to say that there, to insinuate,

I guess, that there really isn't a culpability here, there isn't a responsibility here, or that there shouldn't be a punishment there, just because, well, you're not the one that actually has the knife in your hand.

You're just, well, you're just asking the person with the knife to do their thing. That's just a morally broken compass.

And we wouldn't apply this to any other area. We wouldn't apply this to someone who's in a mob and pays another guy to go to a hit job on someone.

We'd say, well, they weren't the ones that actually took part in the hit job. They were just ordering it, but they didn't actually do it.

I mean, that would seem silly to us. We would laugh that out of the room, hopefully. Say, yeah, that person also wouldn't be doing it unless you were the one that went to them and asked them to do it.

So we wouldn't apply this in any other area, but for some reason in this area, there's a lot of resistance to it.

And that's why, part of the reason why I was thinking, I don't know if I was gonna add this, but I think

I have enough time. It was part of the reason I don't quite understand, and I say this from a place of great respect, but also great frustration.

I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. I'm very frustrated with this. I don't understand when conservatives say things like this.

Bart Barber's president, you know, pray for Bart. Bart, I like Bart. We've been friends for years. In fact,

I just sent him a message last night. I was going through some old messages on Facebook, which people message me on Facebook.

I never check it. I just, I don't do that. And so I'll find things five years, some of them 10 years old people saying, hey, well, okay, that ship's passed, but I appreciate the effort to communicate.

I just don't pay attention to a messenger. But I was going through stuff last night and I found an exchange of messages that he and I had back in 2018 before the convention.

And I was actually encouraging him to run for president in 2018. I said,

I will back you if you run for president in 2018, because the options at that point were

J .D. Greer and Ken Hemphill, I think maybe had announced, I'm not sure. But anyway, the writing on the wall for me as I was looking at the landscape back then was, man, you know, would love to have

Bart. He would be a better option than what we wound up with in 2018.

So that was funny. And I think that he still will be a better option than Greer and Litton. I think, you know,

I told him, I think he's a man of integrity and I think that's what the convention needs right now. Although we don't see things the same way.

And, but, you know, continue to pray for him. Yeah, absolutely. Use him in this office. Yeah, I do pray for him.

My wife and I got to know him and Tracy and Robin and Kathy Hathaway through the event in Keller, Texas, where they had a little panel for all of the candidates at that time.

And it was just wonderful. You know, just having fellowship with them and I'd never met Robin and Kathy. And so that was neat.

We had some common connections and relationships. So that was really fun to, even we've been following up on that and communicating with each other.

But I've known Bart for years. I don't know that I ever met Tracy before, but again, you just realize, okay, these are real people.

He's a faithful Southern Baptist pastor. He's been at his church a long time. He's trying to do a faithful job, shepherding

God's people. And so he deserves our prayers. And so we, Donna and I have been praying for them ever since we had that time with them.

And it's been a wonderful thing for us to pray about. I'd encourage everyone to pray for Bart. He's got a lot of responsibilities and opportunities and he's going to need wisdom from on high.

And he's going to need God's spirit to guide him and to protect him and help him. And also to carry on his regular responsibilities as a pastor.

So it's a right thing to pray for him. Yeah, and you know, one other high point of the convention that I didn't mention, and I think is a good sign is, you know,

Bart chaired the resolutions committee this year and we had nine resolutions, some of them good, some of them really not good.

But when we got towards the end, we were running out of time Bart asked the platform if we could have an extra 10 minutes and he said, we'll forego these other resolutions that we wanted to bring out just so we can have some debate from the floor, bringing out resolutions that the committee did not bring out.

And so he gave the floor opportunity to make their voices heard. I thought that was really fair. I thought that was a class act move.

Yeah, me too. And I think that's indicative, I think, of how he will try to do things.

So that was, yeah, that was an unusual thing in terms of how that committee has functioned in recent years.

You think about Bart Barber, everything that I said yesterday, the new president of Southern Baptist Convention, clueless on social justice, broadly speaking, on the gun issue, convoluted.

On abortion, I just read you what he said about that in regards to culpability of the mother.

On the issue of SSA, same -sex attraction, homosexuality without acting on it, whether it's a sin or not, again, convoluted on that issue.

On critical race theory, I mean, he joined in and condemned

First Baptist Church of Naples members who voted against Marcus Hayes and condemned them as racist when they weren't.

On plagiarism, this is a guy who said that basically

God is plagiarizing, that Mark took Peter's account, that's plagiarism, ran cover for Ed Litton specifically.

I mean, just indefensible kind of cover. It's just, it staggers the imagination.

The resolutions committee that he chaired declined a resolution against plagiarism.

His reaction to COVID, although he didn't take federal money from the government, he still ended up being pro -lockdown.

He ended up being, at least initially, for the vaccine mandate in the

International Mission Board. This is why people came home from being missionaries, a lot of them. They didn't wanna have that mandate, even if they didn't have to have it.

Bar barbers for that kind of thing. He defended Rick Warren indirectly by trying to insinuate or claim that Rick Warren was advocating religious liberty for Muslims.

