Skip to main content

Christian Ethics and Abortion: Sources, Contexts, and Arguments--E-Booklet Available

 I have uploaded my essays on abortion in an e-booklet entitled 'Christian Ethics and Abortion: Sources, Contexts, and Arguments'.  The e-booklet of 64 pages is available for free in this blog's bookshop.  The booklet has several chapters that would be solid resources for a seminary classroom, but it is written for laity and ministers alike. With the citation of primary sources and an engagement with various arguments, I would suggest that it is also sufficiently academic to offer a contribution to scholars.

The reason for offering this resource at this time is in part due to the importance of the question of abortion in the upcoming elections in the USA.  Some say that the 2024 presidential election will be determined over voting on the issue of abortion.  Those who see abortion as a universal 'woman's right' believe it should not only be protected in national law but also be pressed on all countries throughout the world.  For them, it is not an issue of democracy--the people's choice--and certainly not something to be left to the states.  By turning the subject into a matter of a 'woman's choice', they have understood the morality of abortion in terms of individual freedom rather than the freedom of a society to determine its values.

Christians have rejected abortion throughout the centuries.  They have presented their reasons in Biblical terms, and over time this has become Church tradition.  Of course, the declining, Protestant mainline, post-orthodox denominations in Western culture of the past few decades have broken ranks with their history and the Roman Catholic Church to affirm or allow abortion in one way or another.  Some persons claiming to be devout Roman Catholics, too, have been public advocates for abortion--obvious hypocrites in their faith (Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, e.g.).  As with other issues, such denominations have chosen to follow the culture and reject the authority of Scripture and the relevance of Church tradition.  

Yet, with Christians already at the end of the first century AD and following centuries, we need to say that we as Christians are opposed to abortion.  Given the opportunity to vote in a democracy, we have no choice as Christians but to vote against candidates who advocate abortion.  Any vote for pro-abortion candidates is a contradiction of Christian faith.

Christians may or may not be able to persuade the wider society in one context or another to oppose abortion.  We should not, however, not by any means, deny the sanctity of human life in the womb.  We should not undermine the importance of this issue by reducing it to a less important matter facing voters than, say, the economy.  Not only so, but we as Christians should be known for our efforts to affirm life, not empower people to take life.  This calls the Church to more than voting against candidates favouring abortion.  Support for mothers and for unwanted children is a role the church can play and has played through the centuries.  Indeed, the health of a culture can be determined in large part by how it cares for the least of these, including the most vulnerable in our society--the unborn.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

‘For freedom Christ has set us free’: The Gospel of Paul versus the Custodial Oversight of the Law and Human Philosophies

  Introduction The culmination of Paul’s argument in Galatians, and particularly from 3.1-4.31, is: ‘ For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery’ (Galatians 5.1). This essay seeks to understand Paul’s opposition to a continuing custodial role for the Law and a use of human philosophies to deal with sinful passions and desires.   His arguments against these are found in Galatians and Colossians.   By focussing on the problem of the Law and of philosophy, we can better understand Paul’s theology.   He believed that the Gospel was the only way to deal with sin not simply in terms of our actions but more basically in terms of our sinful desires and passions of the flesh. The task ahead is to understand several large-scale matters in Paul’s theology, those having to do with a right understanding of the human plight and a right understanding of God’s solution.   So much Protestant theology has articulated...
Post a Comment
Read more

Alasdair MacIntyre and Tradition Enquiry

Alasdair MacIntyre's subject is philosophical ethics, and he is best known for his critique of ethics understood as the application of general, universal principles.  He has reintroduced the importance of virtue ethics, along with the role of narrative and community in defining the virtues.  His focus on these things—narrative, community, virtue—combine to form an approach to enquiry which he calls ‘tradition enquiry.’ [1] MacIntyre characterises ethical thinking in the West in our day as ethics that has lost an understanding of the virtues, even if virtues like ‘justice’ are often under discussion.  Greek philosophical ethics, and ethics through to the Enlightenment, focussed ethics on virtue and began with questions of character: 'Who should we be?', rather than questions of action, 'What shall we do?'  Contemporary ethics has focused on the latter question alone, with the magisterial traditions of deontological ('What rules govern our actions?') and tel...
Post a Comment
Read more

The New Virtues of a Failing Culture

  An insanity has fallen upon the West, like a witch’s spell.   We have lived with it long enough to know it, understand it, but not long enough to resist it, to undo it.   The very stewards of the truth that would remove it have left their posts.   They have succumbed to its whispers, become its servants.   It has infected the very air and crept along the ground like a mist until it is within us and all about us.   We utter its precepts like schoolchildren taught their lines. Its power lies in its claims of virtuosity, distorted goodness.   If presented as the vices that they are, they would be rejected.   These virtues are proclaimed from the pulpits and painted on banners or made into flags.   They are established in our schools, colleges, universities, and seminaries.   They are the hallucinogen making our own cultural suicide bearable, even desirable.   They are virtues, but disordered, or they are the excess or deficiency of...
Post a Comment
Read more