Story time
Many years after the fact and many years after last seeing each other, a former classmate told me that she’d had an abortion. As we talked, I remember wondering what life would have been like for her had she felt safe telling me and others—not in a confessional way but in a “Hey, I just made this really difficult decision. Can you all hold me through this?” And then, because we were safe, we would all say, “Of course. We’re here. No matter what.”
Knowing what I was like when she had the abortion, being present to her would have felt impossible. Am I co-signing on an abortion? How do I love the sinner while hating the sin? I would have needed a ton of guidance on what it means to show up judgement-free, what it means to be to someone what they need me to be regardless of what I think I can be. I would have needed someone to tell me that the “love the sinner, hate the sin” posture isn’t helpful. I would have been a mess.
Many many more years later, I had a miscarriage and on the hospital paper work, I saw the words spontaneous abortion. I respond with a curious, Huh. That’s what this is called? Well…it’s even more nuanced than I thought. (I know it’s not the exact same thing—it’s the power of the word that I reacted to.) By then, I would have been able to sit with my friend because I’d learned a lot about loss and grief. I understood that much (most?) of life is complicated, not black and white.
These days, I’m thinking a lot about abortion, not because a friend has told me she’s had one and not because I’ve had one but because I’m understanding more of how abortion is being used as a Conservative Christian Agreement, a way of showing who is in and who is out of the community of faith. Abortion isn’t the only Agreement but it’s certainly one of the most prominent, if not the most.
I’ve been typing up my thoughts for many days and while I haven’t achieved graduate research-level finesse, I’m going to share my thoughts, not to change anyone’s mind, but as a sort of experiment, I suppose. I’ll say what I say and invite replies. Perhaps we’ll enter into true dialogue and hopefully we’ll all learn whatever it is we need to learn in this moment, for this moment.
A preamble of sorts…or a ramble…
In my attempt to unpack this Agreement, I’m not saying that I wholeheartedly agree that abortions should always be. I am also not here to support abortion as a flippant late-term decision as some are often accused of doing, as if all women having abortions are waiting until the last moment after having decided, “Ah, never mind. This child will be too much work and I’m here to live my best life.” And also, I choose to believe that it isn’t a flippant late-term decision for most women. I choose to believe their decision making is more complicated than that.
Because of life’s complications, I would like to see abortion no longer used as an agreement, a bonding agent among Christians that helps us define who is in or out of alignment with the will of God.
When we are able to see the thoughts of when new life begins as intricately connected to a larger political conversation, I believe that on the issue of abortion it’s not the will of God that many care about so much as it is the creation of a system that we can control. Abortion regulation is just one example of desired control, a very layered, nuanced control that is fundamental to the broader picture and preservation of Conservative Christian Agreements.
My Definition
Conservative Christian Agreements are proofs of alignment within a particular definition of what it means to be a Christian. Proofs of alignment are only necessary in spaces where black and white approaches are lauded and grey area is ignored or downplayed. Certainty acts like a preservative. As salt can keep a food item fresher, so certainty can keep people from sinning, or so it’s (mostly unconsciously?) believed.
How Conservative Christian Agreements Work
Conservative Christian Agreements (CCA — we love abbreviations, no?) show up in all the things related to sex — the look of a family unit, when to have sex, who to have sex with, when life begins.
Certainty is not the same as faith.
The belief that the Bible is the infallible word of God is another CCA. The challenges with this Agreement is that the infallibility of the Bible is believed to very specific ends—to make/keep America a Christian nation defined by CCA—that serve those who are maintaining the use of CCA.1 But is making/keeping America Christian the first desire or a way to mask what is really desired—white supremacy? I think the latter, but let’s get back to CCA because it is those pieces of this very complex yet at times simple puzzle that need clarity in my mind. Not many will say they are trying to secure white supremacy, but they may agree to the Christian nation ideal. Understanding the Agreements that are used to bolster that ideal is a way to unpack what it is folks are actually agreeing to, whether or not they like it and, for the Christian, whether or not these ideals are in fact the way of Jesus as detailed in the Bible.
We didn’t get here overnight so there’s a lot to unpack.
Conservative Christian culture and its use of Agreements like abortion points to a desire for control over race, socio-economic success, and even salvation. That last one sounds like a stretch? Let me attempt an explanation.
The Issue of Salvation
When we use Conservative Christian Agreements as a way to determine who is in and out, they eventually become Agreements that we use to determine who Jesus will save and as a way to stay sure that we’ll be saved. Look like us, think like us, and you’re in. With this mindset, salvation is no longer the already completed work of Jesus that we respond to by freely accepting. Now salvation is part Jesus and part us, specifically our ability to align with certain Agreements.
