In the Realm of Judeo-Christianity, Some Lives are More Precious than Others
Charles E. Carlson Dec 05, 2003
A strange paradox is predominant among the Judeo-Christian celebrities. It is found in mega-churches and bible study groups, and even in pro-life organizations. Many of these oppose abortion on religious grounds, but most favor U.S. serial war with equal passion. Oddly, pro-life leaders and spokesmen rarely object to the “collateral” killing of thousands, perhaps millions, of children who are virtually undefended. Many of those killed are pregnant women, especially in Iraq, where a modest estimate is now up to 9,000 Iraqi civilians killed in 2003. With the death of each pregnant woman, an unnamed unborn child also dies. We will explore why this ambivalence exists and its effect on the so-called “Judeo-Christian” culture.
Its not news when a politician thrives on inconsistency. But churchgoers–especially evangelicals, or “Judeo-Christians,” as they are fond of calling themselves–claim to follow a higher power. For them consistency should be a moral imperative. Christians say they follow without question only one teacher, Jesus Christ, whose only recorded words are in one very small book–the Christian New Testament.
Yet some of the largest Christian organizations in America are totally inconsistent when it comes to Jesus’ most well-known statements about the value of human life.
Let us examine two formal statements from the website of The Southern Baptist Convention, which boasts some 16 million members and 45,000 churches and is the largest Judeo-Christian faction. Here is its official policy on the sanctity of human life:
“Procreation is a gift from God, a precious trust reserved for marriage. At the moment of conception, a new being enters the universe, a human being, a being created in Gods image. This human being deserves our protection, whatever the circumstances of conception.”
So far so good! Now for the war policy of the SBC. Only one formal resolution on war has been recorded in its 165 year history, and that concerned Iraq in July 2003, after the bombing was declared ended and the casualty rate of civilians was known to be high. Here, in part, are the SBC’S words taken from its website:
RESOLVED, That the messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, June 17-18, 2003, affirm President George W. Bush, the United States Congress, and our armed forces for their leadership in the successful execution of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Note the Southern Baptist policy on life specifically states that the circumstances of the individual are irrelevant to its right to protection. In other words, a child’s life is sacred regardless of race, parentage, or nationality; yet the War resolution declares the bombing of Iraq to be “successful.” What about those lives?
Inconsistency about wars on Islamic states
For the most part, Judeo-Christians have illogically provided tacit support for each one of the unnecessary serial wars. The main purpose of these planned annihilations has been to destabilize non-cooperating governments. They have resulted in the systematic annihilation of one Muslim country after another. Iraq is the first to be annihilated twice. This unconditional support of anti-Islamic wars includes $91 billion dollars of U.S. foreign aid, most of which is war gifts given to Israel as well-documented military aid.
The Southern Baptist Convention has a great deal to say about its friendship with Israel; its spokesmen have been outspoken in their support. Richard L. Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the SBC, has stated that the Palestinian have a right to live, but not in Palestine. His term is a crass: “its God’s way or the highway.” Land’s words sound benign and dignified compared to more radical self-professing Judeo-Christians, some of whom call for liquidation of the Palestinians. Their churches and mass media have provided informal but loud support for bombings and sanctions, not only against Palestine and twice in Iraq, but also in Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Sudan and others. Most of these so-called wars were controlled slaughters where the number of people killed was elective by our government.
Except for Yugoslavia, these targets were predominantly Muslim, and most are either declared enemies of Israel or among its critics. Judeo-Christians say they believe they must oppose anyone who resists the state of Israel. They are as radical as any Steelers fans in their support of Israel, and they manage not to look at the cost in human life.
The two U.S. annihilations in Iraq satisfied Israel’s fondest wish, and most of the administrations declared future “terrorist” targets are also Muslim countries. Israel’s political leaders convey their wishes to the leaders of the Judeo-Christian church, who oblige from the pulpit by supporting the politicians who campaign for war.
Israel hero-worship has earned many the title “Christian-Zionists,” conferred on them by none other than Ariel Sharon. Christian leaders become Israeli patriots. The blood-letting of weak adversaries is contrary to everything Jesus taught about life. It is so alien to His words that this writer cannot recall ever hearing a Judeo-Christian leader use the words of Jesus to justify war. No such words exist.
Inconsistency about abortion
The evangelical churches are inconsistent in their support of the pro-life movement. This writer believes this accounts for its failure. Part I of this series detailed the role of politicians in that failure.
But there are accomplices guiltier even than self-serving politicians, and these are the media celebrity leaders and the self-professed Judeo-Christian churches, including not only the Evangelical Church, but to a lesser degree the Catholic Church and mainline Protestant churches. For the purpose of this report, we will focus on the primary problem, the evangelicals including the Southern Baptists.
The pro-life movement has been able to accomplish little in its 31 years. Its sorry best effort till now has been to pass the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act (PBABA), a pathetic excuse of a law that forces abortion doctors to find a different way to kill the victim before extracting the corpse of a little boy or girl. It is likely that not a single life will be saved by this piece of legislation; the law can be compared to those that require humane killing or animals. Yet many call this a long sought “legislative victory.”
