Full Text for Lutheran Support for the Pro-Life Movement: A Case of Faith Without Works? (Text)

Concordia
Theological
Quarterly
The Value of Children according to the Gospels Charles A. Gieschen Abortion, Incarnation, and Children David P. Scaer Lutheran Support for the Pro-Life Movement Peter J. Scaer Marriage in Light of Natural Law Gifford A. Grobien Man Reconstructed: Humanity beyond Biology Brent Waters The ELCA-Ouo Vadis? Mark D. Menacher Suffering in Luther's Exegesis of 1 Peter Kenneth J. Woo US ISS N 0038-86 I 0 CTQ 77 (2013): 213-228 Abortion, Incarnation, and the Place of Children in the Church: All One Cloth David P. Scaer On January 22, 1973, the United States Supreme Court issued its 7-2 decision in the Roe v. Wade case that, based upon a person's right to pri­vacy, a woman would be allowed to abort her unborn child in the early stages of pregnancy. Today, abortion is often seen as an ordinary surgical procedure and not restricted to the first trimester. An unborn child has no more rights than a set of tonsils. This places an obligation on the church to remind its members that early Christians saw abortion as an offense against the Fifth Commandment and found it just as repulsive as pedophilia, for which a Penn State coach will spend the rest of his life in prison.1 His victims had their day in court. Abortion's victims must wait for the Day of Judgment. When the defenseless are deprived of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the distinction between the kingdoms of the left and right hands becomes academic. Pastors must encourage their parishioners to engage in all legitimate action to outlaw the practice, with the proviso that in the past some great things began to happen only first when legal boundaries were disregarded. Political action can lead to a moral good. On that January day in 1973, the court decision came like a thunderbolt out of the blue. Some things we think will never happen do happen. This is a rule of life we forget to our own disappointment. We think that we will 1 The Didache may be as early as AD 60 and so is coterminous with the late apostolic era. Prohibitions against abortion and infanticide appear as subcategories of the commandments "thou shalt do no murder; thou shalt not commit adultery" (Did. 2:2). This ordering may suggest that some Christians were using abortion to resolve an unwanted pregnancy resulting from adultery. The Greek text translated as "Thou shall not commit an abortion" could just as easily be translated" do not murder a child [that had been conceived] in the seduction of a woman." While Matthew had a Jewish audience in view, a later writing like the Didache was addressing a similar audience, though one more likely to engage practices common among pagans. Jerry Sandusky, a former Penn State University football coach, was convicted of 45 counts of child sexual abuse on June 22, 2012. David P. Scaer is the David P. Scaer Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology and Chairman of the Department of Systematic Theology at Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Indiana. 214 Concordia Theological Quarterly 77 (2013) never contract a life-threatening disease, but we do. Those who, in the face of an unanticipated moral collapse, ask "What is the world coming to?" are not aware that from a biblical perspective the world provides a hospitable habitat for the enemies of God with which human beings are comfortable; often, the world is indistinguishable from the church. By the first century, abortion was replacing infanticide, because the mother did not have to view the results of her decision. Looking at the bodies of dismembered babies causes revulsion. Both Moses and Jesus escaped infanticide at the hands of evil rulers, but some did not and still some do not, and so the words of Jesus still prove true that the devil is "a murderer from the be­ginning" (John 8:44).2 In the 1950s, The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) and the predecessor church bodies of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in American (ELCA) were more alike than different. We differed on the lodges and pulpit and altar fellowship, but our members held to a shared belief in biblical inspiration and inerrancy, we saw God as our Father through his Son Jesus, and we all learned Luther's Small Catechism. No one in either trajectory of American Lutheranism proposed that homo­sexuals could serve as ministers or that same sex marriages deserved church blessing. Pentecostals had women preachers, but mainline denom­inations did not. Governments saw marriage as a union between one man and one woman that would soon produce a family. Kingdoms of the left and right hands washed the other's hands. In those halcyon days, the church influenced the public morality, and in turn the public morality provided external support for church practice. In January 22, 1973, this mutual support began to collapse. Winters in Springfield, Illinois, were brief and so January 22, 1973, was typically cold, gray, and dismal, but not frigid. I received the news in my second floor office in Wessel Hall opposite the classrooms. James Bauer, a first-year student in the last class to be graduated from the Springfield campus in 1976 and now a pastor in Denver, came across the hall. Faith had to be followed by works and the telephone was the medium or instru­mentum gratiae. We both had faith, but Bauer had the works in making phone calls of protest to various government officials. Following the precedence of Genesis 27:22, Jim introduced himself as me: "The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are [those] of Esau." In contacting LCMS president J. A. O. Preus, a hypostatic union took place and I was both person and voice asking Jack to make a statement in the name of our 2 See John A. Hardon, The Catholic Catechism: A Contemporary Catechism of the Teachings of the Catholic Church (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1975), 334-338. D. Scaer: Abortion, Incarnation, and Children 215 church. Well, he did, but only after some time had passed. The Cardinal Archbishop of Saint Louis was on the ready with a press release. Roman Catholics are more adept at bringing moral issues to the public attention. If congregational autonomy and synodical fellowship mean our presidents must have permission before speaking for the church, then the episcopal system is superior. Flocks do not guard themselves, shepherds do. In the intervening years, the LCMS has increasingly taken on a pro­phetic role in awakening the conscience of its members to the evil that takes away the lives of defenseless human beings. Abortion is no less a moral issue than it is a political one. LCMS president Matthew Harrison has shown no hesitancy in speaking clearly, promptly, and prominently on social issues. The January 2013 issue of The Lutheran Witness tackles abor­tion head-on, with no less than five articles plus two editorials, the first by Harrison. If previously the Lutherans were in the shadows, now they are coming out of the closet. Lutherans tend to be reticent in getting involved in political issues, but abortion is legalized moral violence against the most defenseless human beings. Reticence or Luther's doctrine of the two kingdoms is not a valid excuse in refraining from political involvement. Soon after the court decision, I took pen to hand-a metaphor for pounding away on a manual typewriter-and wrote what was probably the first article on the subject in the LCMS, entitled" Abortion: A Moment for Conscientious Reflection." Only four and a half pages long, it appeared in the December 1972 issue of The Springfielder.3 The cover date did not correspond with the date of its publication, so the article appeared in an issue that predated the court decision by one month. Call it proleptic eschatology. Drawing a parallel to the holocaust, it may appear harsh, but without an edge, prophetic voices are no longer prophetic.4 As Jesus said, "If salt has lost what makes it salt, how shall its saltiness be restored? [£av bE to aAUI; ~())pav8TI, £V tLvl aAL08~OEtm;]" (Matt 5:13). Rhetorical etiquette had little place in the preaching of the prophets. In the 2012 vice­presidential debate, Joseph Biden said that he was personally opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but was unwilling to superimpose his beliefs on others. His opponent failed to reverse the argument: if private morality cannot determine public policy, why then should government force individuals to engage in immoral acts, such as paying for pills causing abortions? Separation of public and private morality is a species of 3 David P. Scaer, "Abortion: A Moment for Conscientious Reflection," The Springfielder 36, no. 3 (December 1972): 180-184. 4 Matthew C. Harrison makes the same comparison in his editorial, "God's Gift of Life," The Lutheran Witness 132 (January 2012): 1. 216 Concordia Theological Quarterly 77 (2013) the old argument that science and faith exist in their own autonomous worlds. They do not. Without the perspective of what was culturally happening in 1973, the legalization of abortion appears as sea change in public thinking. At sec­ond glance, cultural, moral, and theological change had been in the air for some time. Like biological evolution, changes in public morality often go undetected until an advanced product evolves. At the end of World War II, extended families living in close knit neighborhoods in cities began to be replaced by the nuclear two-child families of the suburbs. As farms became mechanized, large families became more of financial burden and less of an asset. Children were obstacles to women pursuing careers, and romance rather than procreation was seen as the purpose of marriage.s Today, two­parent families are on the decline and one-parent families could become the norm. One self-described liberal social scientist finds that the arrange­ment of a mother with no permanent partner is harmful to children. This is hardly a religiously bigoted opinion, since the author opposes one govern­ment definition of a family over another.6 He acknowledges, as we all should, that though children come with no guarantees, those with one father and one mother fare better. What the world looks like today is a lot different than fifty years ago. Abortion was not legalized in a moral vacuum. Beginning with the Emperor Constantine, the church was a factor in shaping public morality. New England Congregationalism was a factor in abolishing slavery, and a general Protestant objection to alcohol consump­tion led to a constitutional amendment outlawing its sale. When Protestant modernism could no longer hold the moral torch, the Catholic Church took over as society's moral guardian, but its own sheep no longer listen to the church's voice. To show how things have changed, consider that as re­cently as 1961 the Archbishop of Canterbury was consulted by the Lord Chamberlain as to what plays were morally and theologically acceptable for the London stage? Today, unfavorable presentations of the prophet are 5 For a discussion of children as a financial burden rather than an advantage, see Paide Hochschild, "What Are Children For?" First TI1ings 229 (January 2013): 39-44. 6Andrew J. Chrelin, "Middle Class Offers Marriage Model," TI1e Journal-Gazette (December 28, 2012): 11a. Chrelin argues that those in the middle class, with more edu­cation and better paying jobs than the poor, are more likely to have stable marriages. Hence education leading to higher paying jobs will serve as a catalyst for more stable marriages. 7 Peter Webster, "The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chamberlain and the Censorship of Theatre, 1909-49,"in The Church and Literature, ed. Peter Clarke and Charlotte Methuen (Suffolk, UK, and Rochester, NY: Bowdell & Brewer for the Ecclesiastical Historical Society, 2012), 437-438. D. Scaer: Abortion, Incarnation, and Children 217 met with outrage, even by government officials, while blasphemous images of Jesus are allowed. Putting dates on when things began to change is inexact, but recently retired Harvard professor Joseph Fletcher gave a push to the rolling ball in 1966 with his Situation Ethics.8 He created a sensation in proposing that intercourse outside of marriage is wrong one hundred times out of a hundred, but that an exception is still possible. To use biblical language, that one exception brought forth a hundredfold. Today, Fletcher's one-time exception morality is a quaint, outdated cur­iosity. Apart from substituting situation ethics' vaguely defined concept of love as the standard for concrete moral principles in determining right from wrong, Fletcher's proposal is moral hubris, with each person decid­ing what is best for him or herself. Satisfactory outcomes and not moral codes determine right from wrong. Referencing the book of Judges, "every man did what was right in his own eyes" (17:6; 21:25). In 1963 J. A. T. Robinson released his Honest to God.9 The English bishop and later Cambridge don combined Karl Barth's transcendental God out there with Paul Tillich's immanent God within us to produce a God who was once somewhere but was now nowhere. William Hamilton and Thomas J. J. Altizer followed up with their God-Is-Dead proposals, but were not agreed on the cause of death. The word "God" would still be ban­tered around, but was no longer useful as a moral authority. Signs of a dis­integrating public morality in the 1960s were opposition to the Vietnam War, Woodstock, and the deaths of protesting students at Kent State University by unseasoned national guardsmen. In retrospect, the confident Pelagian morality of the Enlightenment Rationalists and Immanuel Kant's moral imperative look good. If God and a semblance of public morality were no longer in place, it is not surprising that the lives of unborn infants became expendable and were seen as having no more value than that of animals. Modern saints rescue beached whales and assist in animal shel­ters. Species ism became the sin of those who think otherwise. Fanatics work to rescue the unborn, but even after death, fanatics get things done. John Brown's attack on the federal facility in Harper's Ferry, Virginia, focused the national attention on the evil of slavery, and the Union forces went off to war singing "John Brown's Body Lies a Smouldering in the Grave." 8 Joseph Fletcher, Situation Ethics: The New Morality (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1966). In the chapter, "Love Justifies Its Means," Fletcher provides a number of test cases (120-130). Absolute standards of morality have no place. Just as divorce can be done out of love, so can abortion (133). 9 J. A. T. Robinson, Honest to God (Norwich, UK: SCM Press, 1963). 