Even Christians have abortions because they have never seen abortion.  How can they see it if nobody shows it to them?  If pro-life churches would simply show the truth, babies could be saved that are now being lost.

Only rarely do we get permission to show abortion video in a pro-life church.  Even pro-life pastors are reluctant to accept the angst that goes along with making people uncomfortable about abortion.  Even when we do get to show the video, we often have to fight for the priviledge.  When we suggest babies lives are at stake, we are called “strident,” “pushy” etc.

But we are often reminded later why we fought so hard.  We just got word this week of another baby saved because we showed abortion video during a worship service.  As reported earlier link here), CBR’s Executive Director Gregg Cunningham was able to show abortion video on a November Sunday morning at Calvary Chapel Pearl Harbor.

We just learned that at least one baby has already been saved as a result.  The mother was not only pregnant that Sunday, she had actually scheduled an abortion for the following day.  This mother had heard sermons against abortion, but had never actually seen abortion.  Gregg had debated the pastor and his wife at some length to persuade them to allow him to show our “Choice Blues” video to the congregation.  To their great credit, they finally withdrew their opposition.

When confronted with the truth, the mother became angry and stormed out of the service – but the pictures haunted her.  She cancelled her abortion appointment and sought the church’s help instead.  Had this pastor rejected Gregg’s pleas to show abortion video, this baby girl, just born, could easily have become another faceless, nameless statistic.

Please don’t withhold truth at your church.  Here is how we showed truth at Calvary Chapel Pearl Harbor:

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CBR Executive Director Gregg Cunningham shows abortion video during worship service at Calvary Chapel Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Abortion, which was sold to the American people as a way of liberating women, has become a tool of oppression that men use to victimize women.

The question returns, “Are we taking abortion as seriously as God takes child sacrifice in the Old Testament?”

We start by talking about forgiveness, because [abortion] is an incredibly easy mistake to make … when they are being lied to and they are under a great deal of pressure.

God forgives sin, if we repent of that sin.  That’s what the Gospel is about.

Abortion, which was sold to the American people as a way of liberating women, has become a tool of oppression that men use to victimize women.

Psalm 139 describes our being formed in a secret place, and God has now opened up that secret place and allowed us the technology to actually see what’s going on.

Abortion is happening with the permission of the Body of Christ, in the sense that God has given His people dominion over resources more than adequate to stop abortion, and abortion florishes because the Church is doing little or nothing to stop it.

It’s ironic beyond imagining that our pastors in churches around America dispute that abortion can be analogized to Old Testament child sacrifice at the very time when pagans are outspokenly saying abortion is not analygous to child sacrifice, abortion is child sacrifice.

The question returns, “Are we taking abortion as seriously as God takes child sacrifice in the Old Testament?”  And the answer for most of us is, “No, not really.”

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“Now is a bad time.”

Quote of the week:

I have never heard an abortionist say now is a bad time to kill babies.  But Christian leaders often tell me that now is a bad time to save them.  (Gregg Cunningham, Executive Director, Center for Bio-Ethical Reform)

Bubba Gene Garrett explains prenatal development to a student at James Madison University.

Where can Christians learn the message not to kill their own children?

Not at church, apparently.  That’s why 1 in 5 women who have abortions identify themselves as “born again” or “evangelical” Christians.

The secular campus is a great place to reach these good people with the truth that the pro-life church is covering up.  This was also true at James Madison University.

Joe had recently become a Christian, but had never considered abortion in any form or fashion.  He spoke with CBR GAPper Bubba Garrett.

As they looked over the pictures and discussed the implications of abortion in terms of the genocide comparison, his heart was deeply moved.  Bubba helped him to understand that authentic Christianity must include protecting the helpless from systematic slaughter (Proverbs 24:11-12).

Joe asked Bubba to pray with him that more Christians would get involved in stopping abortion.  Afterwards, he told him that his spiritual mentor was nearby and also needed to learn about abortion.  As a result both young men experienced a change of heart concerning the consequences of abortion and a newfound determination to do something about it.

Darius Hardwick and GAP at Liberty University

This story is from Darius Hardwick, CBR’s Midwest Director.

“Are you more pro-laundry now?” Greg said as he pushed his sweaty gym shorts under my nose. “We don’t need to see this, we are already pro-life!”

This was the almost unanimous statement we heard from students at Liberty University (LU) when we brought our Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) there this fall.

Greg is one of the many students at LU who were upset by seeing abortion photos at their university. He stayed and debated for well over an hour about how our abortion photo signs were ineffective at getting peoples’ attention, forming relationships, and getting people engaged in the abortion battle.

After an hour of lively on-camera debate, we all shook hands and exchanged contact info. He even offered to edit the video for us, because that is a part of his major! He admitted he would not have met us had it not been for the pictures.