I mean, Rick Warren advocates a version of Chrislam, really, but Bart Barber, at the moment

Rick Warren's on the ropes for his advocating female pastors, Bart Barber's gotta jump in and bring up something else to defend

Rick Warren by. He's defended the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission when they've been on the ropes because of the

George Soros money that has gone into their efforts. He's, in fact, just this morning,

I was looking at a tweet. I'll read it to you. This is from February 21st of this year. He says, he's asking someone on Twitter who's making a claim.

It's something Lee Brand, who's a conservative, who was vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention up until,

I think, last week. Bart Barber asks about a quote that he made, and he says, can you show me direct quotes of how the

SBC leadership has devalued the words sufficiency, reconciliation, and the gospel, or in gospel?

And the whole thread on Twitter is that there's a drift in the SBC, which

Bart Barber denies, and that we see these issues being devalued.

And he's saying, where is it, basically? I don't see it. And I have to just wonder, what kind of tunnel vision do you have to have to not see that the gospel has been completely devalued and watered down?

When 866 things become gospel issues. Black Lives Matter is a gospel issue, said the president of the

Southern Baptist Convention two years ago. When you have gospel above all as your theme, and yet so much of what's talked about isn't even the gospel.

It's all these other social issues, just like the Just Gospel Conference is anything but just the gospel. And you have so many

Southern Baptists at high levels claiming that others have just a partial gospel or a half gospel because it doesn't involve some kind of social justice work.

If Bart Barber can't see any of this, and I've gone to great pains to outline this, to show you where this is, over the course of many podcasts, a lot of it's in my book,

Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict. You can go get that, and there's plenty of receipts there. If he can't see that, and he's the president of the

Southern Baptist Convention, I don't know why in the world that would be, we would look at this and say, well,

I mean, it's not so bad. It's better than it could be. It's certainly better than a

J .D. Greer, I guess, or an Ed Litton. You almost get the impression that this could be a step in the right direction. It's just not a big enough step.

I mean, I wanted Tom Askew to win. If someone's gonna win that, I encourage you on this podcast, if you're still in the

SBC. And by the way, if you wanna stay in the SBC, you can give as little as $14 a year to remain in.

And I know most pastors that I've talked to, I don't think, are interested in that as much, just because they think, why am

I giving $14 a year to an organization, and then going out to a convention for the big headache that is, and the expense that is, when

I just wanna support missions? And I can't really argue with that. That's up to your conscience. But if you wanna stay in the

SBC, and you wanna give the $14 a year, and you wanna go out to the different conventions, and try to fight, then do it.

Have your exit strategy. Have some kind of a moment where you think, where you say to yourself, if this doesn't happen by this time, then we need to get out.

I would have that in hand. Have that ultimatum. But if that's what you wanna do, that's fine.

I'm not trying to condemn anyone for staying in and fighting, but you gotta fight.

You have to fight, and you have to do it with all your might. And then, if it doesn't work out, you can't waste the

Lord's resources. That's my conviction on that. But anyway, you can, yeah,

I support Tom Askell, for churches that were still in that. But then to hear this, honestly, it is, with all due respect, and there is respect there, because it takes a lot to run, but this is discouraging to me.

You have guys that went out and took out reverse mortgages on their homes and ate into their church budget for more than a year in order to, from little bitty churches, to afford to fly out to California to get a hotel, possibly a rental car, and to then go through a headache.

And hopefully they got some encouragement, but it's a big sacrifice. And then, to minimize, that's how it feels,

I think. It comes across as a minimizing of that, that things really, it was more of a head cold and less of a stage four cancer.

And so, that's how I'm hearing it. Now, if you're hearing something different, then please let me know.

But this is, I don't think Barber's election is, this is not a good sign at all for the

Sunner Baptist Convention, if anything. This is, in some ways, this is more discouraging than the last two years, to me, if you're a

Southern Baptist. Because this is a guy who, and I just went through a bunch of issues with you, this is a guy that seems to demonstrate that he, where are his principles?

He runs all over the place. He's vague. He comes across as incompetent, as unknowing.

At least some of these other guys, at least like Litton and Greer, seem to be, they would dig their heels in and be pretty consistent on the wrong things sometimes.

Having someone who's more unprincipled, having someone who is, seems to just defend the people who are influential or in power.

I don't know if I can do it this podcast. I'm really getting off track of what I wanted to talk about. There's a bunch of pictures that I was gonna show you of just the silliness after the convention.

Bart Barber at Disneyland with his wizard's hat, and Steve Gaines taking a picture, and hey, this is the new president of the

Southern Baptist Convention. There was a bunch of those kinds of things, really goofy, silly pictures that Bart Barber was liking and retweeting, and just,

I'm like, this is sad to me, because at least you had some progressive -minded people who were a little more serious.

That there was a modicum of, I don't know, just, it was adults more so.

And Greer was more of a youth pastor, but I mean, it's just, the bar keeps lowering.

There's just not any dignity anymore. And Bart Barber is probably one of the biggest examples of that I've ever seen.

