The Church faces the challenge of pro-abortion America

With the Republican Party’s shift on abortion and the exultancy of Democrats concerning “reproductive freedom,” one thing should now be clear to American Christians: Whoever wins in November will represent to some degree a deeper, more significant victory. That victory is not merely the triumph of the sexual revolution, where the popular imagination is gripped by the idea of sex as recreation, free of any obligations or commitments. It is the victory of a deeper vision of what it means to be human—to be radically free, autonomous, and responsible for self-creation. That is one lesson we can draw from the fact that most Americans are to varying degrees in favor of abortion.

It was clear in the aftermath of the fall of Roe v. Wade that the pro-life movement had no real strategy for addressing the way forward from that point. It was caught off guard by the comprehensive nature of the backlash so that in retrospect the victory now seems a Pyrrhic one, followed by nothing but defeats and setbacks everywhere the question has been put on the ballot. American churches now face an analogous question: What is the plan forward for such churches given that the political landscape is about to make explicit the underlying abolition of man that the modern revolution of the self represents? Online cosplayers may well continue their posturing and polemics as if nothing has changed. But congregations are generally made up of real people who live in the real world. They have jobs, mortgages, and student loans. They have to be in the world, even as they are called not to be of it. How is the Church to minister to such?

Some churches will struggle with this. Those who have instrumentalized the gospel to this-worldly ends, whether those who peddle the prosperity gospel or those who focus their attention on political/cultural issues, left and right, may well be doomed. Once doctrinal truth is subordinated in either function or emphasis to worldly success of whatever kind, then when such success fails to materialize, so much the worse for the doctrine.

This is not to say that we as Christians are not to seek the welfare of this earthly city and not to strive for policies that protect the weak and the vulnerable and reflect and support what it truly means to be human. But the Church’s first and greatest task is always to present her people with the glory of God via the gospel of the Son manifest in the flesh, summoning us to faith and repentance. That is the foundation of everything else she does as a body and we do as individuals. That task is why the Lord calls the Church, His creation, into being. Therefore, worship that apes the trivia and the childishness of the world, or pulpit ministries that are obsessed with temporal politics and power rather than with eternal life, will not survive as even vaguely Christian in a world where the priorities of the culture are now so clearly at odds with the idea of human beings as made in the image of God.

The choice for such churches will be simple: to fall into line with the tastes of the world or to become increasingly angry and bitter. The latter option is lethal, something that will eventually drive out those central characteristics of Christian community: gratitude to God and forgiveness of enemies. All that will be left will be the desiccated, bitter souls of the disillusioned.

As America’s secularism becomes obvious, we who are Christians and church people need a strategy for the future. Strange to tell, such is nothing more than what should have been our strategy all along: a focus on things above, of the things of eternity, exactly that for which the Apostle Paul called in his letter to the Colossians. This is not to justify a quietist passivity in the face of our society’s destruction of what it means to be human. But it is to provide a context for action and a horizon of expectation that reflects the New Testament’s teaching on the Church, the world, and our place in both.