218 Concordia Theological Quarterly 77 (2013) In the 1930s and 40s, Dietrich Bonhoeffer focused Germany's attention on the anti-Semitic evils of National Socialism and, like Brown, he paid the ultimate price. Annihilation of the European Jewish population and of infants by abortion are more similar than different in that innocent human beings are put to death-which is the point: who is human? Jews were as human as Christians, and unborn infants share in the same humanity as those babies who make it out alive.10 Ethical decisions are inherently debatable. That is why we have ethics. Bonhoeffer's political and theological views remain a point of contention, especially in the LCMS, but Uwe Simon-Netto has convincingly argued that Bonhoeffer understood his participation in the conspiracy against Hitler as a matter of the left hand to prevent further destruction of the Jewish population and the immanent devastation of Germany by Allied forces. Bonhoeffer's actions might find support in the parable of the Samaritan, for had he, the Samaritan, not stopped, the wounded man would have inevitably died. Luther's explana­tion of the Fifth Commandment requires helping the neighbor in physical distress.ll Current fascination with Bonhoeffer and a renaissance of his theology have not translated into opposition to abortion among his ad­mirers. Consider that chemicals are instruments of death in both cases. Those who weep over the holocaust but do nothing to stop abortion are the contemporary equivalent of scribes and Pharisees who lavishly decorated the tombs of the prophets whom their fathers killed (Luke 11:48). Peniten­tial sorrow for the sins of others does not compensate for failing to recog­nize and relieve current moral wrongs. Even though Hermann Sasse would not consent with Bonhoeffer to the Barmen Declaration, he also opposed National Socialism. Bonhoeffer paid the consequences by a grue­some execution; by a strange twist of circumstances, Sasse was forced out of the University of Erlangen by those who said little or nothing against anti-Semitism or even offered theological reasons to support it. Greatly admired Lutherans theologians Werner Elert and Paul Althaus Jr. failed to recognize or ignored the fact that the German Christianity proposed by the National Socialist Party was Nordic-Germanic paganism disguised in Christian clothing.12 Culture, especially when it is government supported, 10 Luke uses the same word for both an unborn, TO ~PEq>OS (Lk 1:41, 44), and a new born infant, Ta ~PEq>T] (18:15). 11 This is suggested in Peter Scaer, "Our Littlest Neighbor," Th.e Lutheran Witness 132 Ganuary 2013): 11-13. 12 For a historical overview, see David Jay Webber, "Bonhoeffer and Sasse as Confessors and Churchmen," Logia 21, no. 4 (Reformation 2012): 13-20. See also John T. Pless, who notes that Werner Elert and Paul Althaus identified themselves with the National Socialists in signing the Ansbacher Anschlag in 1934. "Hermann Sasse (1895-1976)," Lutheran Quarterly 25, no. 3 (Autumn 2011): 302-303. D. Scaer: Abortion, Incarnation, and Children 219 has the potential to take the church under its wing and smother its faith. Such was the case in Germany in the 1930s and 40s and such it is here now with the lack of full response from American Protestants to abortion. In our time, Richard John Neuhaus (1936-2009) was an example of a fearless John the Baptist as he plunged into the public square on the abortion debate.13 We might find an excuse for our lack of involvement in opposing abor­tion in the words of Jesus to Peter that those taking up the sword will perish by it (Matt 26:51), but rather than being a prohibition of the use of force to avert evil, they are the promise of the inevitability of death for those engaged in military action. Recruits for the armed services are fully informed of what may be in store for them. If ethics is nothing more than a historical study of how others came to their decisions and does little in promoting actions that carry risks, then such ethics are inherently un­ethical. In our tradition, monthly Monday morning circuit pastoral con­ferences still serve to help clergy as they walk the narrow line between right and wrong actions with the risk of uncertainty. Agreeing to an appro­priate action in an ambivalent situation and taking the necessary action is a pastor's burden that the apostles also faced. James, the brother of the Lord, came to a decision allowing Gentiles as full members of the church while giving as little offense to the Jewish members as possible (Acts 15:19-20). In his epistles, Paul weaves in and around troublesome issues, remaining faithful to the commandments even as he aims to keep the congregations together. Two contemporary instances come to mind in distinguishing right from wrong. Some years ago Neuhaus, who was a frequent guest on William F. Buckley's Firing Line, was asked by a pious Catholic lady why 13 Wesley Smith details how Neuhaus came to oppose abortion: "The culture of death is an idea before it is a deed. I expect many of us here, perhaps most of us here, can remember when we were first encountered by the idea. For me, it was in the 1960s when I was pastor of a very poor, very black, inner city parish in Brooklyn, New York. I had read that week an article by Ashley Montagu of Princeton University on what he called" A Life Worth Living." He listed the qualifications for a life worth living: good health, a stable family, economic security, educational opportunity, the prospect of a satisfying career to realize the fullness of one's potential. These were among the measures of what was called "a life worth living." Neuhaus looked "out at his congregation and saw the very types of people who Montagu denigrated as having lives not worth living: In that moment, I knew that T had been recruited to the cause of the culture of life. To be recruited to the cause of the culture of life is to be recruited for the duration; and there is no end in sight, except to the eyes of faith." "The Moment I Recognized the Culture of Death," National Review Online (January 13, 2013), http://www.nationalreview.com/human-exceptionalism/337567/moment-i-recognized­culture-death: (accessed October 17, 2013). 220 Concordia Theological Quarterly 77 (2013) Bonhoeffer's opposition to Hitler could not be used as example in preventing abortion. Both Neuhaus and Buckley are rightly remembered as intellectual giants in the field of public morality, but neither could pro­vide an answer. They were caught off guard and said that the reason for eschewing violence should be obvious. But if it was so obvious, the woman would not have asked. There are no wrong questions, but there are only questions from whose answers we retreat because we do not want to face the consequences of our principles. In colloquial terms, we take refuge in saying that this or that situation is not the hill to die on. Bonhoeffer and his co-conspirators asked and answered the question of what should be done with a tyrannical killer. Hitler's life was of less value than the thousands who would still die, so they argued. A second case was the May 2009 assassination-in a church-of the abortion doctor George Tiller, whose killer was given a near life sentence. After excommunication by a LCMS congregation,14 Tiller joined an ELCA congregation, from where he was buried. Some saw virtue in his helping women rid themselves of troublesome pregnancies. Whatever issues di­vide the LCMS and ELCA, differences on abortion should indicate that we are entirely different churches. IS Both pro-life and pro-choice groups con­demned Tiller's assassination, yet, in contrast, President Obama's order to assassinate Osama bin Laden was seen as an act of courage. Had Bon­hoeffer's co-conspirators succeeded, the morality of their actions would hardly be questioned. Had an armed teacher in the Sandy Hook school massacre killed the assassin, he would have received the honors given the pilot of the U.S. Air jet who safely landed the plane in the Hudson River.16 Or consider this scenario: sometime around the year 2030, a person about twenty years old who had been adopted as a child might do the math and conclude that if that Kansas doctor had continued to live, he or she might 14 The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod states that" since abortion takes a human life, it is not a moral option except to prevent the death of. .. the mother" (1979 Resolution 3-02A). 15 The official pOSition of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America states that "abortion prior to viability (of a fetus) should not be prohibited by law or by lack of public funding," but that abortion after the point of fetal viability should be prohibited except when the life of a mother is threatened or when fetal abnormalities pose a fatal threat to a newborn. A Social Statement on: Abortion (Department for Studies of the Commission for Church in Society, 1991),10. 16 On January 15, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 struck a flock of geese resulting in the loss of engine power. The crew was able to successfully ditch the plane into the Hudson River off midtown Manhattan. At Sandy Hook Elementary School, twenty­year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot twenty children, six adult staff, and his mother before committing suicide on December 12, 2012. D. Scaer: Abortion, Incarnation, and Children 221 not be alive now. Since the 1973 court ruling, every person adopted as a child in the United States might ponder his or her possible non-existence. Contemplating non-existence might be unprofitable philosophical spec­ulation; the over fifty-four million aborted babies will be spared such useless thoughts. Those children may not exist for those who aborted them, but they live before God and at the judgment will have equal stand­ing with those who aborted them. Roman Catholics are more likely to speak of sins of omission, but with­out recognizing sins of omission as serious sins, non-involvement in pre­venting abortion has no moral consequences. The pericope of the woman caught in adultery might shed some light on this. Typically, the saying that the one without sin should cast the first stone is used to show that we sinners should not judge others (John 8:3-7). In other words, the passage has to do with original sin. This can hardly be right, since Jesus and the apostles do make judgments. Without making moral judgments, law and gospel cannot be preached. A preferable interpretation is that by observing the act and not intervening, the woman's accusers were complicit. If the Samaritan proved to be the neighbor in helping the stricken traveler, the priest and the Levite did the evil thing by not helping (Luke 10: 29-37). Politically, 1973 would be a tumultuous year for both the nation and the LCMS. That summer, Gerald Ford became the first person to be named vice-president under the provisions of the twenty-fifth amendment-a sign of more troubles to come. American withdrawal from Vietnam was in­evitable as our nation was coming to terms with its first major defeat by a foreign power. By January 1973, J. A. O. Preus was in his fourth year as president of the LCMS and was weathering attacks from the right for inaction and from the left for too much action in addressing the synod's ills. Depending where one stood, Preus was guilty of the opposing sins of omission and commission. Delegates that July to the LCMS convention in New Orleans received a report concerning Concordia Seminary, Saint Louis, that led to the seminary board suspending its president, John Tietjen, at its December meeting. This led to the February 1974 faculty walkout and the formation of an alternate theological training institution known as Seminex, for whose support the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (AELC) was formed,17 50 if 1973 is remembered as the year in which abortion became legal, it was also the year in which the LCM5 was facing a disruption that in less nimble hands could have led to its disintegration. The Tale of Two Cities has the oft quoted line that it was 17 See Paul A. Zimmerman, A Seminary in Crisis: The Inside Stan) of the Preus Fact Finding Committee (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2007). 222 Concordia Theological Quarterly 77 (2013) the best of times and the worst of times, but for the country and the synod it was the worst of times. Formation of the AELC by LCMS dissidents accelerated the process of bringing the American Lutheran Church (ALC) and the Lutheran Church in America (LCA) together to form the ELCA.18 With vast majority of Lutherans in the U. S. as its members, the ELCA has been on the forefront of promoting a secular, feminist agenda that allows not only women and homosexual clergy but also supports abortion in its insurance program. Its agenda makes it indistinguishable from a political party.19 Secular and religious events are woven into one cloth or mixed into one cocktail, as suggested by Luke 3:1-2, where the ministries of John the Baptist and Jesus are anchored: In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness (ESV). Secular history provides the shell in which Heilsgeschichte, the history of salvation, takes place and is so intertwined that completely separating one event from the other might be as difficult as it is artificial. What happens in the world reflects and shapes church life and belief. John preached a mes­sage with political overtones and ended up on the wrong side of a pre­cursor of the guillotine. Preaching can never be entirely apolitical. Those Christians who ignore the horror of abortion or even support it have al­ready become intoxicated by breathing in the poisoned air of the surround­ing culture. After resisting government pressure, Scandinavian Lutherans allowed for women clergy and adopted the secular agenda.20 This happens and will happen again and again. If every gray cloud has a silver lining and every dark night is a prelude to a bright dawn, so these events were not entirely without reward. Just as 18 At least this was the opinion of David Preus, the last ALC president. See David L. Tiede's review of David W. Preus, Pastor and President: Reflections of a Lutheran Churchman, in Lutheran Quarterly 26, no. 4 (Winter 2012): 452. 19 A helpful overview of the formation of the ELCA is provided by Arthur J. Clement, Lutheranism from Wittenberg to the U. S. A. (New Haven, MO: Lutheran News, Inc, 2012), 842-855. It was legally constituted on April 30, 1987, in Columbus, Ohio, and became the legal successor to the constituting churches on January 1, 1988. 