Our inconvenient truth

The question came up tonight: what are Christians to do with George Tiller, partial-birth abortion profiteer?

It came on the heels of a friend's account of meeting a member in Tiller's church, who was struck by what seemed to her the unchristian behavior of abortion protesters who came into the sanctuary during a Sunday service, chanting slogans and snapping pictures of parishioners. What should we tell this woman? That these protesters were indeed unchristian? That they were misguided, but had good cause? That they didn't go far enough?

It's an interesting question, though seemingly straightforward. We know Tiller is an unrepentant mass murderer, and so our Bible makes clear that he should be handed over to the Devil, as Paul might say, via excommunication. The problem, of course, is that we Protestants (he goes to a Lutheran church in Wichita) haven't a Church from which to excommunicate Tiller, only a collection of churches, most of which recognize neither the authority nor the doctrine of the others. Thus Tiller, having finally been tossed out of his previous church, crossed town to another church just as easily as any of us finds a restaurant.

So what are we to do? Perhaps all the Bible-believing pastors and elders in the city could meet with Tiller's pastor, and once they have her on record, they could go to the governing body above her, and so on, until they formally establish that this entire branch of Lutheranism is rotten. Then perhaps they could formally, ecumenically, excommunicate the whole lot of them. We are, after all, believers in one holy, apostolic, catholic Church, aren't we?

Ah, but so is the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, of which Tiller's Church, Reformation Lutheran (oh, the irony!), is a member. Very well then, but the ELCA statement on abortion, amidst tortured language that in effect admits the church elders have no dogmatic guidance to provide, offers this reasonably clear statement: "This church opposes ending intrauterine life when a fetus is developed enough to live outside a uterus with the aid of reasonable and necessary technology."

But that is Tiller's specialty, executing healthy infants while the tops of their heads remain in the birth canal, justified by the cavernous loophole known as the mother's "mental well-being." So it would seem the pastors and elders opposed to this monstrosity in their city might have a clear-cut case to make with the governing body of the ELCA: remove your pastor, for she is offering communion to this unrepentant murderer and violator of your own policy on abortion.

Or we could wait for old age to do Tiller in, and suffer less frustration. Because many pastors and elders want nothing to do with abortion politics, except insofar as they can sideswipe it from the safety of their pulpits when the mood hits. So the ELCA will feel no pressure to remove its heretical pastor, who in turn will feel no pressure to remove the murderer from the midst of her congregation. Not that a visitation from 500 Wichita pastors would be anything to the leadership of the ELCA but a badge of honor. Look at how we stand up for humanity in the face of intolerance. See how we suffer for Christ.

So what are Christians to do? Picket the church service? Distribute pictures of aborted babies, so other people's children can have nightmares? Pray and wait?

Consider this thought experiment: Suppose 10,000 Christian men stood around Tiller's clinic, for as long as it took, saying simply: Enough. What would the police do? Would the governor call in the National Guard? And what if another 50,000 joined them? We can get 100,000 men to come blubber all over one another at a Promise Keepers convention, so the logistics aren't impossible. What would happen then? And what if this band of brothers, after shutting down the city of Wichita until its putatively Christian leaders took action and Tiller was bankrupted, moved on to the next killing field, and the next after that?

Perhaps the federal government would be forced to aggressively combat this peaceful resistance. Perhaps many of us would suffer. Perhaps it would divide political parties, and churches, and even families. Sound familiar?

And just maybe it would make abortion an issue we can't avoid. For we are, most of us, waiting on someone else to do something, primarily because we are terrified of standing alone. So perhaps the question isn't: what are Christians to do?, but rather: When will we stand up together and do it?