Presbyterians Pro-Life NEWS
Fall 1999

Eminent theologian points toward reformed understanding of unborn
Kathy's abortion
Worthless? a nine-year-old's perspective
G.A. calls for discussion of the unity we have in our diversity; recommends using Historic Principles
A short history of the Presbyterian Church on abortion: Part I
YAD's testimony on The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC)
The "Women of Faith" awards, by Elizabeth Achtemeier
Woman to Woman: Restoring "lost innocence," by Terry Schlossberg

Presbyterians Pro-Life NEWS Fall 1999
Eminent theologian points toward reformed understanding of unborn

Thomas F. Torrance, one of the world's most eminent contemporary reformed scholars, concluded in a recent speech:

The human embryo is fully human being, personal being in the sight and love of his or her Creator, and must be recognized, accepted, and cherished as such, not only by his or her mother and father, but by science and medicine.

Torrance has devoted a significant part of his theological career to the intersection between science and faith. Speaking to the Scottish Order of Christian Unity in Edinburgh, Torrance was responding to the question, "When does a Personal Being Begin?" He finds evidence for his answer in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ: not only biological human life but also the spirit of the human being begins at conception. The human life of the incarnate Son of God began at the moment of his conception in the womb of his mother. That, says Torrance, is the basis for the early church's rejection of abortion and infanticide.

The human being is an integrated whole
Torrance openly resists the pre-Christian dualism that separates body and soul and leads the modern world--and the modern church--to uncertainty about when a human life begins. He argues that we need to recover the Judeo-Christian non-dualist way of thinking to understand properly the conception and life of the unborn child. Modern empirical and theoretical science, he says, rests on a notion of contingent rational order in the universe. And that order, in turn, is the result of the Judeo-Christian belief that God created the universe, matter and mind alike, out of nothing.

In creating human being, body and soul, out of nothing God did not give being and life to the body by itself, or to the soul by itself, but to man/woman in whom body and soul form a living unity. The human being is an integrated whole....

The Presbyterian Church needs to re-examine this matter
The arguments concerning the intersection of science and faith put forth by Torrance, and applied to the unborn child in his essay, "The Soul and Person of the Unborn Child," are evidence of the need for the church to explore once again its position on the unborn. In the 1970s the mainline Protestant denominations, including the Presbyterian Church, departed from their own historical positions reflecting the unity of body and soul in unborn human life.

The most recent formal consideration by our denomination given to the spiritual and theological status of the unborn child and the church's position on abortion was in a policy document adopted by the General Assembly in 1992. Entitled "Problem Pregnancies and Abortion," the policy document resulted in what the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP) oddly regards as one of many statements by General Assemblies since 1970, some of which are used to determine the denomination's social policy witness by a process of compilation.

The church needs a moral position on abortion as its starting place
But Torrance is getting at something far more important than the denomination's social policy. His work challenges the church to examine its own history beginning with the first chapters of Genesis. From the perspective of our Christian faith, we need to understand how the increasing body of scientific knowledge and medical technological capability which are available to us at the turn of this century applies to the unborn child.

It is time for our denomination to take a careful look at this particular intersection between science and theology.

Presbyterians Pro-Life NEWS Fall 1999
Kathy's abortion

The following testimony was presented at the Presbyterians Pro-Life dinner Saturday evening, June 19, for commissioners and visitors to the Assembly.

The discovery
It was 24 years this past July that I first discovered that I was pregnant. I was single, out of college and living on my own in the big city, contemplating whether I should go ahead and enter the law school where I'd already been accepted, or pursue an MBA. By the summer of 1975 I was involved in a long-term relationship with a man whom I had expected to marry. In early July I began to fear the worst. It took all my courage to go back to the Planned Parenthood clinic where I had gotten my contraceptives to get a pregnancy test.

The next morning when I was told over the phone that the test was positive I immediately began to feel trapped and panicky on the inside. I was definitely moving into a crisis mode. The Planned Parenthood worker quickly let me know that I could schedule an abortion the next day as the doctor still had openings, and went on to inform me that the cost of $200 would need to be paid upon arrival.