20 See Jan Bygstad, "Can There Be Peace? Violence in the Name of Religion," Concordia Theological Quarterly 76 (2012): 348-358. D. Scaer: Abortion, Incarnation, and Children 223 the practice of ordained women dergy led the church to reflect on what it means that God has created us male and female, so the court's decision on abortion directed the church to focus on what constitutes a human being and, subsequently, on how Jesus as a human being can also be God.21 Abortion and incarnation are related subjects. Opposition to abortion in the public sphere must proceed for non-religious reasons, but in the church theological and biblical reasons must be offered. Preaching that is not theological is no preaching at all. With few exceptions, Christians in the tradition of ancient and Reformation churches are agreed that a human being consists of a body and soul, with the personhood of the individual residing in the soul that comes from God, relates to God during life, and returns to God at death (Ecd 1:13; 3:11; 12:7). This is called dichotomy. Trichotomy holds that a human being has three parts, body, soul and spirit. A variation of trichotomy is that one is born with a body and soul and given a spirit when he becomes a Christian. This view opens the door to the error of perfectionism because of the belief that in that part called "the spirit" a Christian can overcome sin.22 The Athanasian Creed assumes dichotomy in that Jesus Christ is described as "perfect God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting." Just as Jesus is God and man, so as a man he has a body and a soul. Without a soul, an unborn child is arguably not a human being; Christians, however, are not agreed on the soul's origin.23 Origen (c. AD 185-254) held that souls existed in eternity and were placed in the body at conception. Mormons believe something like this. A now long-deceased, confessional, and dear colleague argued that birth control prevented pre­existing souls from assuming bodies. These are Platonic variations. Popular among Roman Catholics and the Reformed is creationism, the view that God creates each individual soul and places it into the body. Reformed theologians say this happens by a special action of God at the time of conception. Roman Catholic theologians are not agreed as to when this takes place; supposedly, Thomas Aquinas said it happened three 21 Francis Pieper's Christian Dogmatics, 3 vols. (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1950-53), 1:476-477. This view is resembles those of the Gnostics and hardly fits Luther's understanding of man simul iustus et peccator. How this view understands abortion is unclear. Aborted children would lose their souls in death, but not their spirits which they never had. 22 For a fuller discussion of this and other matters related to anthropology, see Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1994), 472-489. 23 Monism holds that a human being has only a body and that the soul is the mind as an extension of the body and, in contrast to animals, is more highly developed. 224 Concordia Theological Quarterly 77 (2013) months aiter conception.24 Since souls take on the character of sin by being placed into sinful bodies, this view borders on Platonic dualism.25 Traditionally, Lutherans favor traducianism, the view formulated by Tertullian and held by Augustine and Luther, that the soul is derived from the parents along with the conception of the body.26 In one act, a person is conceived as body and soul as a totality, a position that is the most satis­factory in opposing abortion and understanding Christ's incarnation. In one act, God assumed not only a human body but a human soul from his mother. This was a complete, not partial, incarnation. In the moment of conception Mary was fully theotokos, the mother of Jesus, who is both God and man with a body and soul (Luke 1:43).27 His soul was not added later. Differences on these matters are not reasons for separating ourselves from others in opposing abortion, but our opposition to abortion is an oppor­tunity to reflect on the nature of being a human being on the and incar­nation. The Son of God became a human being at his conception, not at his birth. Theologically and liturgically, the Annunciation (March 25), which celebrates the conception of the Son of God, takes precedence over Christmas (December 25), the commemoration of his birth. Theology does not have the market on how a human being is defined. Man can be understood physiologically, psychologically, and philosophically. From a physiological perspective, what makes a person a human being, what he or she will be, emotions, personality, intellect, and hair and skin color, al­ready are in place at conception. Before they are born, children are linguis­tic, intellectual, and emotional beings. They can recognize the mother's voice and distinguish one language from another, respond to music, and be adversely affected by a tumultuous environment. They experience pain 24 Hardon, The Catholic Catechism. See also Catechism of the Catholic Church (Liguori, MO: Liguori Publications, 1994), 93, para. 366. 25 Creationism, the doctrine that a soul was created by God for each infant, is problematic. Creation came to a completion on the sixth day. God no longer creates ex nihifo but through multiplication of what has already been created. This view puts God in the position of creating sinless souls to be placed into sinful bodies. In the Reformed tradition, Grudem is a creationist and gets around this problem of children having bad dispositions by holding that God, in creating souls, fashions them according to the dispositions of the parents. Systematic Theology, 485-486. This is an innovative idea, but results in God being directly involved in creating sinful souls. 26 Hardon, 771£ Catholic Catechism, 106 27 Yves M. J. Congar notes that we can affirm that Christ "is ontologically the Son of God because of the hypostatic union from the moment of his conception," and still "respect the successive moments or stages in the history of salvation in which the virtue or effectiveness of the Spirit in Jesus was actuated in a new way." I Believe in the Holy Spirit, 3 vols., trans. David Smith (New York: The Seabury Press,1983), 3:171. D. Scaer: Abortion, Incarnation, and Children 225 and flee in anticipation of an abortionist's knife. Unborn infants possess the characteristics of human beings. Recently released are the results of research with children as young as three to ten months conducted by the Yale University Infant Cognition Center. It finds that a moral sense can be detected in the youngest infants. 28 In other words, children are born as moral creatures. The choices they make for their own advantage seem to affirm what the church calls original sin. They differ from the rest of the animate world in being able to distinguish right from wrong. Jonah Lehrer goes into even more detail in his Boston Globe article "Inside the Baby's Mind."29 The distinction between the law and the gospel assumes everyone is in some sense moral, including children. Voltarie followed Pelagius in assuming that a child came into the world with a tabula rasa, a clean slate. Learning good and evil was similar to learning facts. B. F. Skinner's behaviorist psychology saw things the same way. The recent research at Yale is not that dissimilar to Immanuel Kant's moral argument for the existence of Cod by which he posits that we intuitively can recognize moral injustices that will be rectified by Cod in the afterlife when he rewards the good and punishes the bad. The Yale study leans in the direction of seeing morality as intuitive rather than learned behavior.3D While scientific and biblical data are not identical, they can cor­respond. Before their births, John the Baptist and Jesus recognized one another (Luke 1:44). That was an act of faith. The account of Jacob grabbing the foot of his brother Esau during birth might be more fact than tale (Cen 25:26). Fraternal dislike that first appeared in the Cain and Abel account (Cen 4:8) exists before birth. Twins are known to be combative before birth. As natal and prenatal research advances, accumulated evidences will 28 Abigail Tucker, "Born to be Mild," Smithsonian 43 Oanuary 2013): 35-41, .76-77. 29 http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ ideas/ articles/2009/ 04/26/ inside_the_ baby_mind/ (accessed October 17, 2013). 30 These studies were the subject of a November 11, 2012, feature on CBS's "60 Minutes." See http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50135408n (accessed October 17, 2013) and published in the Smithsonian with the title of the article on its cover as "Born to be Bad?: The New Science of Morality? With the article the title was changed to "Born to Be Mild" with the subtitle in uppercase "ARE WE BORN KNOWING RIGHT FROM WRONG? NEW RESEARCH OFFERS SURPRISING ANSWER TO THE AGE-OLD QUESTION OF WHERE MORALITY COMES FROM." Researchers attribute this innate moral sense to evolution, but it corresponds to the biblical doctrine of original sin, i.e., not only are we born sinners but we know it. If children on this side of womb have a moral sense, do they have it in the womb itself? Should it be established that children at birth have an innate moral sense, they must have had it before they were born. 226 Concordia Theological Quarterly 77 (2013) suggest that the "what" being aborted might actually be a "who," i.e., a human being. Abortion is not the destruction of a thing, the cessation of an accumulation of living cells and body parts, but a human being who con­sists not only of a body but also a soul. An argument for abortion might be that before birth, the fetus or the child is not a human being because it has not reached its full potential. Such an argument assumes that in life there exists an optimum moment when all our mental, emotional and physical capacities reach their full potential, ideally at the same time. If this is so, when is this? Certain potentials like physical strength and intellectual and linguistic capacities are reached early in life, perhaps the late teens and early twenties, but wisdom comes later in life, and for some it never does. Is there any stage of life when we are more human than another? Should reaching a certain potential determine our humanity, then some of us have long since reached our peak and are on downhill slide. Solomon also spoke about this in Ecclesiastes (12:1-5). So the arguments for abortion are easily reversed into ones for euthanasia for the non-functioning aged.31 The Boston Globe article goes so far as to say, "In fact, in some situations it might actually be better for adults to regress into a newborn state of mind. While maturity has its perks, it can also inhibit creativity and lead people to fixate on the wrong facts."32 Of course Jesus said something like this first when he spoke of becoming like little children in order to receive the kingdom, i.e., to have a part in him. Over against the Baptists, we might want to say that we have no concerns about baptizing infants. They believe. We are not so sure about adults. While we can take heart that the movements to abolish abortion have outperformed pro-choice movements and that this success is recognized in a one-third decline in abortions since their peak in the early 1980s,33 never­theless, the pro-life movement has suffered political setbacks. Where at one time the nation was evenly divided on the issue, 59 percent of the elec­torate hold that it should be legal in all or most cases.34 Several attitudes and philosophies fuel the pro-abortion movement, but feminism is a major engine making imoads in the church where women are ordained and God 31 British National Health Care hospitals are already doing this. See "The Week," National Review 64/24 (December 31, 2012),13. Comas are induced for both the aged and for babies with congenital defects, who are then deprived of sustenance. 32 Lehrer, "Inside the Baby's Mind." 33 Jon A. Smith, "Roe's Pro-Life Legacy," First Things 229 (January 2012), 23. 34 Rarnesh Ponnuru, " A Pro-Choice Surge," National Review 64, no. 24 (December 31, 2012): 15-16. D. Scaer: Abortion, Incarnation, and Children 227 is addressed as "Our Mother who is with us when we celebrate your many names."35 In parenting, the mother holds the trump card in determining whether the unborn child shall live or die and so the man's right to father­hood is subordinated and actually annihilated.36 One reason given for my undertaking a dissertation on what nine­teenth-century Lutheran theologians thought about infant baptism was my desire to provide background material that showed if and how baptized children differed from unbaptized children in receiving Christian educa­tion.37 This goal may remain elusive, but our defense of the lives of unborn children may have a side benefit in reflecting and assessing the place of children in the church. Arguably, their subordinate state in the household of God is evident at the communion rail, where they can receive a blessing of Baptism with hands but not the second sacrament because they are said to lack the fides reflexa, a faith that reflects on sins, set forth as a re­quirement for a worthy reception (1 Cor 11:28). Claiming that infants do not have fides reflexa, i.e., they cannot reflect on their own faith, may be one of those "of course" doctrines, something which we believe but cannot prove. The Yale clinical study and others, however, call into question the assumption that children do not have the mental powers of reflections. We cannot base a case on a child's inability for moral reflection on a Yale clinical study, but it is hard to ignore, especially since we do not have evidences for the traditional understanding. It might be that the inability of children to have fides reflexa may be hardly more than a pietistic and rationalist relic without biblical or evidential support. We baptize children because, like the rest of us, each child is simul iustus et peccator. Studies show that children have intellectual advantages over adults. Perhaps the most notable advantage is that they have not developed the pious hypo­crisy that comes with maturity. In the Roman church, the Rites of Christian 35 Words used by an ELCA bishop at the celebration of Holy Communion with Rite of Reception, St. Mark's Lutheran Church, San Francisco, CA, Sunday, July 25, 2010, prayed at a "'Rite of Reception' for partnered gay and lesbian pastors." Taken from "Afterword: Staying Lutheran in Changing Church(es): Why We Still Need Lutheran Theology," in Changing Churches by Mickey L. Mattox and A. G. Roeper (Grand Rapids; MI: William B. Eerdmans Company, 2012), 312. 36 Amy L. Way, review of Why Have Children? The Ethical Debate, by Christine Overall in First Things 228 (January 2012): 51-53. 