While Christian Nationalists busily try to put the theocratic band back together (i.e., to restore Christianity to its privileged place in American society), the culture continues to disintegrate at an alarming rate and to an alarming degree. Christians do well to spend more time preparing to live in post-Christendom than they do trying to recapture old Christendom, or, in the case of the USA, to foment a revolution by instituting either a state or national church.¹ From our early Christian history, we learn how to navigate life in a predominantly pagan culture. On this, article XIX of the Statement addresses the question of abortion, the killing of human beings in utero. Article XIX of the Statement says:

WE AFFIRM that all civil authorities have a duty before God to uphold justice by establishing equal protection under the law for all image-bearers of God from the moment of fertilization, which is conception. We affirm that civil authorities must reject all partiality in judgment by asserting the same legal prohibitions and available sanctions against homicide that exist to protect persons after birth and persons before birth.

WE DENY that any law which classifies abortion as a lesser crime than homicide or which allows any class of humans to murder preborn children with legal immunity is a just law.

On the question of abortion, the early church was quite clear. The Didache (Διδαχὴ) was an early church manual of moral instruction and church order. Though scholars debate its location and date, it most likely dates to the very early second century. The first part contains moral instruction following the “two ways” pattern we find in the Psalms and Proverbs. In 2:2: “You shall not murder a child in destruction nor shall you kill one just born.”² Michael Holmes translates this verse thus, “You shall not abort a child or commit infanticide.”³ Bart Ehrman’s translation agrees with Holmes: “do not abort a foetus or kill a child that is born.”⁴ The Latin noun foetus, of course, simply means infant.⁵

One did not even have to be a Christian in the ancient world to understand the evil of abortion. J. Ryan Davidson writes, “The Middle Assyrian Laws, which date as far back as the early eleventh century BC, specifically addressed abortion. In these laws—a collection of legal codes including decrees of the Assyrian kings and Amorite legal customs (Tetlow, Women, Crime, and Punishment, 126)—abortion was considered a serious offense against the state and was punishable by death.”⁶ In 1971, Enzo Nardi catalogued other ancient laws against abortion.⁷ He recognized that the Hippocratic Oath prohibited abortion.⁸ Sheila K. Dickison, summarizing Nardi’s work, writes, “With the first centuries B. C. and A.D. . . . the sources referring to abortion increase in frequency. At the same time Nardi tries to prove from literary and religious sources that the general public opinion and feeling was becoming increasingly opposed to abortion on the grounds that abortion is murder.”⁹ Reflective of that trend perhaps, the pagan Roman emperors, Septimius Severus (ruled from AD 193–211) and Caracalla (reigned AD 198–217) forbade abortion in certain circumstances.¹⁰

Certainly today, with all the biological and physiological information (e.g., high-resolution imagery) that we have about human development in utero, and the fact that infants in every stage of development possess human DNA, the case that humans conceive, gestate, and give birth to humans is very strong indeed.

Whatever pagans may say, Christians are and should be persuaded that human beings are conceived in the image of God and are therefore subject, in every stage of human development, to the protections afforded to human beings. We see this sort of contrast between pagan ethics—which sometimes diverge sharply from Christian ethics—and a Christian ethic of life in the Epistle to Diognetus (5.6) which said, “[Christians] marry like everyone else, and have children, but they do not expose their offspring.”¹¹ Notably, however, none of the authors of the New Testament spoke to the evil of abortion, though they were certainly aware of it.

I offer this background not to dispute the Statement’s articulation of the prevailing Christian consensus against abortion, or even to dispute it as a statement of Christian anthropology (the doctrine humanity) and ethics, but rather to suggest that it is one thing for Christians to teach what they do about humans being image bearers—which is certainly true—and another thing to formulate civil law on the basis of Christian doctrine.

