The “pro-life” church is massively uninvolved in activities that have any chance at all to end abortion.  When we approach church leaders about doing much of anything, they reel in horror, hands over both hears, as if trying to keep their heads from exploding.  They exclaim, “Why are you bothering us?  We’re already pro-life.  We checked that box years ago.  Leave us alone!”

In reality, they don’t do much because they fear controversy within the church.  They say just enough to satisfy the pro-lifers in the pews—“We are a pro-life church”—but little else.  They know if they actually organize pro-life activities or even show members a brief video of what abortion is and does, they will hear complaints from people who don’t want to be reminded.  Members might leave the church.  Donations might go down.  The building program might be jeopardized.

Controversy is bad for business if your business is to appeal to the widest possible audience.  Which brings us to our “Quote of the Week”, by Gregg Cunningham of the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform:

Alas, if only killing babies were as controversial as saving them.

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We often get comments from people who don’t want us to show abortion pictures in the public square because children will see them.  We get one such message from “Briana Richards”, who saw our trucks operating near Liberty University in Lynchburg.  She wrote:

To whom it may concern,

Let me begin by saying I am completely anti-abortion and support that cause.  However, I do not agree with the manner in which the organization is displaying the signs in areas that are heavily traveled by young children.  I do not think that it is necessary to take away my young child’s innocence by showing them graphic images of fetuses.  The only thing that is going to promote is questions too early regarding what is abortion, why are some babies not wanted and killed.  Why do YOU get to choose when the right time is to talk to MY child about abortion?

I understand making people aware of what abortion truly is so they do not make that choice, I just disagree with the method in which you are getting your point across.  After school yesterday I had to stop short of the stop light and drive up next to 2 cars just so my 6 year old wouldn’t have that image in his mind for the rest of his life!  You are not using a plane this year (from what I’ve seen) but what 18-month-old kid, or 10-year-old, does not look up at the cool airplane going over, only to be accosted with an image they have no idea about but know it’s scary looking?  I mean would you really want to have a conversation with your 6-year-old about abortion?  They don’t even understand all the ins and outs of how babies are born yet but we’re showing them what people do when they don’t want them.

I am requesting that you please take into account the large amount of parents that are driving their young children by these signs daily near the Liberty University campus and that you rethink the location of your displays for the future.  I disagree with your methods but I know it is your right to display them.  It seems there could be better ways to get your point across without effecting our innocent children.

Thank you for your time and consideration,
Briana Richard
Sent from my iPad

I responded as follows:

Dear Ms. Richards,

Thank you for registering your comment about our work at Liberty University last week.

We don’t target young children with our pictures, but with all the institutions of society (including the Church) covering up the truth of abortion, we have no choice but to take to the public square.  Otherwise, the killing will never stop.

Children are exposed to graphic images of violence all the time … on newspaper front pages, on magazine covers that are visible in the supermarket checkout lines, etc.  They even showed Schindler’s List on TV during family viewing hours a few years back.  Nobody objects because nobody feels guilty about their own complicity or complacency with respect to those acts of violence.  Many are guilty of complicity or complacency with respect to abortion.

What is worse, a born child being horrified by a picture of abortion or a preborn child being killed by the act of abortion?

You might ask if Jesus would ever put a graphic image on display where children could see them.  In fact, He did just that.  Jesus controlled every aspect of his arrest, trial and execution.  He arranged to have Himself beaten nearly to death before stumbling through the most crowed part of Jerusalem on the most crowded day of the year.  His bloody body horrified throngs of Passover pilgrims which included large numbers of families with young children.

He then permitted himself to be stripped naked and tortured to death in full view of still more passersby, including more children.  The Romans used executions to intimidate subjugated peoples.  They located crucifixion cites for maximum public exposure.  Our Lord accommodated Cesar by going out of His way to make this disturbing spectacle of His death as public as possible.  And in the process, He chose as the very symbol of our faith, a bloody instrument of torture.  His point was to disturb us with the gravity of our sin but bless us with the grace of His forgiveness, despite the fact that many children would be traumatized in the process.  Did He get this wrong?

