Nadia Bolz-Weber in Shameless presents the history of how abortion got on the Evangelical Christian agenda.
In 1968, Christianity Today, the flagship magazine for conservative Evangelicals, published a special feature on birth control. The article quoted Bruce Waltke, a professor from the famously conservative Dallas Theological Seminary, who said that the Bible plainly teaches that life begins at birth, not conception.
“God does not regard the fetus as a soul, no matter how far gestation has progressed,” Waltke claimed. “The Law plainly exacts, ‘if a man kills any human life he will be put to death (Leviticus 24:17). But according to Exodus 21:22-24, the destruction of the fetus is not a capital offense. … Clearly then in contrast to the mother, the fetus is not reckoned as a soul.’”[1]
Physician Jonathan Dudley later wrote an opinion piece for CNN’s Belief blog in which he noted that viewpoint was the “consensus among evangelical thinkers at the time.”[2]
What changed? you might as. Well, not the Bible, that’s for sure. In 1969, several black families in Mississippi filed suit against private Christian schools that had excluded black students from enrolling. That’s what changed.
How is that lawsuit connected to views on abortion? When it comes to the Religious Right, the commonly held origin story is that in 1973 American Evangelicals woke from their political malaise as a response to Roe v. Wade. It’s a compelling story, but it’s not entirely true.[3] The issue that originally galvanized Evangelical Christian voters was one of “religious freedom” – namely, the freedom for Christian institutions to remain deeply racist.
Nine years before the suit against racist admission policies of Christian schools in Mississippi, Bob Jones Sr., an evangelist and the founder of the university that bears his name, claimed in a radio address that racial segregation was ordained by God, and that to oppose segregation was to oppose God and “God’s plan” for humanity.[4] It would not be until 1971, forty-four years after its founding, that Bob Jones University would admit its first African American student, and even then only because the federal government forced its hand.[5] That year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Coit v. Green that private schools would be denied tax-exempt status if they maintained racially discriminatory policies.
Paul Weyrich, founder of the conservative think tank The heritage Foundation and one of the architects of the Religious Right, wanted to further rally American Christians as a moral force on the stage of 1970s American politics. So after mobilizing to defend Bob Jones University and its racially discriminatory policies, he and several other Evangelical leaders held a conference call to discuss their strategy going forward. The conversation is detailed by Dartmouth historian Randall Balmer in his book Thy Kingdom Come.
Someone suggested … that they had the makings of a broader political movement – something that Weyrich had been pushing for all along – and asked what other issues they might address. Several callers made suggestions, and then, according to Weyrich, a voice on the end of one of the lines said, “How about abortion?” And that is how abortion was cobbled into the political agenda of the Religious Right.[6]
After rallying to defend the religious freedom for conservative Christian institutions to remain racist and still retain tax-exempt status, a small coalition of Evangelical leaders wanted to keep the momentum going, and decided the issue that could build their movement was abortion. That was the day Evangelical started changing their minds around what the Bible says about when life begins.
[1] And in 1973, Robert L. Pettus Jr., a medical doctor, wrote a book titled As I See Sex Through the Bible, based on a series of classes he taught for his Church of Christ congregation in Madison, Tennessee. He painstakingly used scriptures to determine the answer to questions about sexuality and gender roles, most conclusions adhering to the conservative Christian thinking of the day. But when discussing what the Bible said about abortion, he concluded that a fetus does not have a soul because it was with breath that God gave Adam life.
[2] Jonathan Dudley, “My Take: When Evangelicals Were Pro-Choice,” Belief blog, CNN, October 20, 2012.
[3] Randall Balmer, Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts Faith and Threatens America (New York: Basic Boos, 2006), Kindle ed., loc. 463-70.
[4] Daniel L. Turner, Standing Without Apology: The History of Bob Jones University (Greenville, SC: BJU Press, 2001), 225, 369.
[5] It was not until 2000 that interracial dating was no longer banned on the campus of Bob Jones University.
[6] Balmere, Thy Kingdom Come, Kindle loc. 481-532.