37 David P. Scaer, Infant Baptism in Nineteenth Century Lutheran Theology (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2011). 228 Concordia Theological Quarterly 77 (2013) Initiation for Adults assumes that adults are the better Christians than children.38 Is this not the old Baptist argument to refuse infant baptism? At the death of an infant, pastors often have to face the question of what age the child will be in heaven or at the resurrection. Though we might be tempted to say that the grieving are asking the wrong question, we can still provide the right answer that we adults will become like chil­dren, listening to and totally depending on the voice of their Father who has spoken once and for all time through his Son and our Brother, who gives us his Holy Spirit to be his children. Maybe for this reason the writer of First John addressed his hearers as little children six times. Are unborn children human beings? Ask a married couple awaiting the birth of their first child. Ask any Englishman who awaited the birth of Kate Middleton's first child who is already regarded as the future sovereign.39 We should defend the lives of all children, if for no other reason than the truth that God became a child not in Bethlehem but in the womb of his mother. The final stanza of "Once in Royal David's City" says it all. Not in that poor, lowly stable With the oxen standing by Shall we see Him, but in heaven, Set at God's right hand on high. Then like stars His children crowned, All in white, His praise will sound.39 38 For a summary of the current situation in the Roman church, see lnfant Baptism, 12, n. 43. 39 On July 22, 2013, George Alexander Louis was born to Prince William and Catherine Elizabeth, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. George holds the official title: His Royal Highness Prince George of Cambridge. 39 Lutheran Service Book 376:5. CTQ 77 (2013): 229-255 Lutheran Support for the Pro-Life Movement: A Case of Faith without Works? Peter J. Scaer When we look at Lutheran support for the pro-life movement, how far from the truth would it be to say that we are speaking of a case of faith without works? In convention after convention, The Lutheran Church­Missouri Synod passes pro-life resolutions by large majorities, verging on unanimity. On paper, we are a tiger. Yet, speaking from personal ex­perience and listening to others, I can say that pro-life groups across the nation often find themselves frustrated with us. They know our pro-life stance, but they do not see us on the front lines, at the rallies or the care centers. Over the years, I have attended numerous LCMS churches, but seldom have I heard the life issue from the pulpit or in Bible studies. Now, why is this? Is it possible that we have been living in an abortion culture for so long that we have become desensitized to how much it has affected us? While I do not have definitive answers to this vexing issue, I offer here a few observations, as well as a few modest suggestions. I. The Intellectual Embrace of Abortion I was at a garage sale some time ago and happened upon an issue of Reader's Digest, published in May 1966, the month of my birth. Reader's Digest was to me a slice of apple pie. With its folksy stories and mildly amusing anecdotes, it captured a kind of Norman Rockwell vision of America. Feeling nostalgic, I purchased the issue and began to browse. Scattered throughout were ads for "Nudit," a moustache remover for women, "Prunes: the Energy Breakfast Fruit," Emily Post's revised book on etiquette, and even an ad for "Lutheran Brotherhood Insurance." In a decade marked by tumult and upheaval, Reader's Digest represented a kind of safe haven, where polite Americans, Lutherans included, could go for gentle humor and wisdom. Or, at least, that's what I thought. As I made my way down the table of contents, the title of one article jumped out at me: "Let's Speak Out on Abortion," written by none other than Lawrence Lader, co-founder of the Peter J. Scaer is Associate Professor of Exegetical Theology and the Director of the Master of Arts Program at Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Indiana. 230 Concordia Theological Quarterly 77 (2013) National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL).l As both a political activist and the movement's leading intellectual, Lader authored an influential book, simply titled Abortion, in which he argued that the so­called right to privacy that protected birth control (Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965) should logically be applied to abortion.2 For good reason, Betty Friedan called Lader "the father of the abortion movement."3 An astute strategist, Lader framed the abortion issue in ways that would appeal to middle America's values and fears. His Reader's Digest article begins dramatically with the story of an intruder who forces himself into the home of Denver housewife and then gags and assaults her, result­ing in pregnancy.4 Lader then tells of a mother pregnant with a deformed baby, followed by a report of back alley abortions performed with wire hangers. All of these cases, Lader argues, are good reasons to legalize so­called "therapeutic abortion." A wonderful con artist, Lader paralyzes the reader with fear and then performs his sleight of hand. The term "therapeutic abortion," used originally to speak of saving the life of the mother, opens the door to any physical or emotional malady a woman might face, including what Lader terms "the worn-out mother syn­drome."s While Lader dramatizes the plight of the woman in distress, he soft­pedals the abortion procedure, calling it the "simplest and safest" of all 1 Lader (in)famously organized a demonstration of women pushing empty baby strollers on Mother's Day. He was especially active in churches, organizing ministers who referred patients to abortion clinics. 2 Lawrence Lader, Abortion (Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1966). He also authored an unlikely sequel in which he told the story of abortion's political progress leading up to the Roe v. Wade decision: Abortion II (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973). 3 Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique, served as the first president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), and, with Lader and Bernard Nathanson (who later became a pro-life activist), was one of the co-founders of NARAL. NARAL's mission statement was as follows: "NARAL, recognizing the basic human right of a woman to limit her own reproduction, is dedicated to the elimination of all laws and practices that would compel any woman to bear a child against her will. To that end, it proposes to initiate and co-ordinate political, social, and legal action of individuals and groups concerned with providing safe operations by qualified physicians for all women seeking them regardless of economic status" (National Abortion Rights Action League Records, 1968-1976; Me 313. Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Harvard University. http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/ deliver! ~sch00781 (accessed November 26, 2013). 4 Lawrence Lader, " Let's Speak Out on Abortion," Reader's Digest (May 1966): 82. 5 Lader, "Let's Speak Out on Abortion," 85. P. Scaer: Lutheran Support for the Pro-Life Movement 231 operations."6 According to Lader, a "tiny instrument" is used to "scrape the walls of the womb." He adds, "Performed under anesthesia, the oper­ation is painless, and the patient is rarely kept in the hospital more than one night."7 Part of the strategy was, of course, to divert attention from the child and minimize the significance of each life. Lader minimizes, for example, the value of fetal tissue, asking, "Does it possess any more sanc­tity than an appendix or any other human tissue that is commonly excised when the mother's health is threatened?"8 One wonders why few saw the contradiction in Lader's claim that abortion was merely the removal of tissue, while the same time claiming that it was necessary to protect the health of the mother. Lader leaves no stone unturned in his advocacy of abortion. To sooth fears of promiscuity, he writes: "Many of those who insist on the status quo are concerned with the erosion of moral barriers, believing that any liberalization of abortion law would increase promiscuity, particularly in the case of the single girl. This argument is hardly borne out by reality." Legalizing abortion would make abortion safe, not more frequent, argues Lader. "Moreover, real morality is not something that can be based on fear."9 Ever the sensitive counselor, Lader reminds us that if a child is not killed, he may suffer. "Meanwhile those who insist that unmarried mother­hood is in every case morally preferable to abortion ignore the human cost." As Pearl Buck argued throughout her career, the child bears alone the total burden of his illegitimate birth-even if happily adopted, he may carry a stigma and the burden of psychic damage all his life. The logic is frightening, but typical. It would be better to kill the child than stigmatize her. Children who are not adopted supposedly "wither away in institu­tions from lack of sufficient love and care. Or, kept by grandmothers or aunts while the mother works, these unwanted children become the flot­sam of our depressed neighborhoods making up the core of our problem youth, the prime candidates for delinquency, perversion and jail."10 Lader, who had previously warned about stigmatized children, now refers to them as potential perverts and criminals. In Lader's world, children have no inherent worth apart from the opinion of others. Thus, he could pro­claim that with birth control and abortion our society would be on the 6 Lader, "Let's Speak Out on Abortion," 83. 7 Lader, "Let's Speak Out on Abortion," 83. 8 Lader, Abortion, 102. 9 Lader, Abortion, 233. )0 Lader, Abortion, 233. 232 Concordia Theological Quarterly 77 (2013) verge a new dawn, what he called "The Century of the Wanted Child."ll Never once does he explain why an unwanted child should have to pay for another's lack of desire. Lastly, Lader addresses the issue from the religious perspective. He speaks of it as "a theological thicket." As was typical, abortion proponents played a game of divide and conquer, marginalizing the Roman Catholic Church, which was by far the strongest opponent of birth control and abortion. The Catholic hierarchy, claims Lader, would prefer that both mother and child die than that an abortion be performed to save a mother's life. Knowing the power of flattery, Lader then notes that the National Council of Churches in Christ had made exceptions for legal abortions when the health or life of the mother was at stake, which as Lader says with a smile, "sets Protestant thinking far in advance of most state laws."12 And finally, he ends with a gloriously religious proclama­tion: "The great awakening of society's responsibility will come only with the recognition that family limitation is in fact an affirmative, creative policy." 13 So it was that Lader peddled the abortion agenda to middle-class sub­urbia, injecting his poison into the hearts and minds of many Americans, Lutherans included. Perhaps, though, Lader should not get too much credit for originality. His arguments for abortion are, by and large, similar to those made to promote birth control earlier in the twentieth century. This was no accident. According to his obituary in the New York Times, Lader "stumbled into the abortion issue while working on a biography of Margaret Sanger."14 Indeed, Lader viewed his life's mission as a natural extension and culmination of Sanger's work. The final chapter of Abortion begins with two quotes from Margaret Sanger. "The most far-reaching social development of modern times," Margaret Sanger declared in 1920, "is the revolt of woman against sex servitude."ls And again, he quotes Sanger, "No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously 11 Lader, Abortion, 155-166. 12 Lader, Abortion, 233. 13 Lader, Abortion, 237. 14 Douglas Martin, "Lawrence Lader, Champion of Abortion Rights, Is Dead at 86," New York Times, May 10, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/10/nyregion/ 10lader.html?_r=0 (accessed November 19, 2013). Indeed, in 1960 Lader had written Margaret Sanger and the Fight for Birth Control, to which he added a companion biography, written especially for children, entitled Margaret Sanger: Pioneer of Birth Control. 15 Lader, Abortion, 167. P. Scaer: Lutheran Support for the Pro-Life Movement 233 whether she will or will not be a mother."16 Lawrence Lader, the father of the abortion movement was, intellectually, the son of Margaret Sanger, the mother of the movement to legitimize birth control. II. Margaret Sanger, Birth Control, and Planned Parenthood The sixth of eleven children, Margaret Sanger was born in 1883 in Corning, New York. Her father was an atheist, and her mother, a supposedly frail and submissive woman, lost her life to tuberculosis at the age of forty-eight. After her mother died, Sanger came to resent her father, whom she considered a "tyrant" and a "monster."17 Her revulsion, how­ever, did not prevent her from making his leftist political views her own. Indeed, she began her career as a radical leftist and anarchist, launching a newspaper in 1914 titled Woman Rebel under the masthead, "No Gods, No Masters." The young editor urged women "to look the whole world in the face with a go-to-helllook in the eyes; to speak and act in the defiance of convention."18 She spoke specifically to women living in poverty whose health was jeopardized by child bearing. With an ear for the dramatic, she writes, "Women whose weary pregnant, shapeless bodies refuse to accommodate themselves to their husbands' desires, find husbands looking with lustful eyes upon other women, sometimes upon their own little daughters of six or seven years of age."19 She warned a­gainst the emptiness of religion, while her co-conspirator Alice Groff declared that "the marriage bed is the most degenerating influence in the socialorder."20 In the years that followed, Sanger traveled to Europe, where her life's work came into greater focus. During her time in England, she met Havelock Ellis, a world renowned sex expert with whom she had an affair and from whom she learned the liberating power of the sexual experience. Not surprisingly, Sanger attached herself to the free love movement, and in time divorced her first husband and moved into an open marriage and a 16 Lader, Abortion, 167. 17 Margaret Sanger, The Autobiography of Margret Sanger (New York: Dover Publications, 1971), 42-43. 18 David M. Kelmedy, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 1. 