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WDBJ-TV, the CBS affiliate in Roanoke, broadcast a story on our RCC/GAP at Liberty University.  It was very well done, except for their unwillingness to show what the display was all about: abortion.

But you gotta hand it to WDBJ.  They did something we were unable to do.  They got Liberty University to state their official policy toward abortion.  Unfortunately, Liberty is just like the pro-life church; they oppose abortion, but they also cover it up.  Out of sight and out of mind.  Liberty was quoted as saying this:

Liberty has always taken a strong pro-life position on the abortion issue, but it does not encourage the public display of the horrific images of the deaths of aborted babies in order to further the pro-life cause.

In other words, we can talk against abortion, but we won’t show people what it really is, even those who desperately need to know.  But can anybody provide even one example of a deadly social injustice that was ever eradicated by covering it up?

Compare this policy to that of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who brought about dramatic changes in our society, even ending segregation in less than 10 years.  Was he wrong when he said this?:

We bring [injustice] out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with.  Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with an its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

Dr. King also said, “America will never reject racism until America sees racism.”

Was he wrong?  We’ve been asking that question for many years, and nobody … not one person … has ever stood up to defend the proposition that Dr. King was wrong.   We can name many historical examples that prove that his strategy of exposing injustice works.  People who criticize our our use of King’s stragegy to fight abortion can’t provide even one example to suggest hiding injustice works.

This all reminds me of that regular feature on Monday Night Football …  Liberty, you’re a university.  You’ve got a whole department of history.  C’mon man!

Hardin Family GAP Team

Did you know that White House is home to a family of pro-life missionaries like no other?  Ask yourself this question: Would you do this with 7 of your children?  Read on; it’s even more incredible than you think.

I’m talking about the Hardin Family of White House, Tennessee, just north of Nashville.  Yes, Mom and 7 children (3 teenagers and 4 younger children) are coming to Lynchburg, Virginia, for CBR’s outreach to Liberty University.  (See photo at right.)  They’ll drive 8 hours to get here, just so they can stand out in the hot sun holding GAP signs for members of the Liberty community.

Bright Eyes in the center of the photo is Karine, the newest member of the Hardin family. You may remember our story of her arrival from Armenia earlier this year.  This will be her first GAP!

This will be more Hardin’s than we’ve ever seen at one time! Because of the them and the rest of our traveling team, students at Liberty will see abortion in all its horror.  When Christians see the horror of abortion, they are more likely to obey God’s command not to kill their own children (Mark 10:19).  They are more motivated to protect and defend the defenseless (Proverbs 24:11-12).  They more fully understand their duty as Christian leaders to teach other believers to do the same (Matthew 28:20).

The Hardin’s are willing to come to bring truth in love to Liberty students.  (Others are coming from Florida, Ohio, Tennessee, Alabama, and North Carolina.)  They offer themselves freely.  All they ask is their expenses.  Could you help us cover their expenses?  Here’s what it will cost to bring the Hardins:

• Gas: $250 (500 miles in a van big enough for 8!)
• Lodging: $250
• Food: $480 (ever try to feed 8 on the road?)

Your tax deductible gift to CBR (link here) will transport the Hardins and the rest of our team to Liberty University next week.  This is one of the most important GAPs we’ve ever done.  Please be as generous as you can, maybe even more so.  Thank you for saving babies and moms.

A plea to the pro-life church.

I sometimes have the occasion to visit with pro-life pastors on behalf of the 1.2 million children being killed by abortion annually.  My plea is always the same: We can help you stop abortion in your church; we need your help to stop abortion in the culture.  The result is almost always the same: “No, thank you, we’re doing enough already.”