I remember saying to her, "I don't know what to do, I just don't know." She assured me that I could talk to the counselor the next day when I arrived. So I made the appointment and hung up the phone feeling shell-shocked. Over the next 24 hours, I felt torn inside. I quickly realized that my relationship itself was in jeopardy if I did not get an abortion. I wondered how I might make it financially, supporting a baby and myself. I was so wrapped up in myself and what a baby would do to me, that I barely allowed myself to think about the baby.

I needed just to make a decision and do something--anything--to get out of the horrible mess I was in. I felt more powerless and trapped with each passing hour. I tried praying but I felt too far from God. I called up my grandmother who lived in the city and asked if I could stay with her that night. On one level, I desperately wanted someone--anyone--to rescue me from what I felt was my only solution. On another level, I was racing just to do it, just get it over with, forget all about it and never let it happen again.

The decision
I never did say a word about my pregnancy to my grandmother that night, and by the time I left her home the next morning I felt numb. But I vividly recall driving down the city streets on the way to the clinic, and looking up at a big blue billboard with huge white letters splashed across it that said, "Birthright." I remember saying out loud, "Maybe I should go over there instead." But my boyfriend assured me that would be the worst thing I could do.

The abortion
My counselor collected all my data, took my money, asked a few questions and then assured me that given my circumstances--being unmarried, on my own, working and only six to seven weeks pregnant--abortion was a good choice for me. My entire counseling session lasted less than five minutes. Then I was in a room with a doctor I'd never met before, who knew nothing about me, and who said nothing to me.

Within an hour I was on my way home. It had been a little over 24 hours between the time I found out I was pregnant and the time I had the abortion. On the ride home I felt a huge surge of relief that no one would find out that I had ever been pregnant, and I could just get on with my life.

I had left the clinic with instructions to rest, but bled heavily and experienced very painful cramping. Seven days later I was in the hospital for outpatient surgery due to complications. I finally recovered and resolved that I would forget that I had ever been pregnant. And I did just that for the next six years.

Life goes on
The relationship I was in eroded and a year-and-a-half later, it was completely over. I never did go to law school or enter an MBA program. I took a new job, carried on with my friend-ships and family, and eventually married my husband. He was like a breath of fresh air in my life--a man Id known since grade school. But in many respects, I operated on a sort of "auto-pilot." I no longer made any conscious connection between my abortion and the gnawing, unfocused, free-floating guilt that was just beneath the surface.

Pregnant again
Six years later, I was pregnant with our oldest son, and eagerly anticipating becoming a mother. Yet I also found myself thinking increasingly about the child I had aborted so many years earlier. It was becoming harder to maintain my previous level of denial, as I was literally surrounded by baby paraphernalia, books and pamphlets documenting all stages of fetal development.

As I approached my delivery date, I experienced complications and there was serious medical concern for our baby's wellbeing. For the first time in all those years, feelings of fear, guilt, desperation and remorse flooded over me. I cried out to God and prayed that He would not let our baby be harmed because of what I had done.

Gratefully, our son was born soon after and in perfect health. But the feelings that had surfaced in those last weeks of my pregnancy could not just be shoved down anymore. I was conscious of them and realized, as David wrote, "my sin is ever before me" (Psalm 51:3). For the next year-and-a-half, I hungered on an emotional and spiritual level for God and for his forgiveness.

God's grace
In the summer of 1982, shortly after the birth of my daughter, I heard for the first time how Jesus Christ desired to have a personal relationship with me. I began to understand that God himself had already atoned for my sins, that he had already paid the price himself, that he had loved me and had pursued me through all those years. I came to understand that he had been there all along and that I had left, but he had not.

I began to understand and experience the amazing grace and lavish mercy of God. I also experienced peace for the first time in years. I allowed God's truth to penetrate into my innermost being: the truth about what I had done in aborting my first child, and the truth about what God had done for me in making me his child.

Today I work as a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor. As a result of God's redemptive work in my own life, I have had the privilege of sitting with women not only in the midst of a crisis pregnancy, but also as they have struggled in the aftermath of abortion. The truth is that the emotional and spiritual scars of abortion run deep, yet God's love is deeper still.