19 Margaret Sanger, My Fight for Birth Control (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1931), 48. 20 Alice Groff, "The Marriage Bed," in The Woman Rebel 1, no. 5 (May 1914), 39. 234 Concordia Theological Quarterly 77 (2013) long series of lovers, including such luminaries as eugenicist H. G. Wells.21 For Sanger, birth control held the key to fulfillment. Sanger compared the husband-wife relationship to that of priest and his congregation: "How he guards her lest she receive a word, inspire a new thought, and rebellion. How closely he keeps her within the boundary of his own, like a priest who watches and weeds the young ideas to keep them forever within the enclosure of the church."22 For Sanger, the Christian church and traditional marriage had become prisons jealously guarded by priests and husbands. In order to save women from the shackles of marriage, Sanger would need to subvert the churches. Of her struggle, she writes, "Slowly but surely we are breaking down the taboos that surround sex ... in the so-called Chris­tian communities."23 If Sanger had any religion, it was sex made possible and free by the sacrament of birth control. In The Pivot of Civilization, she writes of birth control as "an ethical necessity" that will bring" control over the primor­dial forces of nature." While St. Paul spoke about mutuality in marriage, Sanger proclaimed a message of radical autonomy, "No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother."24 Indeed, one cannot help but be struck by Sanger's religious fervor as she envisions a time when the church would fall away and a new paradise would open up to the sexually liberated woman. She predicted that "interest in the vague sentimental fantasies of extra-mundane exis­tence would atrophy ... for in that dawn men and women will have come to the realization, already suggested, that here close at hand is our paradise, our everlasting abode, our Heaven and our eternity." Sanger imagined a new reality in which there would be no heaven, except that which we create on earth. She writes, "Through sex, mankind may attain 21 For a brief summary of Sanger's personal life, see Madeline Gray, Margaret Sanger (New York: Richard Marek Publishers, 1979). See also, Donald De Marco and Benjamin Wiker, Architects of the Culture of Death (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004) , esp. 292-294. Her open marriage to Three-in-One Oil magnate J. Noah Slee proved especially beneficial, as he subsequently bankrolled her political activism. 22 Margaret Sanger, Journal, November 3-4, 1914, quoted in Kennedy, Birth Control in America, 27. 23 Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization (New York: Maxwell Reprint Company, 1969; originally published by Sanger in 1922); http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1689/ 1689-h/1689-h.htm (accessed November 15, 2013). 24 Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race, 92. P. Scaer: Lutheran Support for the Pro-Life Movement 235 the great spiritual illumination which will transform the world, which will light up the only path to paradise."25 Havelock Ellis, Sanger's sexual guide, was influential in another way, for it was he who advised Sanger to moderate her tactics. In one letter, he counseled, "It is no use, however, being too reckless and smashing your head against a blank wall." In order to change the law, one "needs skill even more than one needs strength."26 Previously, Sanger had worked for socialist and communist causes, arguing that birth control would ennoble the wo~king class no longer to "produce children who will become slaves to feed, fight and toil for the enemy-Capitalism."27 Sanger came to realize that this type of message was doomed to failure. Thus, Sanger began to sell her movement to polite society. Disturbed by the Democratic party's ties to the Roman Catholic Church, she began to work with wealthy Republicans.28 Masterfully playing a game of divide and conquer, Sanger played on the fears of Protestants who were begin­ning to feel outnumbered in cities like Boston and New York. Instead of peddling a workers' revolution, Sander now promoted birth control as a way to cleanse society of its waste products. Taking her message to the middle and upper classes, Sanger sold birth control as a tool with which to weed humanity's garden. In Pivot of Civilization, for instance, she calls immigrants and poor people "human weeds, reckless breeders ... human beings that should never have been born."29 She promoted birth control as a method "to create a race of thoroughbreds."30 Sanger wrote, "More children from the fit, less from the unfit-that is the chief aim of birth control."31 Her goal was a better society through eugenics, so that America would no longer "multiply racial handicaps." Sanger held forth a grand vision of the new American melting pot: "We shall see that it will save the precious metals of racial culture, fused into an amalgam of physical per­fection, mental strength, and spiritual progress."32 Indeed, it is not without 25 Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization. 26 Kennedy, Birth Control in America, 30. 27 Kennedy, Birth Control in America, 110. 28 As Kennedy notes, "In the 1930s, Mrs. Sanger found that argument especially well-received among those who opposed New Deal welfare legislation." Birth Control il1 America, 117. 29 Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization. 30 Margaret Sanger, Birth Control Review 5, no. 11 (November 1921): 2. 31 Sanger, Birth Control Review 3, no. 5 (May 1919): 12. 32 Sanger, Women and the New Race, 45. 236 Concordia Theological Quarterly 77 (2013) reason that after World War II, Nazi leaders claimed to have been influ­enced by ideas imported from America.33 Indeed, there was a racist undertone to the movement. In her own biography, Sanger tells of her experiences offering over a dozen lectures to various chapters of the Ku Klux Klan.34 As Sanger wrote elsewhere, "We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population. .. [but it may occur to] any of their more rebellious members."~ Sanger also began to advocate birth control as an answer to the world's supposed problem of overpopulation. Thomas Malthus, and those who followed him, taught that children were not a blessing but a burden on the planet. Many, influenced by Malthusian notions of overpopulation and limited resources, openly worried that the planet was reaching a breaking point. Sanger capitalized on this fear by promoting her movement globally in places like Europe and Japan, saying that overpopulation threatened domestic prosperity and was one of the major causes of war. The key, of course, was birth control. Finally, Sanger advocated birth control as way to plan a family that was happy, healthy, and wealthy. She has become forever tied to the sinister axiom, "Every child a wanted child." Sanger, was of course quite successful in her endeavors. Having founded the" American Birth Control League" in 1921, and then having served as the first president of Planned Parenthood, Sanger's vision took hold in society and became part of the American culture. While Sanger began her career as an outlaw, her movement triumphed magnificently, so much so that when Planned Parenthood went international, its honorary co-chairs were Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Many of the Protestant churches that at first had opposed her completely fell under her spell. The rebel was now regnant. 33 Edwin Black, "The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics," History News Network (September 2003), http://hnn.us/article/1796 (accessed November 26,2013). 34 Sanger, The Autobiography of Margret Sanger, 366-367. 35 Margaret Sanger commenting on the "Negro Project" in a letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, December 10, 1939. http://smithlibraries.org/ digital/files/ original/ d6358bc 3053c93183295bf2df1cOc931.pdf (accessed November 20,2013). P. Scaer: Lutheran Support for the Pro-Life Movement 237 III. Smitten: Sanger in the LCMS For a particularly interesting example of Sanger's influence, consider the work of LCMS theologian Alfred Rehwinkel.36 It is no coincidence that Rewinkel's book title contains tI!e names of both the organization and the movement founded by Sanger. en the back cover of Planned Parenthood we read, "Dr. Rehwinkel is eminently qualified to discuss planned parent­hood. He was among the few who pioneered open discussion of planned parenthood and has followed its developments for 20 years." Rehwinkel was, in fact, a great admirer of Sanger. The fourth chapter of his book is titled "The Planned Parenthood Movement, Its Struggle for Recognition, and Its Status in America Today." Here Rehwinkel introduces us to his heroine, claiming that Sanger "happily married, was the mother of three children, but later in life separated from her husband, but was not divorced until years later."37 In reality, Sanger, was involved in the free­love movement early on, had many, many affairs, both during and after her first marriage, and entered into a second marriage with the proviso that it be open. Her own children described her as an indifferent and largely absentee mother, often uncomfortable in their presence.38 Sanger's views of marriage as a degenerating and enslaving institutions were wide­ly known; indeed, she had thoroughly documented them herself.39 Despite Sanger's views on marriage and family, Rehwinkel focuses on her sympathy for the poor and downtrodden. He speaks of how Sanger "saw the poverty, the misery, the desperation of weakened pregnant women, the appalling housing conditions, the devastating effect of the criminal abortionist."4o Sanger's catalog of suffering would seem to match St. Paul's. Rehwinkel writes, "Very few men or women had the courage to 36 Alfred M. Rehwinkel, Planned Parenthood and Birth Control in the Light of Christian Ethics (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1959). Rehwinkel (1887-1979) taught theology at Concordia College (Edmonton), served as president of Saint John's College (Winfield, Kansas), and finally taught as a professor at Concordia Seminary (Saint Louis). 37 Rehwinkel, Planned Parenthood, 32. 38 Supposedly, Sanger suffered from a "nervous malady" whenever she had to take care of her children and thus spent very little time with them. Her son Grant said, "Mother was seldom around. She just left us with anybody handy, and ran off we didn't know where." Gray, Margaret Sanger, 61. 39 We should add Sanger's life story was well-known in LCMS circles. In For Better Not for Worse, Walter A. Maier noted Sanger's association with the free love movement, as well as her militant atheism. See Walter A. Maier, For Better Not for Worse: A Manual of Christian Matrimony (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing house, 1935). 40 Rehwinkel, Planned Parenthood, 33. 238 Concordia Theological Quarterly 77 (2013) share with her the odium of public disapproval, though they might share her general ideas. She was harassed by law enforcement agencies, repeat­edly suffered imprisonment, and even her husband had to go to jail for a considerable time merely for having handed to an investigator a pamphlet published by his wife on the u~e of contraceptives."41 Rehwinkel, how-I ever, does not mention that Sanger wanted to eliminate not only poverty but also the poor and the weak. Consider Sanger's words in Pivot of Civilization: "Every single case of inherited defect, every malformed child, every congenitally tainted human being brought into this world is of in­finite importance to that poor individual; but it is of scarcely less impor­tance to the rest of us and to all of our children who must pay in one way or another for these biological and racial mistakes."42 Rehwinkel shared Sanger's concern for overpopulation, writing that "unless some solution is found, the world is rapidly rushing on toward the greatest economic crisis in history, and the standard of living throughout all the world will be brought down to the level, or even below the level, of the hungry peasants of India and Egypt."43 Whatever one thinks of Rehwinkel's advice, it is hardly consonant with Christ's teaching about mammon and children; it is, in fact the same type of rhetoric used by Sanger to win over an aspiring middle class. Like Sanger, Rehwinkel promoted birth control as a means of bettering society: "Again, society may demand the curtailment or control of pregnancy in cases where the parents are suffering from economic or in­dustrial disability and are either unwilling or incapable of supporting their offspring."44 "Economic disability," of course, could mean simply that a family was poor. Rehwinkel also seems to treat pregnancy as a type of ailment that could endanger health. He writes, " A woman does not reach her full physical and psychological maturity until about the age of twenty­two or twenty-three. Pregnancy and childbirth are a great drain on the vitality and the health of the woman."45 The way Rehwinkel organizes his thinking is illustrative of his dependence on Planned Parenthood propaganda. Take for instance, his chapter on "The Practice and Methods of Birth Control in the History of the Human Race." Addressing the topic of abortion, he breaks it down in 41 Rehwinkel, Planned Parenthood, 35. 42 See Sanger, "Women and the Future," chapter 12 in Pivot of Civilization. 43 Rehwinkel, Planned Parenthood, 14. 44 Rehwinkel, Planned Parenthood, 12. 