After one recent e-mail from a pastor, I wrote back (edited):

Thanks for getting back to me.  I wish that I could just delete your e-mail and go seek help where I can find it, but I feel as if it’s my duty to respond.

I don’t know much about your ministry, so some of what I have to say might not apply, but I would ask you to consider how much of this, if any, might be useful to you.

In all candor, I have to tell you that abortion is happening in America with the permission of the “pro-life” church.  We say we believe abortion is systematic murder, but we don’t act like we believe it.  I don’t know what you are already doing on behalf of unborn children at your church.  I can’t know all that you are doing.  But I can tell you that when we look at what the “pro-life” Church is doing as a whole in this country, it all adds up to almost nothing.  The lone exception is the network of pregnancy support centers that are run by Christians.  They do heroic work.  They are woefully under-funded, under-staffed, and under-visited by Christian couples who, in large numbers, patronize abortion clinics instead.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, 1 in 5 women having an abortion identifies herself as a “born-again” or “evangelical” Christian, and the rate of abortion among practicing Catholics is almost the same as the rate of abortion in the general culture.

Christians are aborting their babies in staggering numbers and Church is not doing much at all to stop the killing, neither within the walls of the church nor in the culture at large.  Christians are complicit and/or complacent, in large measure, because nobody has shown them pictures that prove abortion is an act of violence.  They know only what the abortion industry has told them: that the preborn child is a blob of tissue and abortion is just the removal of some cells.  If we don’t show pictures of abortion in our churches, then babies are dying that might have been saved.

If we don’t show pictures of abortion in our communities, then babies are dying that might have been saved.  Every pro-life Christian leader with whom we converse believes that he, his ministry, and his church are doing everything they should be doing.  They are doing everything that God is calling them to do.  They make these claims despite the fact that they are not even warning their own young people of the horrifying truth of abortion.  Nor are they doing very much at all, if anything, to stop the killing outside the church.  This compels us to one inescapable conclusion: Either (1) God doesn’t care about abortion and truly is not calling His church to respond, or (2) God is calling His people to be a witness against evil, and His people simply are not answering His call.

We believe the latter to be the case.  In your e-mail, you mention that there are “widespread concerns about the approach” that we take to educating people about abortion, yet you never articulate what those concerns are.  I am particularly perplexed when I reflect on the fact that we are taking the exact same approach as William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, the abolitionists of the 1800s, Lewis Hine, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  In fact, even Jesus Himself used a horrifying graphic image to help us understand the consequences of sin.

Not trying to be flippant here, but what did all these guys do wrong?  If anybody on your leadership team would be willing to meet with me to discuss that question, I’d welcome the opportunity.   Frankly, if I’m wrong, I’m desperate to know that I’m wrong, so that I can change.  But if I’m right, then babies are dying that could have been saved.

If there is any progress to be made, I’m open to whatever next step you suggest.

This offer is open to all pro-life pastors.  Please contact me here to see (1) how we can help you stop abortion in your own church and (2) how you can help us stop abortion in the larger culture.

America will not stop abortion until America sees abortion.

My response to a pastor who commented on a previous post.

Dear Pastor,

On my blog, you asked if you could use my argument as part of your public requests (pulpit and bulletin announcements) for increased participation in prayer vigils and other peaceful, legal efforts to close the Planned Parenthood facilities in Midland and Odessa, TX. 

Yes. Please. Thank you so much. Please encourage your church members (and your church body) to become involved in activities like this. Please use anything I have written. I put these ideas out there for folks like you to use.

As you are planning your presentation, please bear in mind that most Christians who are doing nothing to stop the killing don’t even know what abortion is. They think they do but they don’t. They are trying to ignore or trivialize abortion, because that allows them to do nothing about it. That’s why you must use abortion images to show them what it is. If they don’t see it, they won’t understand it and won’t do anything about it.

Some will complain about this and assert that you only need to show pretty pictures of preborn children. If that were true, a photo of a Jewish family picnic on the Rhine would be adequate to convey the horror of the death camps. I’m sorry, but I look at a nice Jewish family photo, and it tells me nothing about Auschwitz.

