In light of the current abortion situation in the U.S., a rising chorus of leading Evangelical women called the Senate to stop its rush to confirm a replacement for Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court and put a “Pause on the Culture Wars”. A significant core of leading Evangelical men has now joined the women’s call.
It may at first sound counterintuitive, but this growing segment of the Evangelical church is warning that the conservative Evangelical strategy to dominate the Supreme Court will not reduce, but will in fact increase abortion rates—particularly in poor communities, especially communities of color. What’s more, a Conservative majority Court poses an existential threat to the civil rights and protections gained through the Civil Rights movement.
The evangelical Culture Wars have effectively brought the nation to this turning point with the balance of the Supreme Court poised to tip in favor of a conservative agenda for generations.
With this political strategy crafted in the 1980s by the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition, conservative Evangelicals have eyed the Supreme Court as a prime target of its war to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Not only does Roe not end abortion (it just bumps it to states legislatures); rates for American women are at all-time low — except among poor women — because economic hardship is the primary driver of abortion. The way to reduce abortion is not through escalating culture wars but by reducing poverty. Instead, this conservative court’s rulings have already begun to whittle away voting rights and desegregation, and will continue to unravel hard won rights and freedoms that reduce poverty. It’s spreading divisiveness across our nation — even within our church pews.
This Call to Pause, initiated by evangelical author Lisa Sharon Harper and founder of Freedom Road, LLC, and an Auburn Senior Fellow, has garnered strong public statements from nearly three dozen leading Evangelical women and men across the country. Read the statements from this growing chorus of evangelical women and men of color and white evangelical allies; and learn how you can help stop the collateral damage from this war, and find in God a path forward toward common good, humility, and real solutions that will bless all: www.freedomroad.us/calltopause
Publication Date: July 18, 2018
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