My late father and I share the blame (with many others) for the murder of Dr. George Tiller the abortion doctor gunned down on Sunday. Until I got out of the religious right (in the mid-1980s) and repented of my former hate-filled rhetoric I was both a leader of the so-called pro-life movement and a part of a Republican Party hate machine masquerading as the moral conscience of America.
In the late 1970s my evangelical pro-life leader father Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop (who soon become Surgeon General in the Reagan administration) went on the road with me taking the documentary antiabortion film series I produced and directed ( Whatever Happened to the Human Race?) to the evangelical public. The series and companion book eventually brought millions of heretofore non-political evangelical Americans into the antiabortion crusade. We personally also got people like Jerry Falwell, Ronald Reagan and countless Republican leaders involved in the "issue."
In the early 80s my father followed up with a book that sold over a million copies called A Christian Manifesto. In certain passages he advocated force if all other methods for rolling back the abortion ruling of Roe v. Wade failed. He compared America and its legalized abortion to Hitler's Germany and said that whatever tactics would have been morally justified in removing Hitler would be justified in trying to stop abortion. I said the same thing in a book I wrote (A Time For Anger) that right wing evangelicals made into a best seller. For instance Dr. James Dobson (of the Focus On the Family radio show) gave away over 100,000 copies.
Like many writers of moral/political/religious theories my father and I would have been shocked that someone took us at our word, walked into a Lutheran Church and pulled the trigger on an abortionist. But even if the murderer never read Dad's or my words we helped create the climate that made this murder likely to happen.
In fact that very thing has happened before. In 1994, Dr. John Bayard Britton and one of his volunteer escorts were shot and killed outside an abortion clinic in Pensacola, Florida. Paul Hill, a former minister, was convicted of the killings and executed in 2003. Paul Hill was an avid follower of my father's.
Hyperbole from the pulpit from religious leaders, be it from my father or from President Obama's former pastor the Rev. Wright, is par for the course. But once in a while someone "does something" about it and then everyone says that they were only speaking metaphorically or "spiritually" when they called for violence or for the overthrow the state or when they said things like "God damn America!" or that "abortionists are murderers like Hitler!"
Angry speech has become the norm in American religion from both the right and the left. Words are spoken which -- when taken seriously -- lead directly to violence by the unhinged and/or the truly committed.
When evangelicals on the right call President Obama a socialist, a racist, anti-American, an abortionist, not a real American, and, echoing the former Vice President, someone who is weakening America's defenses and making us less safe, the logical conclusion is violence. If you take these words literally you might pull the trigger to "make America safe" and/or free us from communism or to even protect us from -- what some "Christian" leaders claim -- Obama as the Antichrist.
Contributing to an extreme and sometimes violent climate has not only been the fault of the antiabortion crusaders. The Roe v. Wade decision went to far, too fast and was too sweeping. I believe that abortion should be legal. But I also believe that it should be re-regulated according to fetal development. It's the late term abortions that horrify most people. And for the sake of keeping abortion legal adjustments need to be made. Roe is far too all or nothing (as I explain in my book Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All -- or Almost All -- of It Back). As I say in my book today I believe that abortion should be legal but more regulated than Roe allows. I also think that we should do what President Obama calls for: use sex education and contraceptive distribution and programs to help women and children in a way that results in less abortions.
But the reason this issue will never go away is that the Roe ruling was an over broad court decision that makes abortion legal even in the last weeks of pregnancy. Take away the pictures of all those dead late term fetuses and everything changes emotionally. Democracy and civil debate is messy but if abortion had been argued state-by-state abortion would be legal in almost all our states today and probably the laws would be written more like those of Europe, where late-term abortions (of the kind Dr. Tiller specialized in performing) are illegal and/or highly discouraged.
The same hate machine I was part of is still attacking all abortionists as "murderers." And today once again the "pro-life" leaders are busy ducking their personal responsibility for people acting on their words. The people who stir up the fringe never take responsibility. But I'd like to say on this day after a man was murdered in cold blood for preforming abortions that I -- and the people I worked with in the religious right, the Republican Party, the pro-life movement and the Roman Catholic Church, all contributed to this killing by our foolish and incendiary words.
I am very sorry.
Frank Schaeffer is a writer. He is author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back and also author of the forthcoming Patience With God: Faith For People Who Don't Like Religion (Or Atheism)
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Another abolitioni
And African-Am
Ironically
Most would consider Brown's actions to be not much more than acts of terrorism --- and rightly so, in my view. Lincoln apparently called him a "misguided fanatic".