Though there was, broadly, a Christian consensus in this country for a long time, the founders of the Republic did not assert their claims against Great Britain on the basis of Christian doctrine, but rather on the basis of natural law. They did not assert the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which is quite germane to this discussion, on the basis of a statement of Christian doctrine, but on the basis of natural law established by a Creator.¹² They proposed them as self-evident truths, perceived by the senses from nature. This is the American way of articulating political principles and policy. Thus, again, the Statement is proposing a theocratic revolution.

If the approach of the pre-theocratic Christians is to be our model, then it is important to observe that neither the apostolic church nor the early post-apostolic church, considered as an institution, ever spoke out against the practice of abortion. Nor did they, for that matter, petition the government to make Christianity the established religion. This is not to suggest that the Christians were indifferent to abortion. All the evidence is to the contrary. It is to suggest that it was possible for Christians to oppose abortion, as a matter of public policy, without involving the visible, institutional church in the attempt. History suggests that when Christian teaching is accepted it does have an effect on the way people live. The consequences of Christian teaching tend to be indirect instead of direct and immediate.

Experience suggests that it is when people become convinced that human beings in utero are just that, human beings, and therefore “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” Just about five years ago, I appealed to the Drew Carey Show as an example of the ways that Christians can subvert culture.¹³ For nine seasons, the Drew Carey show subtly but effectively (and apparently unintentionally) helped to persuade millions of Americans that the infant (foetus) in the mother’s womb really is a human being. That messaging might have been as effective as protests in front of abortion clinics. This is not to suggest that clinic protests are a bad thing, but only to say that there are other ways to try to persuade our fellow citizens of the reality and humanity of humans in utero.

The Statement apparently seeks to do an end run around the American process of persuading citizens by making sound, cogent, and compelling natural law arguments, which is the American way, as for example, Martin Luther King’s 1963 letter From Birmingham Jail. The reason that King’s letter was so powerful, so affective, and so effective is that it was not revolutionary. It was classic American stuff. It called America to fidelity to her political creeds (e.g., the Declaration of Independence). The old Civil Rights movement won because they finished the rational argument against the humanity of black Americans. They persuaded Americans that the country had been wrong and unfaithful to the things to which, we say, we are all agreed. They marched, they sued, they prayed, and they legislated; but above all, they persuaded. The tragedy of the Christian Nationalist movement is that they seem to have given up on the American experiment before they have even tried to make use of the tools that very experiment provides.

Notes

1. It is not clear to me what the framers of the Statement intend regarding the establishment of the church. Some establishmentarians hope to institute Christianity as the state religion and others seem to be willing to accept Christianity as the “national Church” (which is the status of the Church of Scotland). They would do well to investigate the history of the Church of Scotland, to see what good the status of “national Church” has done for the orthodoxy of the Church of Scotland.
2. οὐ φονεύσεις τέκνον ἐν φθορᾷ οὐδὲ γεννηθέντα ἀποκτενεῖς. Michael W. Holmes, ed., The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, 3rd edition (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 346.
3. Holmes, ed. The Apostolic Fathers, 347.
4. Bart D. Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 1, I Clement, II Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, Didache, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).
5. For more on the Didache on abortion see, R. Scott Clark, “Notes From the Didache On the Early Christian View of Abortion.”
6. J. Ryan Davidson, s.v., “Abortion in Antiquity,” The Lexham Bible Dictionary (2016), citing Elisabeth Meier Tetlow, Women, Crime, and Punishment in Ancient Law and Society, vol. 1 (New York: Continuum, 2004), 126.
7. Enzo Nardi, Procurato aborto nel mondo greco romano (Milan: Giuffre editore). Sheila K. Dickison surveys Nardi’s work in her review, “Abortion in Antiquity,” Arethusa 6.1 (1973): 159–66.
8. Aristotle prohibited abortion after the foetus “developed sensation and life.” Politics 7.14.10, 1335b.
9. Dickison, “Abortion in Antiquity,” 161. Nardi also mentions the Stoics, who saw the foetus as part of the mother.
10. Dickison, 161.
11. Holmes, 703.
12. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” Declaration of Independence, para. 2.
13. See RSC, “What Christians Can Learn From Drew Carey About Subverting Culture.”

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

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