LU is the largest private non-profit university in the nation, the largest university in Virginia, and the largest Christian university in the world. According to the LU website, “[Liberty] is designed to develop Christ-centered men and women with the values, knowledge and skills essential to impact tomorrow’s world.” We went to LU because those are the types of people who need to engage the culture on abortion.

We talked to many great kids who were growing in their relationship with God, and had high hopes of serving Him with their educations. When the inevitable question came from every student, “Why are you here?” We replied, “Because Christians are the only ones who will stop abortion, and you are the cream-of-the-crop.” All week long, our plea for help was met with blank stares. It had not occurred to them that they should personally do something to stop abortion.

God said to the Israelites through the prophet Jeremiah, “For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly practice justice between a man and his neighbor, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place, nor walk after other gods to your own ruin, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers forever and ever.” (Jeremiah 7:5-7) God said to “amend your ways.” We as a nation are guilty of all of this, but note that God reserved His harshest words of judgement against Israel for their practice of killing innocent children. Here in America, we have killed more than 54 million innocent preborn children.

“As for you, [Jeremiah] do not pray for this people, and do not lift up a cry or prayer for them, and do not intercede with Me; for I do not hear you. “Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem?” (Jeremiah 7:16-17)

We must not say, “Look what they did.” We need only drive through our cities to see the neon signs for the establishments of drunkenness, fornication, and pride in homosexuality. Finally we will come to the “clinics” where innocent blood is shed. When will God tell America, “I don’t want to hear your prayers until you amend your ways?”

Let us amend our ways before it is too late.

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.

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

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlfEdJNn15E

We are indebted to Shirley Moore of Knoxville for this excellent essay.

They were accused of disturbing the peace in the churches, a peace [William Lloyd] Garrison did not believe they were entitled to enjoy.

Are you an extremist?

Extremists, self-righteous, judgmental, violent (or the cause of violence). These terms, familiar to pro-lifers, were also applied to the 19th Century abolitionists, and most particularly to William Lloyd Garrison, the editor of the anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator. He renewed an anti-slavery movement that had languished during the first part of the 19th Century and agitated against slavery from 1829 until it was abolished at the time of the Civil War.

Because he challenged the core morality of the US and because he never lost sight of the moral issues (the sanctity of life, the equality of the races, and the obligation of Christians to oppose slavery), he was hated, mocked in newspapers, and persecuted throughout his life. However, he had a loving family and loyal circle of friends.

After a century and half, at least one book has given him his just due: All On Fire by Henry Mayer. Mayer is a veteran of the 60s-era Civil Rights Movement. Few books have been written about Garrison because the image of him as a “holier-than-thou nut” has persisted to this day. He put justice above peace and has never been forgiven by the culture he challenged.

As many pro-lifers experience today, the churches of the 19th Century despised abolitionists. They were perhaps “too” Christian for the men and women in the pews. They were accused of disturbing the peace in the churches, a peace Garrison did not believe they were entitled to enjoy. Like many pro-lifers, they were “outsiders” in their own congregations and parishes.

Sometimes, being effective and being liked are incompatible.  In social reform movements, this is almost always the case.  Which will  you choose?

Whatever happened the the Christian faith? Is something horrific going on?

What does CNN and Princeton Theological Seminary know about the Church that we don’t?  Actually, quite a lot? Check these out:

• “Fake” Christianity.  CNN reports on research by Kenda Creasy Dean, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, who says that “your child is following a ‘mutant’ form of Christianity, and you may be responsible.”  According to Dean, it’s a watered-down faith that portrays God as “divine therapist” whose chief goal is to boost self-esteem.  Disclaimer: I haven’t read her book Almost Christian so I don’t know what kind of gospel she is selling—I seek spiritual advice only from those who accept the Bible, in it’s original text, as the inerrant Word of God—but I believe she’s onto something with her diagnosis.  What do you think?
• Incredibly inarticulate.  A World Magazine article mentions the work of UNC Chapel Hill sociology professor Christian Smith.  Smith, who has since taken a position at Notre Dame, found that many evangelical teenagers know little about Christianity.  Based on interviews with some 267 teenagers, Smith found that the majority of teenagers who identified themselves as evangelicals were “incredibly inarticulate” about their religious beliefs. “They were well-trained in the dangers of drunk driving and STDs,” he said, but they fumbled on basic questions about Christianity.
• False conversion.  I believe all of this must be related to the phenomenon of “false conversion.”  Let me encourage  you to listen to two sermons by Ray Comfort: (1) Hell’s Best Kept Secret and (2) True and False Conversion.  What do you think?

What do you think?  I can’t wait to read your comments!

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.