So I only bring that up just to inform you all out there who are following this kind of thing in the

Southern Baptist Convention. I think that we need to, or you need to, if you're in the

SBC, kind of evaluate who are the leaders you wanna follow in this convention?

What do you wanna do for next year? And I realize most of this podcast was about the pro -life or anti -abortion stuff and how that's being diluted, and I'll circle back to it, but I just do wanna say that if there's a serious effort to actually take back the

Southern Baptist Convention, I think it's gonna come from, first, laymen and pastors who are willing to take back their local churches.

It'll be, that'll be the first sign that there's a real effort underway. Secondly, I think it's gonna be someone who is willing to run and go scorched earth, basically.

To be like the Apostle Paul, I know that's a novel idea, but to be like Jesus, to really call these people out for who they are.

Barbara, you're corrupt. You're just corrupt. You switch positions or you defend the indefensible when it's someone who's powerful in your club.

I mean, you don't have good moral reasoning. It's a buffoon at this point.

It's a buffoon convention because of the way that you're acting. We have to have someone who's willing to say that kind of thing.

You don't seem to even understand or realize the false teaching happening at your seminaries. And by the way, let's name some false teachers right now.

You know what, Jarvis Williams, that's a false teacher right now, being protected at Southern Seminary. Walter Strickland, false teacher, being protected at Southeastern.

If we can't say this, then we can't say false teacher. If we have to say brother and treat them like that, then it's doomed to fail, any effort.

I just don't see how God would bless that kind of an effort. I think, you know, calling out people, even the opposing the

Peters out there. If there's a Peter who's being confusing on what the gospel is, because they're covering for false teachers, confront that person to their face.

Don't be afraid to do it publicly. Don't be afraid to write about it. We need some fearless leadership that's convictional and bold.

And it's gonna take someone, I think, that's probably, it's not gonna be your typical, if there's gonna be a win for conservatives, it's gonna be like a

Trump kind of scenario where, and I don't mean morally Trump's character, I mean like a drain the swamp campaign coming from an outsider, who can somehow electrify the base of conservatives and motivate them to sacrifice, to show up.

And I think that that window is probably closed, but maybe not, maybe if there's someone that's actually willing to really not pull the punches, but really for the glory of the

Lord, for his kingdom and for the love of Jesus Christ, to go out there and to risk being, having bad relationships perhaps with, or having the condemnation of really false teachers and those covering for them in your denomination, then so be it.

But that's what we need is someone who's not worried about that kind of thing. And maybe there's someone in the earshot of my voice who's listening and hasn't considered doing that, you're remaining in the convention, and you thought, well,

I haven't considered running. Well, maybe this is your moment, maybe that's what you need to do. And maybe it starts soon, maybe it starts now, start the campaign early, start calling out the things that are wrong, start proposing actual solutions, and use the standard of scripture as your ultimate authority in this, so that you can compare what's happening to what scripture says.

And the Lord has a lot to say about unequal weights and measures and hypocrisy and Pharisaism and all the things that are going on.

So let's circle back though to the pro -lifing. In summary, since I just went on a huge rabbit trail that initially

I wasn't sure I was gonna go on, the three big things that are, I think, deluding and threats to the pro -life or anti -abortion movement are, number one, the holistic pro -life approach.

Number two, the moral equivalency of taking abortion and then comparing it to some other issue that is not the legalized sanctioned murder of actual people and then making them the same.

And then third, I think, treating abortion like it's really not quite murder because the people that are involved in it, some of them are not morally culpable.

If we're going to be consistently pro -life and make any headway on this issue of actual murder, then we're gonna have to reject these three options.

And if what happens next week that many are anticipating actually happens, if Roe v. Wade is overturned, the battle is just starting because it's gonna be on the state level.

And this is going to be where the real battle is. So you need to be aware that these are the approaches and you need to be ready for these approaches when bills are being passed in various states to try to outlaw or reduce or somehow address abortion after this potential decision.

So we need to be ready for it. That's why I primarily wanted to make this podcast. Hope it was helpful for all of you out there.

I had written down some... Oh, I just wanted to make some quick announcement here. I just talked to someone who's helping me edit the

Holdman Mennonite documentary. That will be hopefully coming out in, I don't know, two months, three months,

I would think. But we're making headway on that. I also just scheduled an interview with someone from the

IFCA International, which might be an alternative for some of you who have left the Southern Baptist Convention over social justice.

IFCA International has taken a stand on it to some extent. And I just want everyone to remember also the discerningchristians .com.

That's a place you can go and you can find churches or put your church on. You gotta be a member, you gotta log in.

But put your church on that website so that you can find, or people can find you, and then you can also find other churches of like mind and faith.

It's pretty broad, the statement. It's just a general orthodox statement, except for the fact, perhaps, and that we put in some language there against social justice.

And we also put some language in there against Darwinian evolution. So if that's something that you're looking for, if you can't find a church, you're having a hard time, discerningchristians .com

is a place to go. And while you're there, maybe throw a donation for Craig. He's the guy that's really put this website together in his free time.

And there's a place you can donate there. I'm sure he'd appreciate it. He does this all for free because he loves the Lord. And thank you for listening to today's podcast.