If we are going to ever stop the killing, we must correct three adverse conditions:

1. Christians need to know the truth of it. They don’t. (That’s why the abortion rate even inside the “pro-life” church is so high.)
2. Christians need to care enough to do something about it. They don’t.
3. The Church must lead. It doesn’t.

It is my belief that correcting #1 is critical to correcting the other two. Let me emphasize this point:  To understand it, your church needs to see it!

Dr. Martin Luther King said, “America will never stop racism until America sees racism.” That’s why he organized marches, knowing that the peaceful marchers would be attacked with dogs and water cannons. It was pictures of these attacks, on TV and in magazines, that changed America. I can tell you that America will not stop abortion until America sees abortion, and there is no place more fitting than our churches to begin this educational process. Babies will die in your church if you don’t show pictures.

When guiding your members how to act in holding back the children on the way to slaughter (Proverbs 24:11-12), encourage them to use graphic abortion images in their work. It’s not important that all use graphic images; but it is important that those who oppose their use are not allowed to dissuade others who might be agreeable.

If you need ideas how to counter objections or have any other questions, feel free to contact me.

You might want to check out the slides from my talk this weekend to the Students for Life of America conference in DC.

We’d be glad to provide a speaker for your church anytime.

Thanks,

Fletcher

Abortion Photo over Liberty University

CBR is flying a huge photo of abortion over Liberty University this week, so that Liberty students can learn the truth. For many of them, it will be the first time. WSET-TV has the story.  Watch the video!

Most people have abortions simply because they don’t know who the unborn child is, nor do they know what abortion does. Christian youth are just as vulnerable, because “pro-life” churches are covering up the truth as effectively as everyone else. If your church is not showing abortion photos or video, babies are being lost that could have been saved.

The coverup at Christian schools is just as egregious, if not more so. The most striking examples are Notre Dame University and Liberty University, arguably the flagship universities of the Catholic and Protestant worlds, respectively. Both have prevented the display of abortion photos on their campuses. The First Amendment protects pro-life education at public universities, but not at private schools. It is mind-blowing to think that public university students know more about abortion than Christian university students.

Just a year ago, I showed abortion to a small group of maybe five Liberty University students. None had seen abortion before. One of them later wrote,

Seeing all those graphic photos and that video brought me to tears and showed me [abortion] is murder; it is wrong. I want to now fight for their lives.

Another wrote,

I witnessed my first abortion through the images and clips by the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform. That has changed my view on abortion. … [After] actually seeing the results of this murder, I am pro-life because abortion is bluntly murder and should be outlawed!! I believe these pictures should be shown to change the minds of people on abortion.

Fortunately, the airspace over these universities is still free. Last year, we flew abortion photos over the Notre Dame campus.

Expect us to be more and more aggressive in educating Christians in the public spaces around their schools and churches.  If abortion is to be stopped, three adverse conditions must be corrected:

1. Christian people must know what abortion is and does.  (They don’t.)
2. Christian people must act in proportion to the injustice.  (We don’t.)
3. The Church must lead.  (It doesn’t.)

By ourselves, we can’t do much about #2 and #3, but we will do everything we can to correct the lack of knowledge.

Pastor Cecil Clark of True Vine Baptist Church outside an abortion clinic in Knoxville.

“Would you look at that?” he said, as we stood on the U of Louisville campus. Pastor Dave Daubenmire and I watched as professional pro-aborts desperately denied the truth staring them in the face.  The students weren’t buying it.

“Every time Christians show up with the truth, we win.”  But then Pastor Dave hit me where it hurts, “The only problem is, we Christians usually don’t show up.” 

Jesus said the gates of Hell would not prevail against the Church (Matthew 16:18), but can we really apply that verse when the Church does nothing?

