How The GOP Abandoned The Unborn
The Republican National Committee met yesterday in Milwaukee to hammer out the party’s 2024 platform and the results were… well, very Trumpy. After a brief and futile tussle, the committee revealed a pre-written 16-page document which relied heavily on ALL CAPS and lightly on substance, and seems entirely apropos for our current political circus.
In short, this new platform is a stark departure from the reliably substantive and principled GOP platforms of years past, especially pertaining to abortion. Some conservatives saw this coming from miles away, while others were as shocked as Jake Tapper after the first presidential debate two weeks ago. “We knew it was bad, but not this bad!”
So how bad is bad? Pretty darn. For the first time since the 1980s, the Republican Party’s platform makes no mention of the sanctity of human life. Gone is the call to end taxpayer funded abortion and to ban the inhumane sale of tissue and organs harvested from aborted babies. As of now, the Republican Party no longer officially opposes infanticide. The GOP’s formerly robust declaration: “We assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a right to life which cannot be infringed” was swapped out for very reassuring one-liner: “We proudly stand for families and Life.” That’s it. Just Life. The Republican Party’s new position on abortion is only slightly less nuanced than Papa Tevye’s drunken song from Fiddler on the Roof: “To Life! L’chim!”
Oy Vey! How did we get here? Rather than regaling you with another insightful take on the meteoric rise of D.J. Trump and the capital “E” evils of populism, I’d like to review what we, as American Christians, have been told about our two-party system and the nature of those parties as they pertain to certain fundamental Biblical truths.
In the early 2000’s, Evangelical leaders, eager to disassociate themselves from Jerry Fallwell and the “religious right,” began encouraging Christians to abandon all political allegiances. Followers of Christ don’t fit into America’s two-party system, they assured us. After all, a Lamb is on the throne, not an elephant or a donkey. Instead of getting into the weeds, they suggested a politically agnostic “third way” forward. “Each party has its own solution to the problems of our age. There are nice Christians in either party. Who’s to say which one gets it right?” Not knowing felt humble, above the fray and gave us a hip “not of this world” exile vibe.
By 2016, cries to adopt this third way of cultural engagement reached fever pitch. Platformed pastors from coast to coast gagged at the thought of inadvertently associating themselves with the Republican Party. Pastor of Redeemer Church and pioneer of the third way, the late Tim Keller, perfectly articulated this sentiment in a Tweet from 2022:
“I know abortion is a sin, but the Bible doesn’t tell me the best political policy to decrease or end abortion in this country, nor which political or legal policies are most effective to that end. The current political parties will say that their policy most aligns morally with the Bible, but we are allowed to debate that and so our churches should not have disunity over debatable political differences!”
How absurd. Yes, the Bible doesn’t hand us a clean-cut policy solution to abortion, pre-drafted and ready to implement at the local, state and federal levels of government, but perhaps we ought to grab onto “Thou shalt not kill” and see where things take us. How about we make killing babies a non-starter. Whether you were familiar with the old GOP position on abortion or if this is all new to you, I’d encourage you to give the old 2016/2020 Republican platform a quick scan. As you read those statements of belief, ask yourself: “Why did so many evangelical pastors find those principles too embarrassing to mention?” Pretending that America’s political parties simply provided two different solutions to abortion was disingenuous and damaging. The GOP of old opposed abortion and the Democratic party still supports it wholeheartedly. Christians could and still can discern the differences between the two party positions on abortion, or at least those Christians who still believe that scripture is useful for teaching, preaching and correcting so that we may be equipped for every good work, including for the good work of participating in the political process.
Last year, my home state of Ohio voted to enshrine abortion “rights” into our state constitution. In the year leading up to the election, I traveled around the state with other pro-life leaders encouraging pastors to preach on the sanctity of human life and to disciple their congregations faithfully in this pivotal moment. Many churches, on paper, hold the orthodox view of human life and the intrinsic value of pre-born children. Often conservative pastors and elders tuck these truths away in their denomination’s founding documents and church statements of faith. They’re on the shelf and ready to pull out if ever questions arise. But rarely do they bring these Biblical principles to the attention of their congregation. Some doctrines are for insurance and others for discipleship. Ultimately, even though the amendment itself was a non-partisan issue, most Ohio church leaders were afraid to touch it. “We don’t want to be a political action committee. We want to be a gospel action committee,” I was told.
The new Republican platform will disappoint many faithful Christians and rightly so. It is a sad and ugly symptom of ethical decay. But as always, politics is merely a barometer for deeper cultural currents. How foolish of us to expect an individual candidate or party to uphold and protect fundamental Christian truths which the Church herself has failed to proclaim. Republicans gutted a defense of the pre-born from their party platform, a defense we were told by our most vocal evangelical leaders didn’t really matter anyways.
Many Christians rejoiced when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two summers ago. For nearly half a century, that infamous ruling clouded our national conscience, handicapped state and local attempts to protect unborn children and lulled us, the church, into a state of complacency. Today, Roe’s legacy is over sixty-three million babies killed, and a majority of Americans who have hardened their hearts against the pre-born. Yes, the Dobbs decision returned the issue of abortion back to the states, but unless Christians return the issue of abortion back to the church, all political efforts are futile. Unless God softens the hard-hearted within our churches and emboldens our pastors and church leaders to speak the truth about abortion, we can expect this sad political decline to continue.
In the months ahead Christians will sound off on whether it’s time to abandon the GOP and bow out of the political process entirely. I humbly suggest a prerequisite step: check in with your local church. If your pastor and church leaders have been less vocal about the slaughter of the innocent than the Republican Party, past or present, you have a far more serious problem on your hands than anything coming out of Milwaukee.