45 Rehwinkel, Planned Parenthood, 10. \ P. Scaer: Lutheran Support for the Pro-Life Movement 239 this way: 1) Embryonic and fetal abortion, depending on whether a child is aborted before or after the fourth month; 2) Spontaneous Abortion (miscarriages); 3) Therapeutic Abortions (by "therapeutic abortion" is meant the removal of the unborn new life by competent physicians and in conformity with the existing laws of a state or country in order to save the life of the pregnant mother); 4) Criminal Abortion. "By 'criminal abortion' is meant one that is produced voluntarily and intentionally in violation of the law in order to terminate an undesirable pregnancy by a married or unmarried woman."46 Here, as elsewhere, Rehwinkel receives and imparts the wisdom of Planned Parenthood without critique. To be sure, doctors did distinguish between "embryonic" and "fetal" abortion, but is there a theological dis­tinction? This would have been the place for Rehwinkel to assert that all life is precious from the moment of conception, even as Christ was con­ceived by the Holy Spirit and so became a human being. But he does not. Likewise problematic is Rehwinkel's category of "Criminal Abortion." Does this not imply that if it were to be made legal, then it would be some­how less of a sin? The term "therapeutic abortion" is likewise problematic, as we have seen in the work of Lawrence Lader. It is one thing to say that abortion may be morally justified to save the life of the mother. But Rehwinkel notes that some physicians were already advocating laws that permit a legal abortion to preserve a woman's future health if she has a disease likely to be aggravated by a pregnancy. Also to eliminate grossly defective children and to guard an emotionally unbalanced woman from a possible mental breakdown. Some doctors even go so far as to advocate that therapeutic abortion be permitted to spare a woman a shame resulting from an illegitimate child or from the con­sequences of rape or incest."47 Having placed these opinions on the table, one would expect Rehwinkel to argue the Christian position that the life inside the womb is a child, created by God, and is precious no matter the circumstances of the conception. One might also expect a strong rebuke against those who advocated abortions for children with birth defects or in cases of rape and incest. Certainly, he should have addressed the issue of shame. But Rehwinkel is silent. He offers only a weak summary: "If a therapeutic abortion becomes imperative to save the mother's life, such an operation cannot be regarded as a violation of the Moral Law.48 46 Rehwinkel, Planned Parenthood, 21. 47 Rehwinkel, Planned Parenthood, 22. 48 Rehwinkel, Planned Parenthood, 22. 240 Concordia Theological Quarterly 77 (2013) It is also striking that Rehwinkel, rather than embracing natural law, seems to fight against it. For instance, he argues that birth control is part of man's dominion over nature. He writes, "As a creature of God, man is at the same time subject to the law of nature, and lord and master over it. He is free to control, to modify, and to change nature to serve his own purpose."49 Then, he applies what appears to be a kind of colonialist mind­set to the human body, adding that "the history of human civilization is a record of man's conquest, control, and modification of nature to serve his own best interest."so If Rehwinkel had meant that men have built dams for the sake of irrigation, one could understand his point, but in the context of speaking about the human body, his argument is subversive. There is nothing here approaching a theology of the body or an appreciation of natural law. This neglect of the natural law would later put the Lutherans at a great disadvantage as they began to speak out in the public square on issues such as abortion and homosexuality. Whatever one thinks of Rehwinkel's work, a prophet he was not. In the latter part of the work, he addresses the fear that a contraceptive so­ciety will result in a shrinking population. Assuring his readers, Rehwinkel writes, "Birth control is not intended to limit families to one, two, or three children .... Planned parenthood and normal-sized families are not mutually exclusive terms. When conditions warrant it, there are, and there always have been and can be, families of many children, within the concept of birth control."SJ Certainly that is not the message of the book cover, which displays the perfect couple with their one, perfect child, nor was this Sanger's message. In Woman and the New Race, the title of one of the chapters says it all: "The Wickedness of Creating Large Familes." Indeed, Sanger writes, "The most serious evil of our times is that of en­couraging the bringing into the world of large families. The most immoral practice of the day is breeding too many children."s2 Had Rehwinkel, an expert on Planned Parenthood, not read Sanger's books? Or, perhaps he thought he could offer a Christian version of Sanger's philosophy. In retrospect, we can see that Sanger's vision became reality; she proved the true prophet. The birthrate in countries infected by Sanger's philosophy, including places like Japan, Europe, and the United States, is drastically low, to the point of being unsustainable, and has become an increasing cause for concern. Indeed, within our own church body, we 49 Rehwinkel, Planned Parenthood, 89. 50 Rehwinkel, Planned Parenthood, 89. 51 Rehwinkel, Planned Parenthood, 104. 52 Sanger, Women and the New Race, 57. P. Scaer: Lutheran Support for the Pro-Life Movement 241 hear the constant refrain, "Where are the children? Why aren't there more young people?" Our own aging church body appears to be yet another dead fruit of Sanger's religion. As to those who wondered whether the use of contraceptives would lead to sexual immorality, Rehwinkel proved again a poor prophet. He writes, "But Christians are not made virtuous or kept from violating the Moral Law of God by fear of physical or social consequences. Christians do not lead a moral or decent life because of pressure from without but are led by motives from within .... It is not the business of the church to make people virtuous by fear or by force."53 This same argument, as we have already seen, was later would be used by to promote the legalization of abortion.54 What is clearly lacking, one can say in hindsight, is wisdom. The book of Proverbs warns not simply about sin, but about entering into situations where bad things are almost sure to happen. So now we know the reality every pastor faces, for there is hardly a couple today that does not co­habitate before marriage. Even more, Rehwinkel's advice is painfully naiVe and other worldly. While he speaks about a Christian's individual moral choice, he has nothing to say about what such behavior will do to society. He says nothing of young people who will be encouraged to use contra­ceptives, only to find that they sometimes do not work. He says nothing about what this uncoupling of sex and marriage would do to the institu­tion of marriage, or what would become of the children.55 Instead, as we see in the Planned Parenthood literature, the issue is simply framed as an individual moral choice. While Rehwinkel draws heavily from the reasoning of Sanger, it is also true that he argues directly against abortion in a number of places. He calls abortion" a universal evil among all peoples of the world" and then labels "willful abortion" a sin. 56 In answer to the question "Do the principles applicable to the use of contraceptives also apply to the practice of abortion?" Rehwinkel offers "an emphatic no."57 He speaks against "criminal abortion," saying, "Since it is the willful destruction of human life, it must be placed in the category of murder. Christians will not burden their conscience with this crime."58 Yet, even here, Rehwinkel's thinking is 53 Rehwinkel, Planned Parenthood, 103. 54 See n. 9. 55 Walter A. Maier, For Better Not for Worse, 399-400. 56 Rehwinkel, Planned Parenthood, 23-24. 57 Rehwinkel, Planned Parenthood, 93. 58 Rehwinkel, Planned Parenthood, 93. 242 Concordia Theological Quarterly 77 (2013) affected by Sanger's vision; he appears more concerned with the con­science of the one having an abortion than he is with the life of the child. This type of thinking, as we shall see, became widespread, even in our own church body, where abortion was talked about in terms of conscience and as a personal and private decision. Soon, of course, there would be no such thing as a criminal abortion, and Christians would in fact, have abortions in great numbers. IV. Birth Control: A Trojan Horse The fact that a LCMS theologian as well regarded as Alfred Rehwinkel could write the book that he wrote reveals the sad truth that many Lutherans of that time were seasoned and softened for the advent of legalized abortion by first drinking the birth control Kool-Aid. Children came to be viewed as a decidedly mixed blessing, with financial ram­ifications. Mother Theresa once supposedly quipped, "How can you say there are too many children? That is like saying there are too many flowers."59 Not so Rehwinkel's book or the thinking in the church that was becoming prevalent at that time. In retrospect, Rehwinkel's book appears to be little more than a Chris­tian endorsement and commercial for Planned Parenthood. Every age has its blindspots, and none of us knows precisely what the future holds. Nevertheless, Rehwinkel's advice is haunting. He urged confused women to go to the experts: "Attention may also be called to planned parenthood clinics found in most of the larger cities of the United State. They are staffed with professional personnel to serve with expert advice and aid. In most cases they will be listed in the telephone directory under "Planned Parenthood Association."6o Sadly, many took his advice, and still do. Rehwinkel's book was popular, selling 50,000 copies in three separate printings, and won over the LCMS to birth control. Rehwinkel had to have known that Sanger's well was poison; perhaps in extreme naivete he thought he could sanitize or even baptize the movement. This naivete has persisted for many years, as evidenced in Ronald Stelzer's Salt, Light, and Signs of the Times, published in 1993. Stelzer writes, Movements in which Rip [Rehwinkel's nickname] had been a pioneer mover, or at least a strong supporter, were going out of control. A classic example is planned parenthood. Rip originally staked a claim 59 These words are likely a highly paraphrased form of Mother Teresa's teachings. See Mother Teresa of Calcutta Center Online, http://www.motherteresa.org/08_info/ Quotesf.html (accessed November 20, 2013). 60 Rehwinkel, Planned Parenthood, 93. P. Scaer: Lutheran Support for the Pro-Life Movement 243 on this Christian no man's land in order to equip God's people to make enlightened ethical decisions appropriate to the moral com­plexities of the modern world. Rip's survey of this untilled territory eventually became normative for most of God's people, but when secularists adopted the cause, it was without the stabilizing norm."61 Stelzer's assessment, while charitable, is off the mark. The secularists were in fact the true pioneers. It may be that Rehwinkel carried the Planned Parenthood agenda, like a Trojan horse, into the minds of our people. Or perhaps, he simply ratified a societal process that was inevitable. Either way, when Lawrence Lader led the fight for legalized abortion, our church body was unprepared for the fight. v. The "Meddling Church": Missteps and Baby Steps When abortion became a hot political issue in the late 1960s and early 70s, the Roman Catholic Church was nearly alone at the demonstrations and protests. What kept Bible-believing Protestants from manning the front lines? Again, by way of anecdotal evidence, we may turn to the Reader's Digest of May 1966. Alongside the article endorsing abortion there was another, written by conservative philanthropist J. Howard Pew, titled "Should the Church "Meddle" in Civil Affairs?" Pew openly worried about two issues: I am concerned that many of the church's top leaders today­especially in what are called the "mainstream" denominations-are sorely failing its members in two ways: 1) by succumbing to a creep­ing tendency to downgrade the Bible as the infallible Word of God, and 2) by efforts to shift the church's main thrust from spiritual to the secular. The two, I believe, are related."62 Pew discusses the church's role in society and urges restraint: "To commit the church, as a corporate body, to controversial positions on which its members differ sharply is to divide the church into warring camps, stirring dissension in the one place where spiritual unity should prevail."63 Pew's article explains much. Conservative Christians by and large had no taste for the 1960s radicals and their civil disobedience. Protests and picket lines belonged to the politics of the left and were activities in which law-abiding 61 Ronald W. Stelzer, Salt, Ligllt, and Signs of tile Till1es (New Haven, Missouri: Lutheran News, 1993), 219. 62 J. Howard Pew, "Should the Church 'Meddle' in Civil Affairs?," Reader's Digest (May 1966): 52. 63 Pew, "Should the Church 'Meddle' in Civil Affairs?," 52. 244 Concordia Theological Quarterly 77 (2013) Christians did not participate. Above all, social controversy should be avoided. What mattered was the inerrant word of God. Lutherans, in particular, were prone to this type of thinking. Though Lutheranism was born in a type of revolution, or perhaps because of it, Lutherans have traditionally stressed obedience to earthly authorities, with government serving in loco parentis. As an immigrant church, The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod felt a special need to assimilate. This problem became especially acute during World War I, when German Americans felt compelled to pledge their allegiance, even to the point of placing the American flag alongside their altars. Lutherans, good and obedient citi­zens, took to heart Paul's words: "Therefore whoever resists authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad" (Rom 13:3). Granted, Paul's words are sound teaching, but after Roe v. Wade, children in the womb had done nothing wrong and had a great deal to fear. Though we knew that it was important to give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, Lutherans seemed less eager to hear Peter's cry that" we must obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29). Buying too deeply into the principle of the separation of church and state, much of conservative Christianity, Lutherans included, took the kind of advice offered by Pew and remained silent on abortion. Not wanting to become involved with social issues, and certainly not wanting to be divisive, conservatives treat­ed abortion as a personal and moral choice. This attitude can be seen in the first baby steps the LCMS took into the abortion debate. In 1966 Lader released both his book Abortion and his Reader's Digest article. Not ready to take up the issue directly, the LCMS chose at its 1967 synodical convention to refer the issue for study.64 Better late than never, the 1971 synodical convention adopted a CTCR statement on abortion: Abortion: Theological, Legal, and Medical Aspects. Admirably, the document holds that "I. Life is a Gift from God; 2. Human Beings are Created for Eternal Life; 3. Human Life is Created for Fulfillment; 4. Life and Death Belong to the Province of God."6s Nevertheless, the report exudes timidity. First, the document is short, as the writers explain in its introduction, "This brevity derives from the conviction that men who are motivated by love of God and faith in Jesus 64 The 1967 LCMS convention, held in New York City, answered the challenge with Resolution 2-28: "To refer Diaconate, Work and Leisure, Therapeutic Abortion, Sterilization, and Euthanasia for Study." 