Four years ago this week, on the 32nd anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decisions in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, Bishop Timothy Whitaker of the Florida Conference became the first United Methodist bishop to speak publicly about why faithfulness to the gospel and to our Wesleyan tradition demands a prolife position on abortion.
Addressing a gathering of Lifewatch, the UM prolife caucus, he called on United Methodists to stand against “the violence of abortion in the name of the God of peace.”
Below are excerpts from Bishop Whitaker’s address, followed by audio of his remarks.
When John Wesley gave the General Rules to the people called Methodists the first thing he told them was, “Do no harm.” In order to show evidence that we are a people who are being saved by God, we should do no harm.
The rule to do no harm directs those of us who are Christians to practice non-violence. A Christian is someone who is horrified by violence, refrains from violence in her or his life, and seeks to restrain violence in the world insofar as possible….
Bishop Timothy Whitaker
When Jesus was born, all of the angels in heaven praised God and promised peace on earth.
When he grew up he inaugurated his ministry by being baptized by John in the Jordan River, and the Spirit of God confirmed that he was the Son of God by descending upon him not as an eagle but as a dove, the bird of peace.
He taught the people, saying, “Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called the children of God.”
As one would expect in a world of violence the Prince of Peace suffered a violent death…. By his violent death he overcame violence. Then God vindicated him by raising him from the dead; and when he appeared to his disciples he announced, “Peace be with you.”
On the Day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit descended upon his disciples, and the church was born. The church is a community from all of the nations called to be a peaceable people who follow Jesus until he comes again at the end of history and establishes that kingdom where “death shall be no more: mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”…
We who are the church are called to be a peaceable people. In our practices and in our public witness we are called to make peace in the world. We acknowledge that the ultimate kingdom of peace has not yet been established by God.
We ourselves cannot build the kingdom, but we can build for the kingdom. We can live and witness in ways that can lead to a more tangible peace here and now that points to the coming kingdom of God….
Pope John Paul II has made a powerful Christian witness to God’s peaceable purposes in his 1995 encyclical called The Gospel of Life. He warned the world about creating “a culture of death” that is rebellion against “the Gospel of life.”
He showed us that a culture of death is one that endorses abortion, euthanasia, and capital punishment. He asserted that the commandment, “You shall not kill,” is integral to the revelation of God….
In the United Methodist Church we ought to apply our theological reflection, our pastoral guidance and our public witness against the violence of abortion in the name of the God of peace…
I think that our silence and passivity about abortion comes from the difficulty of being a Christian in America.
I used to think that being a Christian in America is easy. I thought it would be hard to be a Christian in a country dominated by other religions, or in a Communist country where atheism was avowed by the state, but I thought it was easy to be a Christian here.
The Lifewatch logo
Now I realize that practicing the Christian life in America has its own difficulties. The seductions of American life may seem more subtle, but they are real and dangerous.
In America both the culture and the state view persons as autonomous individuals who have private rights to live as they choose.
But we who are Christians have a different anthropology: we view persons as members of a community who are made in the image of the Triune God and who have both rights and responsibilities.
Therefore, we cannot endorse a woman’s right to abort an unborn child as a morally neutral decision because we understand that the child also has a right to live and the community has a responsibility to care for this child if the mother is unable to rear it….
Can there be any doubt that there is silence and passivity about abortion in our Church?
How often is a sermon about abortion or an educational forum on abortion offered in our congregations? How many congregations are involved in supporting crisis pregnancy centers in their communities or offering tangible support to women with unwanted pregnancies? What kind of pastoral counsel is being offered behind the closed doors of the pastor’s office?….
We who are United Methodist Christians should continue to seek to embody in our teaching, pastoral guidance, congregational care and public witness the preservation of human life, and a protest against the killing of human life, in the name of the God of peace….