Those who have openly walked through the pain of abortion and have openly confronted the anger, guilt, denial and grief over their lost children, have discovered the overwhelming presence of God in their lives, the God who loves them, who has forgiven them and who gives them hope.

Paul encouraged the Corinthians:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we may comfort those in any trouble with the same comfort we ourselves have received from God (2 Cor. 1:3-4).

Paul's encouragement reminds us of our opportunity to be the Body of Christ as we allow women a place to mourn, to heal and finally be reconciled with their God, themselves and their children.

Presbyterians Pro-Life NEWS Fall 1999
Worthless?
A nine-year-old's perspective

Abortion could have spelled the name of George Washington Carver. He was a slave whose dad had died. As the baby of a nineteen-year-old mother, he was kidnapped with his mother, and given back in trade for a three hundred dollar race horse. His master wondered if the three hundred dollar horse was worth a child who was sick with whooping cough. "No hope for him," Master Carver might have said. But he was wrong.

George Washington Carver made over 100 products from soybeans and sweet potatoes, and 300 products from the peanut! At Tuskegee Institute, he taught people about growing things. Once he made a meal entirely out of peanuts! He was asked several times to take jobs that would pay him high salaries, but he always refused. His purpose was not to make a lot of money, but to keep on helping humanity. He sure was worth the three hundred dollar race horse the master had given! Don't you agree?

Today, we abort infants when the mothers do not want them. Often the case is there are no dads, or they are in poverty. Sometimes the mothers are teenagers. Sometimes, the child is considered "worthless" if it is sick in some way. The same thing applied to George Washington Carver. His mother was a teenager, his dad had died, and he was poor and sick. If you think a child is worthless and want to abort it, remember George Washington Carver and his work.

Unborn life is of value to God too, because God made all life. God values human life and wants us to protect it, and give the babies inside their moms a chance to live. Let's help humanity. Don't abort--you could be aborting another George Washington Carver.

PPL would like to receive essays or stories on issues of life and sexuality from other young writers in an elementary through high school age range. We will submit the essays or stories to our editorial committee and pick the best to print in our newsletter. Send essays or stories of no more than 500 words, along with your name and address, to PPL, P.O. Box 11130, Burke, VA 22009.

Presbyterians Pro-Life NEWS Fall 1999
G.A. calls for discussion of the unity we have in our diversity; recommends using Historic Principles

The 1999 G.A. rejected a recommendation from its Church Orders and Ministry Committee to remove G-6.0106b from the constitution. It recommended instead that the Stated Clerk make resources available for "conferences and discussion on 'The Nature of the Unity We Seek in Our Diversity,' within the Presbyterian polity and theology."

In other business from that committee, the G.A. asked specifically that the policy paper called Historic Principles, Conscience and Church Government be included as a resource and encouraged the use of this paper in the conferences and discussion.

An important principle raised in the Historic Principles paper appears as a footnote in the Book of Order under G-6.0108b ("Freedom of Conscience--Individual and Corporate"):

…That when any matter is determined by a major vote, every member shall either actively concur with or passively submit to such determination; or if his conscience permit him to do neither, he shall, after sufficient liberty modestly to reason and remonstrate, peaceably withdraw from our communion without attempting to make any schism. (Hist. Dig. (P) p. 1310).

The entire paper, adopted by the reunion Assembly of 1983, is available from the Office of the General Assembly (Call DMS at 1-800-524-2612 and ask for OGA-88-059) or may be downloaded from the Presbyterian Review webpage: http://www.pforum.org/resources/table.htm

"There is one Church. As the Bible speaks of the one body which is the Church living under the one Spirit of God known through Christ, it reminds us that we have 'one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all.' (Eph. 4:5-6)"

Presbyterians Pro-Life NEWS Fall 1999
A short history of the Presbyterian Church on abortion: Part I

Today the Presbyterian Church holds a position on abortion that is of two minds. The General Assembly's most recent policy document (1992) says, on the one hand, that

The considered decision of a woman to terminate a pregnancy [by abortion] can be a morally acceptable, though certainly not the only or required, decision.