65 Commission on Theology and Church Relations, Abortion: TIleologiCll/, Legal, and MediCllI Aspects (The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, 1971),1-2. P. Scaer: Lutheran Support for the Pro-Life Movement 245 Christ do not need a detailed set of rules to follow slavishly." Instead of offering strong guidelines or prohibitions, the document encourages read­ers "to inquire into the general principles given in the Word whereby they can make their own decisions and judgments on the problems of life as they arise." The document ends on a similar note: Responsible ethical living therefore calls for making personal choices on the basis of validly established principles rather than following a detailed set of regulations in a slavish way. Accordingly, these guide­lines are intended to set forth those principles of God's revelation that should guide individuals in making decisions and judgments on the question of abortion as a theological, legal, and medical problem."66 The report lacks a prophetic tone, a clear statement, or an emphatic imperative. When the church needed a clear trumpet, she received an essay in ethics. As was typical at the time, abortion was treated almost entirely as a personal ethical decision. Missing is a discussion of the child itself, or any serious consideration of what it means to be human, as defined by creation and the incarnation. The church, for whatever reason, was not willing to say, "Don't have an abortion." Instead, the document gives too much weight to the experts, especially the legal and medical community. Scripture is quoted as authoritative, but then, under section three, "Medical Aspects," there is a long quotation taken from the American Medical Association's (AMA) position on abortion, as well as the AMA's Judicial Council. The document, in retrospect, appears naIve, assuming that doctors and lawyers held a certain moral authority. In fact, the AMA had nothing to offer except that abortion be done by "a duly licensed physician" and "in conformance with standards of good medical prac­tice."67 The CTCR then notes that Christian physicians are "guided by Biblical revelation, while the non-Christian physician is not."68 The document then claims that even if abortion is legalized, Christians will continue to act according to God's law, which declares abortion to be a sin. This was, of course, wishful thinking. The document does not take into account that legal abortion would result not only in the death of more children but also in the destruction of the faith of many involved in the procedure. The document then addresses the non-Christian: "But because the proposed permissive legislation would cause non-Christian brothers to 66 Abortion: Theological, Legal, and Medical Aspects, 1. 67 Abortion: 771eological, Legal, and Medical Aspects, 4. 68 Abortion: Theological, Legal, and Medical Aspects,S. 246 Concordia Theological Quarterly 77 (2013) stumble, the Christian will continue to hope that the laws will reflect the teachings of Holy Scripture on this issue." Oddly, the concern is for the stumbling of the non-Christian brother rather than for the child who will be put to death by the one having an abortion. When Lutherans might have been spurred to action, they were instead only encouraged to "hope." Strikingly, the report offers no real discussion of natural law. The CTCR concedes, "Few will question the abstract constitutional and legal right of the people to substitute for existing laws a policy of official permissiveness on the part of the state in respect to abortion."69 The CTCR concedes that the argument against abortion is mainly, if not entirely, a biblical one. This is where a discussion of natural law should have taken place, but is absent, even as it was in Rehwinkel's discussion of birth control. Though living in a nation whose own credo is that every person is endowed by his creator with the inalienable gift of life, the document remains silent and concedes that the laws against abortion are arguably nothing more than "the religious credo of a minority or a diminishing majority."7o Thus, the CTCR is left to say only that abortion is a sin, because God's word says so, as if that word were not based on a fundamental reality that recognizes the inherent dignity of human life. While the LCMS was officially on record as being pro-life, that message was not always getting out to its pastors and people. In fact, for a time, the Synod sent out decidedly mixed signals. In 1976, Concordia Publishing House released two books on counseling by Eldon Weisheit: Should I Have an Abortion? and its companion Abortion: Resources for Pastoral Counseling. These books are remarkable in that they followed the Planned Parenthood template, according to which decisions about abortion should be left up to the personal decision of the woman in consultation with her doctor and trusted advisors. Throughout the books, Weisheit recommends a sensitive approach when dealing with women struggling with the question of abortion. As Weisheit explains in his preface, "Since this is a people book, it is not to be rated as being for or against abortion."7l For Weisheit it was all about making a good decision. And so, Weisheit ends the work with this open­ended advice, ''It is important for you now to make the best possible choice as you consider your own situation. But it is also important that your decision fit into the plan you see in your own life. Let this decision 69 Abortion: Theological, Legal, and Medical Aspects, 4. 70 Abortion: Theological, Legal, and Medical Aspects, 4. 71 Eldon Weisheit, Should T Have an Abortion? (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1976), 11. P. Scaer: Lutheran Support for the Pro-Life Movement 247 lead you towards your goals in life, not away from them."72 With striking moral ambiguity, Weisheit offers no direct guidance, no word from the Lord. What is also notable is the kind of self-centeredness that Weisheit encourages. He speaks of "you" making the best decision, and "you considering your own situation," and again about "your goals in life." Weisheit's message would have been especially soothing to those young women seeking empowerment. This message also had a ready audience in would-be grandmothers, who wanted the best for their own daughters whose goals in life surely included college and professional careers. Weisheit supposedly wrote this as a "people book," but has precious little to say about the person who is most affected by the abortion, namely, the little child. Consider also the advice that Weisheit gives to would-be counselors, surely many of them pastors. "The counselor needs to be aware of medical facts and resources. Where can an abortion be obtained? What is the cost? What are the circumstances? What method will be used? When must it be done?"73 Now, this is remarkable. Instead, of saying that a pastor should become aware of pro-life counselors, he must instead have, presumably the name, number, and address of the local abortionist ready at hand in his Rolodex. If the goal was to make abortion palatable for Christians, one could not find better resources than the books of Weisheit. As women make deci­sions concerning abortions, Weisheit encourages them to think through the implications of their choices. Weisheit writes, "If you are determined to have an abortion, go to a doctor who is well regarded in your community. He will give you proper medical advice." As with Rehwinkel and the 1971 CTCR document, one is struck by such reliance on authority figures who are presumably wise and good. Ever the sensitive counselor, Weisenheit adds, The experience of an abortion may make you grateful it was available or it may make you regret either the need for an abortion or the deci­sion to have done it. Do not let yourself get into a position of always having to defend your course of action. Be willing to grow from it, knowing that growth always involves change. You have not always been right in your decisions 100 percent of the time in past decisions. Your security as a person does not depend your totally being right this time.74 72 Weisheit, ShouLd I Have an Abortion?, 101. 73 Weisheit, ShouLd I Have an Abortion?, 111 74 Weisheit, Should I Have an Abortion?, 96. 248 Concordia Theological Quarterly 77 (2013) With the admitted advantage of hindsight, such" advice" is beyond belief. Weisheit speaks of abortion only as a moral decision that will need wise counseling. Advising the woman that she should not beat herself up or defend herself for not scoring 100 on the test, nothing is said of the fact that her child is now dead because of her personal decision and the act of a "well regarded" physician. Or, consider Weisheit's questions for women who are contemplating keeping their child. "The special questions for you to face are: Will the problem that has made me consider an abortion become a problem for the child? Or will it remain a problem for me and therefore cause problems for the child? Would a baby add extra strain on me and make my problems even greater?"75 Weisheit plays the role of the serpent, offering the pos­sibility that not having an abortion will lead to greater pain. Weisheit seems not to be able to help himself as he encourages women and counselors to playa game of "What If?" Eldon advises the pregnant woman to "imagine what your relationship with God would be after an abortion. Will you want to avoid Him? Will you feel a need to make up for something you have done wrong? Will you feel He has helped you through a problem?" What shameful words. Weisheit, the counselor, leaves open the option of thinking about abortion as God's solution to one's problem. How were Weisheit's books received? Lutheran Women's Quarterly commended the books, calling them" open ended."76 Kurt Marquart, on the contrary, understood the danger of such open-endedness. In an aptly worded essay titled "Killing with Kindness," he wrote: "Unsuspecting Christian women naturally trust that no deadly poison will be dispensed through church-related publications. The open-ended Weisheit books constitute, in the deepest biblical sense of the word, a skandolan. Good Lord deliver US."77 Indeed Weisheit's books injected the Planned Parent­hood poison into the mainstream of our church and are a shameful re­minder of the need to be ever vigilant. In addition to Marquart, another theologian who spoke unequivocally against abortion in those early years was David Scaer.78 Shortly after the legalization of abortion in 1973, he spoke presciently of abortion as our 7S Weisheit, Should I Have an Abortion?, 97. 76 Lutheran Women's Quarterly (Fall 1976), 24. 77 Kurt E. Marquart, "Killing with Kindness," CTQ 41, no. 1 (January 1977): 49. 78 David P. Scaer, "Abortion: A Moment for Conscientious Reflection," The Spril1gfielder 36, no. 3 (December 1972): 180-184. P. Scaer: Lutheran Support for the Pro-Life Movement 249 American holocaust, challenging Lutherans to stand, this time, on the right side of history. He spoke not of a moral choice, but of the inherent value of the unborn child. He argued that the one inside the womb is indeed a hu­man being whose life is defined by the incarnation of Christ, who as the embryonic child redeemed all embryonic children. To those who speak of unwanted children, he claimed that every child is wanted by God. Though Lutherans perhaps never acted on his word, he suggested boycotts of doctors and hospitals that performed abortions, and even suggested that nurses baptize aborted children with life still in them. As he saw it, "Such actions might only be candles in the wind, but sometimes little candles have started large fires."79 In retrospect, perhaps, not much came of this advice, though his final word is haunting: "In this matter, I would rather stand guilty for having done too much to halt it, than too little or nothing to stop it."sO Such a principled stand was, in those early years, the exception rather than the rule. One might have hoped, for example, that good counseling and education about abortion would be found in The Lutheran Witness, which had long been one of the Synod's primary teaching tools. For some time, however, the magazine offered very little discussion on the matter, and sadly, at first, the advice was quite bad. The January 1973 issue, published just one month before the Roe v. Wade decision, included a full-page book review by Oscar E. Feucht of David Mace's Abortion: The Agonizing Decision. The book's title was typical of the time as proponents attempted to frame the debate in terms of personal choice. In 1968, for example, Bantam published The Terrible Choice: The Abortion Dilemma. In 1971, Indiana University Press published The Agonizing Choice: Birth Con trot Religion, and the Law. In his review, Feucht introduces Mace as "an internationally known authority on marriage and marriage counseling, a social scientist with a Christian frame of reference, to write this much needed book."81 Again, we see the deference given authority figures. The book is based upon the story of a woman given the name Helen who is faced with the agonizing decision of abortion. We are brought into her inner thoughts during this terrible time. Helen wonders to herself, "Abortion is a decision to take life-only a beginning of human life, it's true, and mind you, I think this could be justified for good enough reasons. 79 Scaer, "Abortion: A Moment for Conscientious Reflection," 184. 80 Scaer, " Abortion: A Moment for Conscientious Reflection," 184. 81 Oscar Feucht, "Book Review of Abortion: TIle Agonizing Decision," TIle Lutheran Witness 92 (January 1973),15. 