It is often said that there is no clear prescription against abortion in the Bible. That is because such a horror is unthinkable and unspeakable to the people of Israel and to the people called the church. The grand story of God’s gift of peace and God’s opposition to the sin of violence compels us to be a people who try to protect the unborn from killing and to work for a culture of life.
From the very beginning Christians everywhere have felt this revulsion against the killing of human life. As Christians moved into the wider world where abortion was not unthinkable or unspeakable they had to apply the divine commandment against murder to the horrible practice of abortion. They did so because of their knowledge of the God of peace in the story of the Bible.
In our time and place, in our own Christian communion, we who are United Methodists also have a responsibility to live according to our first rule, which is to do no harm. Do no harm to the unborn! Do no harm to the witness of the Church as a peaceable people! Do no harm to the Gospel of peace!
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Use the audio player below to listen to a portion of Bishop Whitaker’s 2005 address, Do No Harm!, delivered in the Simpson Chapel at the United Methodist Building in Washington, D.C. (8.5 minutes).
The full text of Bishop Whitaker’s 2005 address is in the March 2005 Lifewatch newsletter (PDF).
Dr. Amy Laura Hall
For a United Methodist Prolife Prayer Guide, based on material from Lifewatch, click here (PDF). The guide is designed to be used as a bulletin insert.
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The speaker at this year’s Lifewatch service, to be held Thursday (the 36th anniversary of nationally legalized abortion), is Dr. Amy Laura Hall of the Duke Divinity School, author of Conceiving Parenthood: American Protestantism and the Spirit of Reproduction (Eerdmans, 2008 — related interview here).
The service will be held at the United Methodist Building on Capitol Hill.
(UMNS photo)
Also Thursday, on the Mall in Washington, D.C., is the annual March for Life.
The event, which draws tens of thousands of prolifers each year, will be aired live on EWTN. In addition, live audio and video will be streamed here, beginning at 11 a.m ET.
The March for Life has been held annually since 1974.
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UPDATES (6:00 p.m. ET): WORLD magazine has a report from the March for LIfe, noting that most of the people in the huge crowd were relatively young. “Anyone over 30 years old was in the minority at the march,” writes reporter Emily Belz.
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama issued a written statement reiterating his support for legal abortion. “I remain committed to protecting a woman’s right to choose [to terminate a pregnancy],” he said.
EWTN will rebroadcast the March for Life tonight (Thursday) at 10 o’clock ET and again on Saturday (Jan. 24) at 9 a.m. ET.
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| • | United Methodists and abortion today | Bishop Timothy Whitaker |
| • | The Sanctification of Human Life — chapter 2 of How Christianity Changed the World by Alvin Schmit (Zondervan, 2004) |
Thank you for posting this thoughtful piece by Bishop Whitaker.
I think though, that modern Methodism is not marked by silence and passivity on abortion. If anything, it is a fervent promotion at the general and annual conference levels, and a spirit of discomfort and repression at the lower levels.
I remember sitting at a Board of Ordained Ministry “dinner with the bishop” for new ordinands in probationary membership, when our bishop stood up and gave an address that included a stern warning about speaking against abortion. He said that the discipline forbids anti-abortion speech, especially from the pulpit, and implied that anyone who “violated the discipline” on this matter would never see elder’s orders. It was the only issue that he singled out in his remarks.
I am a pastor in the Florida Conference, over which Bishop Whitaker presides. I am extremely proud that our bishop is courageous enough to boldly speak the truth.
I don’t know what conference the previous commenter (Pastor Bob) is in, but I feel sorry for him and the other clergy and candidates. I can’t imagine what prohibition in the Discipline prohibits a pastor from believing and preaching a pro-life message. My reading is that the Social Principles essentially recognize abortion is wrong as a form of birth control or for gender selection (which would rule out the vast majority of abortions), although we are opposed to making abortion illegal, leaving the moral decision-making up to individuals in consultation with medical and pastoral consultation.
That other bishop is misusing his/her authority and power to impose his/her views on an entire conference. Shame.