On the other hand, the same policy document affirms that

The strong Christian presumption is that since all life is precious to God, we are to preserve and protect it.

In the final analysis, however, the policy puts the full weight of moral decision making on the individual woman, declaring that the church "[has] neither the wisdom nor the authority to address or decide each situation."

Ambiguity is an innovation in church history
The church was not always so ambiguous about abortion. Abortion was one of few issues on which the Christian Church historically maintained unity throughout the centuries. The disagreement emerged only in the latter half of our own century when the church fell prey to changes in the culture.

Orthodox scholar Alexander Webster writes that while it is often difficult to discern the patristic conscience on modern moral questions, there is no such difficulty when it comes to abortion. "It is one of only several moral issues on which not one dissenting opinion has ever been expressed by the Church Fathers," he says. "Even a cursory reading of the patristic literature (A.D. 330 to 1453) reveals a relentless campaign against the inhuman sin of abortion."

One example of the early church's documents, the Didache, which probably dates from the early second century A.D., commands, "Thou shalt not murder a child by abortion," linking it to the second great commandment of the New Testament, "Love your neighbor."

Unity on abortion was retained in the Reformation...
Even in the great division that became the Protestant Reformation, views on abortion remained unified. Martin Luther wrote, "...those who have no regard for pregnant women and who do not spare the tender fruit are murders and infanticides." John Calvin wrote that it was "atrocious to destroy the unborn in the womb before it has come to light."

The Presbyterian Church General Assembly in 1869 said:

This Assembly regards the destruction by parents of their own offspring, before birth, with abhorrence, as a crime against God and against nature....

...And into the twentieth century
In our own century numerous Protestant theological leaders inveighed against the practice of abortion. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:

Destruction in the mother's womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life....And that is nothing but murder.*

Karl Barth wrote in 1961:

The unborn is from the very first a child. It is still developing and has no independent life. But it is a man [a human being] and not a thing, nor a mere part of the mothers body....He who destroys germinating life kills a man....

Helmut Thielicke wrote in 1964:

The fetus has its own autonomous life, which, despite all its reciprocal relationship to the maternal organism, is more than a mere part of this organism and possesses a certain independence ....These elementary biological facts should be sufficient to establish its status as a human being....This makes it clear that here it is not a questionas it is in the case of contraceptionwhether the proffered gift can be responsibly accepted, but rather whether an already bestowed gift can be spurned, whether one dares to brush aside the arm of God after this arm has already been outstretched.

The Presbyterian Church in 1965 reaffirmed a statement it made first in 1962 when it expressed its approval of the use of contraception in a paper entitled, "Responsible Marriage and Parenthood":

The fetus is a human life to be protected by the criminal law from the moment when the ovum is fertilized....As Christians, we believe that this should not be an individual decision on the part of the physician and couple. Their decision should be limited and restrained by the larger society.

Only a few years later, the Presbyterian Church would find itself caught up in a cultural sexual revolution and the rejection of Christian teaching that would produce a change in its own moral standards.

*Quote taken from Bonhoeffer's book, titled Ethics, published by Macmillan in New York in 1955 (p. 131).

This short summary of the history of the church on abortion is taken largely from Michael Gorman, Abortion and the Early Church (IV Press, 1982). Other references and additional material on the subject are available from PPL upon request. The history will continue with Part II in the next issue of PPL News.

Presbyterians Pro-Life NEWS Fall 1999
YAD's testimony on The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC)

At this summer's "Breaking the Silence" Washington, D.C. summit on black sexuality, sponsored by the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC), speakers not only defended unrestricted abortion rights, but also encouraged the full acceptance of homosexuality by churches and the distribution of contraceptives to sexually active youngsters.* RCRC, formerly the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights, is an interfaith coalition of religious and quasi-religious bodies whose agenda in recent years has broadened to include issues of sexuality. Its agenda is at odds with PC(USA) constitutional standards, policy positions and recent General Assembly actions on youth sexuality. Nevertheless, this year's G.A. voted to continue denominational support of the organization.