Our country has been able to mature to a point where now regard slavery as an unacceptab
We can only hope that our moral conscience (and laws) as a nation will finally acknowledg
It's not an either/or. We can achieve a moral balance that regonizes the worth and dignity of women and the unborn equally.
but a third party may be best in 2012
The real problem with Roe v Wade is logical, not just theologica
When a woman invokes this standard a man can simply state "Your choice, your child, your responsibi
http://www
Whilst the rhetoric of the abortion issue has continued for all these years, and occasional
On Blacks and Muslims offering condolence
http://www
http://www
The Christian Pro-Life community at large should not feel guilty. You're missing the point.
P.S. for everyone as tired of the Army recruiter talking point as me, feel free to use those links liberally!
Slán.
But neither should anyone have to die by digoxin to the heart and dismemberm
I live in Ohio. I live quite near the town where another late-term abortion provider works; in fact, the Dr that developed D&X or dilation and extraction was developed. I think we all know that means of abortion. It involves removing brain tissue...t
be real
and men shouldn't have a say until they can carry their own fetuses to term
Another sentence that disturbs me is his reference to Roe, saying basically, the court's decision is the reason this will never go away, as long as those photos of dead fetuses are staring us in the face.
It almost sounds as if he's blackmaili
If they think they have a great cause like the Holocaust or Slavery, then let them sing songs of tribute to their murderor, the way people sang songs to John Brown, for example.
Why they don't? Because they don't have a great evil or a great cause, and educated Americans don't see third trimester abortions, for the most part, the way they keep blanket asserting without anything to back them up.
IOW, that's why their assassin is just an assassin.
Because their cause is not what they say it is. And they know they're FOS.
This sentence really disturbs me. My sense is that moral/poli
These people now display cult behavior on a daily basis. There will be no stopping them without treating them as such.They'
I refuse to give them a name, as it gives credence where none is deserved.
"These people now display cult behavior on a daily basis. "
Proud Liberal... isn't that an especially big liberal no no? Judging a whole group of people because of the actions of a few?
I'd like to point out, however, a couple of rhetorical traps this author continues to fall into. For one, he alleges, outright, without any substantia
He makes absolutely no mention of the medical conditions giving rise to third trimester abortions and he completely ignores the Constituti
A photograph is not prima facie evidence of something horribly wrong that has occurred. And physicians are NOT taking healthy women with healthy viable fetuses and butchering babies.
Why don't you just tell people a wild story like poor folk in the mountains of South America believe about Jewish people? That they kill and cook babies, practicing canabalism
So get real, man. Come down to Planet Earth.
If Mr. Schaeffer has on his conscience worry over words he or as he believes others have spoken, words that left the will and purpose of our Lord God as taught and having wisdom with knowledge for all mankind, then certainly it is best to repent and change your ways.
Certainly it is true as the Bible prophesies that many false (antiChris
What the Bible does say on this subject, is that in the end days it will become much like Sodom and Gomorrah, wars and division, nation against nation, family member against family member, even the earth reacting to the error of polluting and destructiv
I see no problem with Christiani
easy to listen and believe what Orielly an Hannity says.
Reportedly
By the time of the show that night, challenger Paul Morrison had defeated Phill Kline by 16 points, throwing the criminal investigat
Bill summarized in a heartfelt Talking Points Memo on Friday, November 10th: "If we as a society allow an undefined mental health exception in late-term abortions, then babies can be killed for almost any reason... This is the kind of stuff that happened in Mao's China and Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union... If we allow this, America will no longer be a noble nation... If we allow Dr. George Tiller and his acolytes to continue, we can no longer pass judgment on any behavior by anybody."
Keep watching. There will be more.
People say you can't govern what a woman does with her own body. Well, why can you force me? I work hard and in dangerous conditions and the money I make is taxed. Some of the Taxes go to support 90 year old people lying in a bed with no awarenes of their surroundin
You can't be forced to support life. i.e. If you awakened one day and found you were connected to another person by an IV line and their blood going into you was being purified by your kidneys and liver. No one would accuse you of murder if you disconnect
Well, late term abortion is not like that. In this case, you unplug yourself and tell the doctor to dismember the other person(but don't let me see it)(and i'll see you at church tomorrow).
Any questions?