The biggest example of this is abortion. We have abortion in American because the “pro-life” church isn’t showing up. I’m not talking about the churches that are officially pro-abortion.  I’m talking about just the churches you and I attend.

If you are reading this, you probably attend a church that claims to be “pro-life.”  But is it really?  An easy test to perform:

1. Go to the nearest abortion clinic when the killing is going on.  Count the number of your pastors/elders/church leaders that show up.
2. Go to the next meeting of any pro-life endeavor in your community and count the number of your pastors/elders/church leaders that show up.
3. Take a look at the budget of your church and add up the money spent on stopping abortion. Then add up the money spent on church-run sports programs. Then add up the money spent on making the music better on Sunday morning. If you add it up all over Knoxville, where I live, it will be a few thousand dollars to stop abortion, hundreds of thousands to run sports programming, and millions of dollars on the Sunday morning music. I’m not knocking music or sports, but I am wondering why full-time professionals are hired to run sports and music programs in almost every major church, but almost zero staff time is ever devoted to help stop killing babies.  That despite the fact that approximately 1 in 5 women who aborts her baby identifies herself as a “born-again” or “evangelical” Christian.
4. Take a look at the required core education curriculum of your church. It has to be on paper (or online) or it doesn’t count. Look for the mandated requirements for teaching middle and high-school students about abortion. Are there any such requirements? No? Then is it any wonder why so many of our children have abortions?
5. As you evaluate the pro-life education requirements at your church, find out if photos/videos of aborted babies are mandated as part of the published curriculum. We hear from the students who grew up in “pro-life” churches all the time.  Just recently, two student government leaders at Liberty University told me they were not commited pro-lifers until I showed them pictures of abortion.  The “pro-life” church had hidden the truth from them, and they had never known nor cared because they had never seen.

So, is your church “pro-life”?  What are you going to do about it?

What would Jesus do?

P.S.  A pastor recently told me that his church “works through” the local CPC that some of their members helped to start 20 years ago. Not sure what that means, but I do know it ain’t much. They were not interested in doing anything more.  I can tell you that babies are dying in that church, but the pastor believes that their only responsibility to those babies is to send a few dollars to a pregnancy center across town.  If I ever have a heart attack, I hope I’m not sitting in that church!

One of our wonderful supporters asked me how to respond to people who excused themselves from doing even the smallest thing to stop the killing (e.g, attend a pro-life event or contribute financially) by saying that “everybody has a different calling” or “it’s just one of many causes.”  I suggested she might respond this way:

10-week (1st-trimester) hand on quarter

Regarding my request that you help with a pro-life activity that I am planning, you responded by saying that “not everyone has the same calling and that this is just one good cause out of many that you might help.” In addressing these statements, I need to ask you if you believe that every abortion kills a human baby? If not, then please say so because I don’t want to waste your time or mine. But if you agree every abortion kills a baby, then our nation is killing 1.2 million children every year. Do you really believe that stopping a Holocaust of this magnitude is just “one of many causes”? Can any Christian really do nothing at all?

There is some truth in your statement that God calls different people to different ministries. However, what would we say about a German Christian who did nothing to obey God’s commandment to protect and deliver the helpless being led away to slaughter (Proverbs 24: 11-12)? We might give that person a break, because for him, doing something might have meant execution.  But what would we think of Germans who claimed to be Christian and did nothing to help stop the killing of Jews, if we knew it wouldn’t have been personally dangerous? I think we might have asked the same question that Martin Luther King, Jr. asked when he reflected on White Southerners who did nothing to stop racism.  Dr. King asked ” What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices …?”

What do we say about the Priest and the Levite who passed the robbery victim on the side of the road (Luke 10-30-37)? I have heard many sermons on this parable, but never have I heard any pastor excuse the Priest and Levite by saying that perhaps they “had a different calling.”

What would we say of the person who saw a child drowning in a neighbor’s swimming pool and responded by saying, “I have never felt called by God to save drowning children, and it is, after all, only one of many good deeds I might do today.”