One voice in the floor debate opposing support for RCRC came from a Youth Advisory Delegate (YAD), who found her reason in the scripture:

"RCRC does not accurately reflect the diversity of views expressed by those in the Presbyterian Church or church policy. I would like to read for you from Psalm 139:13-16:

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mothers womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

"These verses describe how God knows and cares for our children before they are born, and is just one of the reasons why I, and many others in the church, feel that abortion is wrong, and that it is only God's place to take a life.

"RCRC does not express these views, or the policy of the Presbyterian Church concerning abortion. RCRC represents only one side of the views that are present in the PC(USA), that side being 'pro-choice.' RCRC lobbies for unrestricted access to abortion, is against parental notification, and is against waiting periods. RCRC also lobbies for partial birth abortion, about which the PC(USA) has expressed 'grave moral concern.'

"The Presbyterian Church's funding of and membership in RCRC is unnecessary based on its failure to represent both sides of the issue and the PC(USA)'s policy."

*From a report on the summit by Mark Tooley and Holland Webb of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C.

Presbyterians Pro-Life NEWS Fall 1999
The "Women of Faith" awards
by Elizabeth Achtemeier

Last June at the Presbyterian General Assembly, the PC(USA) program units associated with ministry to women, with the narrow (41-40) approval of the General Assembly Council, presented "Women of Faith" awards to three prominent females in the Presbyterian Church--to Jane Spahr, an evangelist for lesbian ordination, to Letty Russell, a professor at Yale Divinity School, and to Jane Dempsey Douglas, a retired professor from Princeton Theological Seminary. The first two are practicing lesbians, the third openly approves of such a lifestyle.

Consternation
Of course there was a great hullabaloo, because the Presbyterian Church (USA) has written Amendment B into its Constitution, insisting that any person, male or female, aspiring to ordination in the church's government, must live either in faithfulness in marriage or in chastity in singleness. And the three female award winners deliberately oppose that constitutional stipulation. "It's a slap in the face," declared a Pennsylvania church session. "We are dismayed," said an-other. "There are hundreds of faithful women at work in the church who should have been honored instead of those three." The GAC abdicated its "responsibility and dishonored Presbyterian faith and ethics," avowed The Layman. To make matter worse, the newly elected Moderator of the church, Freda Gardner, showed up at the awards ceremony and declared that she was "proud to be sharing this place with the three recipients of this award." And given human pride, there were probably a few female church leaders who thought that they should have received the award.

The result was that everybody quickly chose which side he or she was on, and then they either grinned in satisfaction over the award, or sank farther into their belief that the Presbyterian Church has totally lost its way. Thus, one more cause for dissension was introduced into the already battered body of Christ's church.

The actual dismaying fact
The most dismaying fact about the "Women of Faith" awards is not that they were given to practicing lesbians and one of their supporters, however. Rather, the amazing fact is that the good solid Reformed Presbyterian Church (USA) gives the awards at all! Any female who receives such an award is being congratulated on having so much faith--on being a model of piety, on setting an example for others!

But is faith something that the woman has developed on her own? Has she worked and accomplished the feat of believing in the Lord Jesus Christ? And so should she therefore be honored? Not according to the New Testament!

Faith is a gift from God, the Apostle Paul tells us. Now abideth faith, hope, love, these three--all gifts of the Spirit (1 Cor. 13; 12:1, 9). And so Paul writes in Romans of "the measure of faith which God has assigned…"(Rom. 12:3), and he declares that "Faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ" (Rom. 10:17). Faith is the result of God's working, not the result of some woman's.