250 Concordia Theological Quarterly 77 (2013) But I've got to be very sure my reasons are good enough."82 Remarkably, Feucht offers no critique of Helen's assessment. Though a Lutheran, he doesn't criticize her obvious attempts at self-justification, nor does he question her evaluation of the child as "only a beginning of human life." Feucht then notes that the book encourages counseling the explores questions such as: "Keep the child? Give the child up for adoption? Abort the child? Each of these questions involves problems." So the book review reveals again a deep-seated moral ambiguity. That Feucht could recom­mend this book is deeply disturbing. The emphasis on personal choice permeates Mace's book, which he concludes with this epilogue: It doesn't really matter what Helen decided. She clearly understood her options and she made the choice to the best of her ability. It was not my task as her counselor to influence her one way or the other­only to help her freely to decide for herself. And now, you also have to decide. I cannot know what your decision will be. But it is my hope that as a result of reading this book, you now understand the issues more clearly, and this will enable you to "take your destiny in your own two hands" and to make a choice you can live with comfortably in the coming years.83 Again, the advice is breathtakingly shallow and selfish, without a thought for the life of the child who will die uncomfortably and with no chance of seeing the coming years. What does Feucht in his Lutheran Witness review say of this work? Again, he appeals to the author's authority and expert knowledge, saying, "It comes from an internationally known authority on marriage and family life who has been a cherished contributor to Lutheran conferences on ministry to families." However cherished Mace may have been, his advice was deadly and callous, as was Oscar Feucht's review. The author, who in the previous decade had written Everyone a Minister, could not bring himself at this pivotal moment in history to take a stand in a lowly book review and simply say, "Every unborn child a person." This was the position marked out by The Lutheran Witness on the eve of the Roe v . Wade decision. The topic of abortion appears again in July 1976 issue of The Lutheran Witness, coinciding with the nation's bicentennial and addressing, appro­priately enough, the issue of church and state. The author of the article, certainly an authority figure, was none other than Paul Simon, the would-82 David R. Mace, Abortion: The Agonizing Decision (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1972),86. 83 Mace, Abortion: TIle Agonizing Decision, 139. P. Scaer: Lutheran Support for the Pro-Life Movement 251 be senator who had served as Illinois' lieutenant Governor and U.s. Congressman. Indeed, guided by a strong moral compass he had begun his career as a crusader against gambling and prostitution. In his article, Simon urged Christians to become involved in politics as part of their responsibility "to be concerned about the poor and the sick and the handicapped-and particularly the hungry," for these issues can be addressed most effectively "in the arena of politics." Abortion, the killing of the unborn, was, however, another matter. Simon writes, "Another church-state issue that is much more complicated than most people believe is the abortion issue. People with strong religious convictions are on both sides, each side claiming that if you do not support them you are violating Christian principle. Obviously, both sides can't be right." To those Chris­tians frustrated with abortion, Simon writes, "People who write to me see this issue (and most issues) as clear cut. They often do not understand the complexities of either the legislation or the problems which our society confronts."84 So, according to this way of thinking, if some evil or mis­guided Christians support abortion, all Christians should remain silent. With Christian friends likes these, the unborn didn't need enemies. But there were friends on the horizon. By the early 1980s, a prophetic voice was rising up within the LCMS, not from its elected leaders so much as from its faithful women. First on the scene was Jean Garten, whose book Who Broke the Baby, helped decode the euphemisms and lay bare the deceptions of the abortion movement.85 The Lutheran Witness also re­positioned itself as it opened its pages to this new way of framing the abortion debate. For example, in July 1982 Garton wrote" Abortion" for a continuing feature called" A Faith to Live By." Refreshingly, she spoke about abortion not simply as a moral decision, but specifically about "the unborn children and their right to life."86 Then, in January 1983, Carolyn Blum, herself involved in "Lutherans For Life," wrote "Abortion and Apathy," in which she spoke of the unborn as "human beings," and urged readers to pray for the unborn, support pro-life education, and become politically involved. She wrote heroically, saying, "God's law is constant. His word that unborn children are valuable in His sight is still true. Man's law is changeable. The Supreme Court decision proclaimed that abortion­on-demand is legal for all nine months of pregnancy. The law can be 84 Paul Simon, The Lutheran Witness 95 (July 1976): 5. 85 Jean S. Garton, Who Broke the Baby (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1979). See also Garton's account of the origins of Lutherans For Life below (337-341). 86 Jean S. Garton, "Abortion," Tile Lutheran Witness 101 (July 1982), 25. 252 Concordia Theological Quarterly 77 (2013) changed."8? In November 1983, we find" A Prophetic Statement of Today's Holocaust," again authored by a woman, Robin Mueller, who wrote about abortion as a holocaust worse than Hitler's, and one for which our nation will be held accountable.88 What is striking about these three articles, all written by women, is how forcefully they challenged the status quo, and how they framed the issue as one that needed to be countered both cul­turally and politically. By the early 1980s, it would seem, our church body was better prepared to tackle the abortion issue. Yet, our movement has remained slow. How might this change? VI. Preachers Must Be Silent No More While the Synod has over the years passed one resolution for life after another, why is it that members of our congregations have been so slow to rally to the cause? Why do the same Lutherans who sit in the pews not march in the streets or volunteer at the clinics? During my admittedly brief time in the parish, I worked to promote pro-life issues with only modest success. As part of a public expression of support for life, I recruited members to join in a "Life Chain," during which people of goodwill stood side-by-side along the streets of Indianapolis. Our congregation also offered some support to a local crisis pregnancy center founded to aid and care for pregnant women who were frightened or alone. However, I found recruiting difficult. A few people heartily joined in, but many remained silent and avoided the topic altogether. Why? Could it be that abortion has affected our fellow Christians as much as it has affected society as a whole? Plamled Parenthood is more than a provider of abortions; they understand that women are their customers. Birth control pills and devices are sold, with the knowledge that they will fail. According to their website, "Abortion is a safe and legal procedure." They soon add, "Abortions are very common. In fact, lout of 3 women in the U.S. have an abortion by the time they are 45 years 0Id."89 Of course, this is not simply a presentation of the facts, but a method of recruiting. If one in three women has an abortion, then it must be all right. But Planned Parenthood says nothing about the lingering pain and guilt that many feel after having an abortion. 87 Carolyn Blum, "Abortion and Apathy," Tile Lutlleran Witness 102 (January 1983): 21. 88 Robin Mueller, "A Prophetic Statement of Today's Holocaust," Tile Llltheran Witness 102 (November 1983): 3. 89 Planned Parenthood, "Abortion is a safe and legal way to end pregnancy." http:j j www.plannedparenthood.orgjhealth-topics j abortion-4260.asp (accessed November 20, 2013). P. Scaer: Lutheran Support for the Pro-Life Movement 253 Some groups have stepped up to address this problem. "Silent No More," for instance, was formed by women who had abortions but now regret their decision. The problem, as I have seen it, is that women who have had abortions carry with them a special guilt. That guilt is often carried not only by the women, but often by their mothers and friends who have been complicit, even by actions as simple as driving them to the abortion clinic. Now, in one sense, no sin is greater than another. To lust is to commit adultery, and to hate is to commit murder. The good news of the gospel proclaims that all sins have been more than paid for on the cross of Calvary. Nevertheless, the fact remains that abortion does more damage to the soul and leaves behind what seems to many women a type of indelible stain, a scar that cannot be healed. The leaders of the abortion movement are defiant. They not only deny the sin of abortion but hold it up as a virtue. Others, knowing that abortion is wrong, retreat into denial, thus shutting themselves down, which often results in a hardening of the heart. What St. Paul says of the sexual sin applies, I think, to abortion: "All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body" (1 Cor 6:18). The pain of abortion is therefore intensely personal, for it involves killing­within the body-one whom God has given us to nurture. Naturally, abortion carries with it much personal shame, pain, and guilt. At this point, corporate confession is helpful, but often not enough. Women need a place to confess this sin in its particularity, an opportunity to unburden themselves of what Margaret Sanger called "the dark secret" of our so­ciety. This is perhaps why, in my experience, there are many more Catholic women who have been open with their abortions, as well as their regrets, for among pro-life Catholics there is a more robust access to private confession and absolution, which is especially curative of such sin. Now, we might argue that we, as Lutherans also offer private confession and absolution for any who are particularly burdened. The problem, though, is that when a person is unaccustomed to the practice it appears fright­eningly foreign, less like a means of forgiveness than a foreboding last resort. Better it would be to teach our children the practice of individual confession and absolution in younger days when the stakes do not feel so terribly high. The other problem we face is a kind of self-imposed code of silence. I find it striking that within The Lu theran Witness, for the longest time, the only pro life articles were written by women. Shepherds often feel sheep­ish, feeling perhaps that as men, they cannot speak about such a sensitive woman's issue. This same thinking mirrors the phenomenon in families, where mothers would take their daughters to the abortion clinic, while the 254 Concordia Theological Quarterly 77 (2013) father stayed out of the situation entirely. Concerning this matter, I have corresponded with one of the co-founders of "Silent No More," the organization designed to help hurting women who now regret their abortions. She replied with this advice: liThe key to helping women con­nect with the confessional is to have the priest actually talk about abortion from the pulpit. Those who have had abortions must be made aware of their sin, as well as Christ's forgiveness. They need also to go through a time of personal healing where they can grieve the death of their child." So, preachers must preach and speak not only of life, in some vague or abstract way, but of the person in the womb. Here, we do well to remember that abortion is not primarily a moral problem, or a personal decision; rather, it gets to the very heart of our faith in Christ, who himself sanctified all human life from the moment of conception. What we say about the unborn child is ultimately what we say about Christ, and about what it means to be human. Part of this preaching must also be directed to the parents of teenagers. As we think of our children, we must teach them once more that their bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. In essence, we must speak to them of their dignity. The other, often unspoken, problem is that as parents we want our young people to achieve certain goals, including college and ac­cess to a fulfilling career. These goals must be questioned, or at least rela­tivized. Motherhood must be held up as noble, and our obligation to our littlest neighbor must come before our devotion to career and to lifestyle as proposed by Planned Parenthood. Children are to be celebrated and welcomed. VII. Ecumenical Boundaries: The Pro-Life Witness The pro-life movement is decidedly ecumenical, and historically, Roman Catholics have taken the lead. But we, as Lutherans, have much to offer, for our Christ-centered witness moves us beyond morals, and even natural law, to the very incarnation of Christ, which defines our humanity and redeems all children. The one who is the Way and the Truth is also the Life. For this reason, perhaps March 25 must become for us a new Christmas, for it is at the Annunciation that our Lord's life truly began among us. Shall we not, with John, himself in the womb, leap for joy at our coming Savior, God's lamb at his littlest? Some worry that participation in such movements will turn non-Christians off. In fact, the opposite is often true. Consider the case of perhaps the greatest American convert of the late twentieth century, Dr. Bernard Nathanson. Nathanson was, with Lawrence Lader, one of the co-founders of NARAL and headed the largest abortion P. Scaer: Lutheran Support for the Pro-Life Movement 255 clinic in America, where over 20,000 children were aborted. Here was a man who was so confident about what he was doing that he aborted his own child. In time, he came to question intellectually the ethics of the issue. He began to speak up for life, even though he was an avowed atheist. Having changed his mind, what changed his heart? Nathanson speaks of a pro-life demonstration he witnessed outside of an abortion clinic: They began to sing hymns softly, joining hands and swaying from the waist. I circulated on the periphery at first, observing the faces, inter­viewing some of the participants, making notes furiously. It was only then that I apprehended the exaltation, the pure love on the faces of that shivering mass of people, surrounded as they were by hundreds of New York City policemen."90 By not taking a stand, we show our apathy; we tell the world we do not care, and that they need not lose sleep. But our Lord was right when he said that they will know us by our love. Looking at the Christians praying in both sorrow and joy, Nathanson felt the "vile bog of sin and evil," and yet the experience "held out a shimmering sliver of Hope to me in the growing belief that Someone had died for my sins and my evil two millennia ago."91 The one who is forgiven much, loves much. Nathanson writes, "1 am no longer alone. It has been my fate to wander the globe in search of the One without Whom I am doomed, but now I seize the hem of his robe in desperation, in terror, in celestial access to the purest need I have ever known."92 Is it possible that we will be able to maintain our Lutheran faith with­out getting involved and taking a stand? Well, as the uterine brother of our Lord might tell us, "Faith without works is ... abortion." And for those of us who have been born not once, but twice, that choice is simply not viable. 90 Bernard Nathanson, The Hand of God: A Journey from Death to Life by the Abortion Doctor vVho Changed His Mind (Washington D.C: Regnery, 1996), 192. 91 Nathanson, The Hand of God, 194. 92 Nathanson, The Hand of God, 202.