The practice called partial-birth abortion is no more or less than a method of assassinating a live and viable child before it is extracted and trashed. The law does not address or affect any of the alternative methods of aborting or killing children; it can be compared to a law that makes it illegal to poison your wife with arsenic, but not with less painful cyanide or rat poison.
We Hold These Truths is not the only anti-abortion voice that feels this way. Jim Rudd, a veteran in the movement, wrote in the November 26th Covenant News: Partial-Birth Ban of No Effect, the new law encourages up-to-full term abortions.
Rudd concludes:
“It is difficult to measure the harm being done by people in the pro-life ranks who are spreading false and misleading information that is being used to deceive Christians into believing that the `Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 is pro-life.”
He explains the loopholes:
“First, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003(1) does not mention the medical procedure known as the “Intact Dilation and Extraction” (D&X abortion). Since the Act does not use this official medical term, then the D&X procedure is not banned or outlawed by any legal means of this Act.”
Rudd explains:
“The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act only applies to a “living fetus” — and there is nothing in the Act to prevent abortionists from killing viable late term babies in the womb first!”
Mr. Rudd’s conclusions cannot be seriously doubted by anyone who has read the bill. No one who was involved in the legislation can say they did not know. Christians have again given only lip service to pro-life by supporting it!
As we pointed out in Part I of this report,( https://whtt.org/whtt.shtml?articles/VoiceForUnborn_part1_final.htm )the churches of America, not the politicians, claim to be the leaders in the pro-life movement. Politicians have responded with pabulum legislation that is offensive to no one but the unborn. When President G. W. Bush signed the bill into law, he successfully cemented his standing as a “pro-life” president before the Evangelical and Catholic churches.
Why the churches have not been more effective in saving lives
Evangelicals lost their righteousness and their ability to be positive influences for life when they became unabashed supporters of Israel’s anti-life practices. Their support for serial war began with the formation of the political state of Israel in 1948. For 55 years the state of Israel has practiced systematic genocide on a captive population while the churches of America have played the organ for the tragedy. We have detailed the logic for the evangelical’s complicity in The Source of our War Problems ( https://whtt.org/whtt.shtml?articles/020707.htm ).
The paradox of evangelical support for both the pro-life position and the Israeli occupation of Palestine is exposed by examining abortion in Israel. While Israelis have killed over 2000 Palestinian children in the last two to three years, they have aborted fifteen times that number of their own children each year. Few Christians are ever told that the “chosen people” whom evangelical leaders and their followers support unequivocally, almost as gods, have a higher abortion rate than Americans do!
There are no significant anti-abortion laws in Israel because the government is itself the number one abortionist. According to its own official statistics, the Israeli government approves, pays for and performs more than 50% of all abortions. Non-governmental, free enterprise abortions (U.S. style) are referred to as “illegal abortions” and require no official approval.
It is also a fact that many of the doctors in U.S. abortion clinics are graduates of Israel’s abortion industry who have come to the U.S. to seek their fortune at the grisly trade. One example is the nationally known A to Z Woman’s Clinic in Phoenix, AZ, that was finally shut down for health violations and for negligently killing one or more women. A-Z was one of several clinics owned by a former Israeli abortion doctor.
Another Phoenix abortionist, Brian Finkel, is convicted and about to be sentenced to prison for sexually assaulting multiple patients. This writer is surprised Dr. Finkel did not jump bond and immigrate to Israel, as he surely could have prior to his conviction.
A small and beleaguered pro-life movement in Israel has long held Israel will eventually run out of people and be outvoted by the pro-life Arab population. A documented report on the scandal of abortion in Israel can be found in WHTT’s Zions Secrets (https://whtt.org/straitgate/images/Zions%20Secret.PDF). Israel is consistent: it does not support the right to life of anyone, not even its own unborn citizens. How can the Judeo-Christian church say they support the State of Israel on “scriptural grounds?” Only by distorting scripture!
The American Judeo-Christian churches Israel fixation has led them to favor wars against Muslims. Anti-Islamism was at the root of support for the Bush Sr. war in Iraq. The Clinton wars against Somalia and Kosovo and the Bush Jr. slaughter of the Afghans and Iraqis are all wars against Israel’s sworn enemy–Islam.
The pro-Israel activism of the evangelical church is the primary reason the Palestinians have suffered under Israeli occupation. Without this huge bloc, it is unlikely Israel could have obtained the financial support that provides the advanced weaponry that makes it possible for them to control and throttle their neighbors.
Pro-life leaders do not know why they have failed
A few weeks before the disgusting Partial birth abortion ban was passed, this author attended a conference that included a forum entitled, Religious Leaders–Did they Fail Us, and what is Their Role Today? Among the distinguished and dedicated panelists were former Presidential campaigner Patrick Buchanan and the founder and president of the American Life League, Judie Brown. Every Christian panelist registered frustration and dismay over the lack of support they received for their efforts from respective church leaders. No Christian speaker considered prominent Christian leaders to be a consistent positive force in their fight. By contrast, Muslim pro-life activist Sharisa Alkhateeb testified that Islamic religious leaders are consistent in opposing abortion even though the Qur’an allows for some loopholes.