I am not trying to rearrange your life. But I am asking that you do something important for me. [What comes next depends on what you want the person to do.]

• [Help with a project:] If you agree that abortion kills a human baby, I am asking for a few hours of your time. Your small investment in this project will save babies that would otherwise be killed.  Because a real baby’s life is at stake, I am compelled to ask you to reconsider and assist me with this project. Specifically, I want you to … (summarize the request). May I call you tomorrow?
• [Financial assistance:] If you agree that abortion kills a human baby, I am asking you to consider a small monthly financial commitment to help stop the killing. If you have cable TV, I wonder if you would consider a monthly gift equal to your cable TV bill. But any amount will save babies’ lives if it is offered regularly (monthly). May I call you tomorrow?

What do you think?  Would this change anybody?  Did it change you?  If so, please click here!

Christians see abortion for the first time.

We hear it all the time:

I’m a Christian.  I grew up in the church.  Our pastor may have said that he was pro-life, but I thought it should be a woman’s choice.  But now that I’m seeing your pictures, I know now that abortion is killing a baby.

How, you ask, can this happen?  It’s because the church is doing nothing to expose abortion, even among it’s own people.  Ask yourself this question:

When is the last time the pastor of my church showed us what abortion looked like?  When is the last time he showed abortion photos to our youth?

If the answers are “no” and “never”, then you know why 1 in 5 women who abort their babies identify themselves as “born again” or “evangelical” Christians.  The abortion rate among practicing Catholics is just as great.

This is intolerable, so we at CBR are doing something about it.  Over the weekend, we took our Matthew 28:20 pictures to the Harvest Crusade at Angel Stadium.  Tens of thousands of people saw the pictures as they entered and exited the stadium.  See pictures here.

Christians need to see abortion and work to stop it. Who will show them the truth?

There are three adverse conditions that must be corrected:

1. Christians need to know, and most of them don’t.
2. Christians need to work to stop the killing, and most don’t.
3. The Church needs to lead, and it doesn’t.

Unilaterally, we are able to correct only Item 1.  By God’s grace, we can show Christians the truth.  If we are willing to do that, we pray that the Holy Spirit will do the rest.

There’s a very good article on our website by Gregg Cunningham, Executive Director of CBR:

Eternal Security for Infants: Illogical Indifference for Pastors

by Gregg Cunningham

One of the most common heresies committed by pastors who attempt to evade responsibility for defending life is to trivialize abortion on grounds that “aborted babies go to Heaven anyway.” Pastor Rick Warren, one of America’s most outspokenly pro-life clerics, made repeated resort to this argument when I challenged him to do more to fight abortion at Saddleback Church. Steve Douglas, now head of Campus Crusade for Christ, said the same thing in precisely the same words when I pressed him to do more to stop abortion. This bizarre theory is now endemic in the Body of Christ.  [more here]

Go to ProLifeOnCampus.com for more information.

It was a lively interview, to say the least.  Yesterday, I was interviewed by Stu Epperson on Truth Talk Live, a Christian radio talk show heard nationally.  The thesis of my presentation was that if you are not regularly (annually?) showing aborted-baby photos in your church (in an age-appropriate manner, of course), you are allowing babies to die that could have been saved.  Link to our page on TruthTalkLive.  For the interview itself, link to this page and click on “How Far Should We Go In Fighting For Life.”  You can also link to the Facebook page. 

One in every five women who aborts her pregnancy identifies herself as a born-again or evangelical Christian. That’s 250,000 abortions every year, just in the evangelical church alone. Add to that the hundreds of thousands of abortions committed on Catholics and other mainline Protestants who wouldn’t identify themselves using that term. Many are having abortions, not because they are evil, but because the truth of abortion has been hidden from them; and their pastors, elders, deacons, etc. are just as guilty of the coverup as Planned Parenthood.