Pure and Undefiled
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. -James 1:27
Abolitionists do not primarily seek to accomplish this or that political end (though some conceivable political ends are desirable.) It is not our goal to establish “make-a-better-choice” pregnancy help centers that attempt to stem the tide of child sacrifice on demand, while tacitly accepting the continued practice as an unfortunate but permanent societal fixture. While we are dissidents in this culture of death, our primary aim is not to shut down grimy abortion mills through protest and while we actively seek to rescue children being carried into these mills by the thousands we do not consider “clinic ministry” to be the front lines of the battle against the evil of our age. As abolitionists we have asked ourselves “What does christianity look like in a culture that kills it’s children?” Our defining purpose is to put the answer to this question into action in our daily lives. In short we are just christians who love our Lord and long to be doers of his word and not hearers only.
The Lord has told us in scripture what he requires of his people. We are to act justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly. We are to love the Lord above all else and love our neighbors as ourselves. We are to lay down our lives for our friends, to rescue those stumbling to the slaughter, to make disciples of all nations, to care for widows and orphans in their distress, and to keep ourselves unstained by the world. We are to be salt and light, a city on a hill. We are to expose evil deeds of darkness. These commands are to be carried out by all followers of Christ in all times and all places. What does it look like to carry them out in a time and a place where the rampant slaughter of human children is widely practiced, culturally entrenched, socially embraced and almost universally tolerated?
Agitation
Obedience to these commands does require us to be a voice in the wilderness proclaiming the word of the Lord. We must expose evil. We must turn our culture upside down. We must awaken the professing church to rise up against the evil of the age. We must cry out with a loud voice “Dear World! Babies are being murdered here!” before the very stones cry out. To this end we hold signs, wear t-shirts and distribute true propaganda. We evangelize on the frontlines where the nations children are taught and on the final lines where our nation’s children are slaughtered. Our dissidence against a complacent and complicit culture, by it’s very nature, makes waves. It is designed to. The agitation mode of abolition…agitates. But agitation is only one of the modes that abolitionists must operate in if we are to fulfill all that has been required of us. The other mode, of equal or greater importance, is more difficult, more costly, and garners fewer accolades but if we neglect it, all of our other efforts amount to clanging cymbals.
Assistance
Adopting the fatherless, rescuing the downtrodden and abused, feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, visiting the imprisoned, supporting the widowed, the abandoned, and the orphaned, are essential to abolition simply because they are essential to following Christ and loving him by obeying his commands. For this reason abolitionists minister at the clinics to abortion-minded women and girls who have determined in their hearts to murder their children and in the culture to abortion-minded women and girls who have not yet sold their virtue. For this reason abolitionists seek to rescue unborn children from the abortionist’s deadly tools. For this reason abolitionists adopt children abandoned or abused by their natural parents and offer help and support to struggling families. For this reason we offer assistance to pregnant mothers in crisis. We do these things because that is what christianity looks like in culture that kills its children. BUT! That is not all we must do! Abolitionists are not seeking to bandage the gaping wound of child sacrifice with some efforts targeted at some of it’s victims or some of it’s perpetrators. We are christians obeying the example of our Lord! We must attend to the sick where we find them. We must provide for those who cannot provide for themselves and assist those who are struggling to do so. It is not only the pregnant teen or the at-risk infant for whom we must lay down our lives. It is every neighbor who is in need. Every abolitionist society ought to be a place where a drug addicted youth can turn (and knows to turn!) to find refuge without enablement and where faithful christians will help him find work and transportation and a safe place to live, will hold him accountable and will care for his soul and disciple him*. All abolitionists should be people to whom an abused wife can turn to and say “If I come to you tomorrow with nothing but my children and the clothes on my back, will you help me to start over?” and be received unflinchingly and warmly.*
*Actual accounts
Abolitionists love their neighbors and do not ask, with the pharisees, “who is my neighbor?” Your neighbors are the pre-born baby and his mother. Your neighbors are the enslaved, the helpless, the homeless, the hopeless, the lost.
If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. -1 Corinthians 13:2
Abolitionists are prophets of protest.
Abolitionists are agents of mercy.
Abolitionists are Christians applying their faith to culture enslaved to sex and in love with death.
Go and do thou likewise.