To be sure, there is a reward given to faith. Genesis tells us that Abraham believed the promise of the Lord, and the Lord "reckoned it to him as righteousness" (Gen. 15:6). The New Testament avers that by faith in Jesus Christ we may receive the forgiveness of our sins and entrance into eternal life, not to mention the joy of Christ and peace that passes understanding. But the faith itself comes not by human work, but as the gift of the Spirit, and if anyone is to be honored for it, should that not be the Giver, God? Whenever the authors of the New Testament epistles give thanks for the faith of some congregations, it is not the people who are thanked but God (cf. Rom. 1:8; Eph 1:15-16; Phil. 1:3-5; Col. 1:3-4; 1 Thess. 1:3-4, etc.), because it is God who has given the faith through the work of the Holy Spirit. Should the Lord, then, not be the recipient of any honor given to faith?

The true honoree
There are, of course, many admonitions in the New Testament to stand fast or firm in the faith, to keep the faith, to walk by faith, to grow in faith, even to suffer in faith. And we do indeed honor those who, like Paul, "have fought the good fight" and "finished the race," and "kept the faith" (2 Tim. 4:7). But such saints of the church are usually honored after they have indeed finished this life. And any one of them would tell us, "It was not I who lived, but Jesus Christ who lived in me" (Gal. 2:20). Saints are persons who honor God and not themselves with their lives, like John the Baptist declaring of his Lord, "He must increase, but I must decrease" (John 3:30).

Surely that is the path pointed out for us Christians to walk, in all things "to glorify God and enjoy him forever." And so to make every reward we give a song of thanksgiving to the Lord.

Presbyterians Pro-Life NEWS Fall 1999
Woman to Woman: Restoring "lost innocence"
by Terry Schlossberg, PPL Executive Director

Recently a friend told me about her concern for the adult children of two sets of parents she knows. The parents are Christians who raised their children in the church. But now the young adults, planning to marry, are living together. My friend sighed with exasperation and asked how a society, and a church too, that finds that sort of arrangement acceptable--even encourages it to the extent of silencing the parents--can ever be renewed.

It is difficult to imagine how a society like ours can recover its lost sense of morality. But at the heart of the Christian gospel message is the promise of change, for individuals and societies. There are many good examples in Scripture.

An example: "Hell on Earth"
The Washington Post (8/29/99) featured a story on "Hell" recently. In it biblical scholars explained that the source of human understanding of hell began with Jerusalem's Valley of Ge Hinnom (in English, Gehenna) a thousand years before Christ. You can visit the site today. It continues to smoulder and stink. This was an ancient site of worship where parents sacrificed their live babies to the pagan god Molech. Bible readers will remember that the pagan practice was adopted by the Hebrews and the spilling of innocent blood became the worst horror of the adaptation of Hebrew religion to the culture (Cf 2 Kgs 21:16).

It doesn't just happen
This religious custom was halted only when one of the later southern kings, Josiah, finally swept through Israel, smashing the idols and descecrating their altars (2Kgs 23:10f).

Following the ups and downs of Israel in the Old Testament, its easier for us almost-21st century Christians to see that renewal and reform of the Church dont just happen. The continual lure of evil and the normalizing of sinful practices in the historical and prophetic books seem always to fall fast on the heels of every new promise of faithfulness made by the Israelites.

Our situation is not hopeless
Sometimes we see how similar our own situation is to the one we read about in the Bible. The offering up of unborn, even nearly born, children ought to seem frighteningly familiar. But we ought also to recall that evildoing was not a permanent condition. Renewal happened in that society. Under good leadership of faithful kings and prophets, people sought the mercy and forgiveness of God and gave up their sinful practices. That can happen in our day too. That is what the renewal movement in the Presbyterian Church (USA) is all about.

But it doesn't just happen. Averting our eyes from the evil doesn't bring renewal. Finding ways to tolerate and adapt to sinful practices doesn't bring renewal. Neither does cynicism or withdrawal from the conflict.

It's what the Gospel is about
Renewal is the very heart of the Christian Gospel. The Gospel is about change. It is about reclaiming individual lives and whole societies, and--yes--the Church too. A proper understanding of godliness and evangelism should cause each of us to work toward the dismantling of evil, and for the reclamation of the right preaching of the Word and godly living in our own denomination. PPL is an excellent place to begin your own involvement. Renewal won't just happen, but God can use you and me to turn everything upsidedown--or rightsideup--again.

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