Mrs. Brown attributed the failure of American churches to “improper preaching” and “lack of courage.” Asked from the floor if she thought it time to picket churches, demanding they take a pro-life stance, she seemed unprepared for the question and said she “preferred to pray for them.” We Hold These Truths respectfully disagrees.
Pro-life activists begin to blame the church
But other pro-life activists are beginning to demonstrate that they think God demands something more than prayer. On May 9th and 10th Project Strait Gate led an anti-war picket at the three-day Billy Graham Crusade in San Diego, California where several hundred thousand mostly professing Christians were in attendance. Pro-life picketers were also there.
One picketer displayed a huge red and white sign reading “WHY IS THE CHURCH SILENT?” Next to it were billboard-sized color photos of dismembered babies. While standing together near the main gate of Padre Stadium, the leaders of the group explained their frustration with the lip service they receive from evangelical churches. Billy Graham ranked high on their list of opponents, his “talk is cheap.”
Everyone except the guiltiest party has been blamed for the abortion holocaust in America. Only now are a few beginning to speak out about the complicity of Judeo-Christian churches. Its tens of thousands of churches and religious organizations are in the best position to change America, and until now, they’ve failed to use their power and influence for the anti-abortion cause.
To change this we must first understand
Pro-life activists, in spite of great numbers, substantial financing and dedicated effort, have failed to mobilize the churches for life because they have not taken their complaints to the doors of the churches as Martin Luther did 600 years ago. In America, cheerleaders like Jerry Falwell claim that evangelical churches are the spiritual homes of one fourth of the voting public, 70 million strong. These churches are guilty of beating an erratic cadence to which none can march.
Inconsistency always leads to ineffectiveness
Inconsistency on the life issue has led both the pro-life movement and the churches into a no-win abortion position. The unborn children–many of whom are of evangelical Christian parents–are the victims. No evangelical can excuse or ignore the killing of upward to a million absolutely innocent victims of serial wars, born and unborn, and claim to be pro-life. Claiming to be pro-life and yet supporting serial elective wars is ludicrous to the point of obscenity. It is probably also obscene in the eyes of God.
Let us be truthful about why the pro-life movement is failing: it fails because no one in his or her right mind, including its own youth, takes the Judeo-Christian churches opposition to abortion seriously. There is not one poll or reasonably scientific study that indicates evangelical churchgoers have a lower abortion rate than the population as a whole. Some studies actually suggest the reverse may be true.
The daughters and sons of Judeo-Christians have heard just enough pro-life lip service to know their parents would be embarrassed by an out-of-wedlock child, but they have not heard enough to convince them that abortion is something that Jesus would oppose and should therefore not be an alternative.
A Deacon in my own former evangelical church, a respected gynecologist, once told me sadly, that the number of women and girls in the church who he knew to have become pregnant and who did not deliver live babies, was staggering. He wished that even a few would come forward and confess their error. This in a church that claims to be absolutely pro-life, that is part of the Southern Baptist Convention, and that claims to be anti-abortion on Biblical grounds.
The children know
Churchgoers fail to take these professed pro-life commitments seriously. There is a gross inconsistency in churches claiming to protect children not yet born while supporting the killing of live children. They do not fool the church youth, who are being asked to go to war. Even if they have been unaware of Israel’s horrible public abortion policy, teen-aged boys and girls are smart enough to see for themselves that American-financed Israeli military equipment kills children almost daily. The massive numbers of civilian deaths seep through the media and the Internet, despite feverish efforts to cover them up.
Who can take seriously the church’s pronouncement that every child is created in Gods image, regardless of race, sex, or condition of birth, when that same church openly supports and finances wholesale slaughters of innocent children in Muslim countries? Deacons may fool themselves, but they will not fool their own street-wise children. The Judeo-Christian church is creating future atheists as fast as it is creating paying members.
How does the church handle Jesus’ commands:
“Blessed are the peacemakers,” “Whatever you do unto the least of these you do also to me,” and “Love your brother as you love yourself.”
The answer is that they ignore Jesus! Judeo-Christians ignore whole sections of the New Testament of Jesus Christ. Ask your pastor when he last preached a sermon on the meaning of Jesus’ words that related those words to the present ongoing serial wars. I have not heard such a sermon! Jesus’ word does not allow the killing of any child of any race or parentage.
Become involved in a church vigil
Followers of Christ must do as he did: go to the “synagogue of Satan” and expose the inconsistency of churches before it own membership as a matter of faithfulness to God. Nail your concerns to the doors of the churches.
Most Churches are tax-exempt, which means you finance them with subsidies. If there are 1000 churches and synagogues in your town, you are paying their share of the tax bill, even on their multi-million dollar properties. You have a right to be on the sidewalk in front to the church communicating to attendees. Project Strait Gate is organizing to do just that from coast to coast!
Charles E. Carlson, Director
We Hold These Truths
Part I of this report, https://whtt.org/whtt.shtml?articles/VoiceForUnborn_part1_final.htm