The belief that we have a role to play in our salvation beyond accepting the free gift is already evidenced by our focus on good works. We don’t do good things because we are being led by the Holy Spirit to do them and we don’t do good things because we are filled with the love of God that stirs within us a deep compassion (a movement toward others in order to aid them). We do good things to ensure that our name stays on the books.2 We do good things because we don’t want to go to hell. And even those of us who don’t believe that hell is an eternally burning fire chamber still do all the good works with hell fire fear as a prime motivator.
However, however, however, the good works that come not from fear of death but from joy of life with Jesus are Holy Spirit led. Sometimes they are pretty easy because they allow us to use the gifts we possess. Sometimes they are difficult because they are inconvenient to our bank account, schedule, and/or our sense of qualification. We don’t check those good works off like the task list we’ve mapped out for the day. We choose to embrace those moments because we have a growing relationship with the Lord that includes abiding (not just doing), because we’ve asked the Holy Spirit to guide us and because we’ve learned to discern the Holy Spirit’s voice/direction. But the good works aren’t ways to secure our eternal life.
When our good works are used to try to secure our eternal life, they are good works we choose to perform without consultation with the Holy Spirit and often from a copycat posture. If that church is doing XYZ and its numbers are booming, we’d better do XYZ also. If that woman’s prayers sound amazing as she weaves Bible verses into almost every sentence, I’d better start doing the same. We’re really good at copying what looks and sounds like deep spirituality. But many of us (most of us?) don’t know how to sit with the Lord on our own, with our own voice, without a devotional book, without listening to the lyrics of a spiritual song, without the instruction a charismatic author has popularized. This key part of being a disciple, the abiding part, is foreign to us. Jesus hasn’t become enough for us.
Getting to a place where we’re willing to abide, to spend time with Jesus, takes time. When we don’t make time to abide, we make time to embrace our own form of certainty which is an insufficient substitute. Consequently, we don’t have assurance of salvation as the completed work of Jesus. We find our assurance in our actions which are bolstered by and grounded in a CCA like abortion.
They wouldn’t be Agreements if they weren’t stressed so much, if they weren’t used as rallying cries, and if the people didn’t rally to the cry. But they are and they do.
Historically…
Abortion has been used as a way to rally the Conservative Christian base that wanted their segregated schools to be tax exempt. When desegregation became a law, Christians started up their own schools so that they could determine who could attend. They wanted to keep their schools white. But doing that meant they couldn’t be tax exempt. They figured they couldn’t rally their base by saying, “Help us stay racist!” So they chose to rally around being anti-abortion. It’s not that they were in favor of abortion before, but they weren’t making a collective big stink against it before. That was thought to be the Catholic thing to do and Protestants have often made a point of not looking or sounding Catholic. But when abortion became a way to rally, they used it, making the anti-abortion stance a tool to maintain racism and further white supremacy.
Knowing this background to the Conservative Christian church’s relationship with anti-abortion messaging gives me pause, makes me wonder how my denomination has maintained a position around abortion that isn’t dictatorial but also isn’t brought up much. I wonder how, without the weight of the word, I would have reacted to abortion when a teen, when a friend had an abortion and didn’t tell any of us because among all of her fears, shame was certainly one and our community would have been a shaming one. We wouldn’t have thought about anything else except the idea that she had taken a life.
How different her life could have been, especially in those initial days and months, if we’d all been a supportive community, one that could love on her, whether or not we understood all the pieces of her decision.
Are we okay with pieces?
One could argue that there is room for pieces within Conservative Christian systems of belief because there are particular instances where it’s believed a woman should have the freedom to choose to have an abortion: when their pregnancy is the result of rape or incest and when the woman may die if an abortion isn’t performed. But even in this attempt at making room for pieces, we’re banking on a few things being present:
- Belief that the fetus to be aborted is the result of rape or incest. I’m sure someone is double and triple checking before being willing to be okay with an abortion in these cases. And we’re assuming that a woman will be forthright in admitting to the cause of her pregnancy, that she won’t have any reason to feel afraid to disclose this information—afraid of a shaming community, afraid of retribution from the man who she’s reporting.
- Belief that the woman is truly in danger of death or some severely life altering end that will significantly decrease her quality of life. Those who believe that enough prayer is guaranteed to change things, may not ever be willing to believe a doctor’s conclusion about the woman’s health status.
- Belief that the woman is as valuable as the unborn.
So, yeah, this attempt at respecting nuance is still controlled.
Basic conclusion for now…
Agreements like being anti-abortion do not allow for pieces or for choice. The Bible is full of pieces and the freedom to choose. I don’t believe we can tow the Conservative Christian line of an un-nuanced view of abortion, the lack of the freedom to choose to have an abortion, while also following the way of Jesus with our whole hearts.
- These specific self-serving ends can only, I think, be met through a misinterpretation of the Bible. ↩︎
- Do you know the hymn, “Is My Name Written There?” Even though it ends with “Yes, my name’s written there,” it’s a cringe-worthy hymn for sure. I remember my pastor dad letting our church know that we’d no longer be singing that song. The question was louder than the certainty. ↩︎