This liberal charismatic Christian wants to know what he’s missing on abortion

I’m a charismatic/Pentecostal Christian. I’m also a liberal Democrat. I make no apologies for either label. But there are a lot of times — particularly in the last three years — where I’ve had to ask a few questions about where I stand. One of those times has involved an issue which has had me whipsawing in a number of directions during my adult life — abortion.

As many of my friends and longtime readers know, I tilted pro-life — albeit weakly — for much of the time from 2004 to 2011. But starting in 2009, a number of events made me increasingly uncomfortable with the direction the pro-life side was taking. This culminated in 2011, when a wave of misguided and invasive laws at the federal and state level led me to conclude that I couldn’t identify even as a non-traditional pro-lifer. Read my formal resignation from the movement at Daily Kos.

I wasn’t quite ready to identify as pro-choice again just yet. But a series of further outrages pushed me all the way off the fence. The last straw was an Orwellian attempt to maintain life support on a brain-dead woman, Marlise Munoz. According to lawyers for her family, it could have opened the door for hospitals being required to check dead women for signs of pregnancy, and hook them up to life support if there were.

But lately, a spate of pregnancies at my church here in Charlotte over the last two years had me wondering again. Specifically, several of my lady friends recalled that their kids could hear them in the womb. Should have been the end of the ballgame, right? Well, not exactly.

But as I thought about it, the same things that pushed me out of the pro-life movement came back to the surface — and made me realize that, unless there’s something I haven’t heard or seen, I don’t feel comfortable jumping the fence again. How’s that, you ask?

Well, I can’t identify with a movement that counts among its “mainstream” members outfits that condone outrageous and potentially criminal behavior. I speak of Operation Rescue, which still has Cheryl Sullenger on its payroll even after she gave George Tiller’s court dates to a guy off the street — who turned out to be Scott Roeder. And yet, when Sullenger’s boss, Troy Newman, appeared on Janet Mefferd’s radio show in 2012, three years after Tiller’s murder, Mefferd absolutely fawned over him. And I speak of Operation Save America, who maintains that it was merely obeying God when it harassed and stalked a Charlotte abortion doctor. And yet, it counts Roy Moore among one of its staunchest supporters.

I can’t identify with a movement that believes it’s merely a “political judgment” to allow rape and incest victims the option of having an abortion. That’s what Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony List said in 2015.

I can’t identify with a movement that is willing to bar children from even having the option of an abortion. Mike Huckabee said just that in 2015. Never mind that medical experts agree that it is far too dangerous for girls younger than 13 to have babies, and that girls as young as 15 risk severe complications if they do so.

I can’t identify with a movement that finds it acceptable to warn a 12-year-old rape victim that she risks being a murderer if she has an abortion. This actually happened in Alabama last year. Watch here.

I can’t identify with a movement that finds it acceptable to rejoice at a neighborhood being inconvenienced by a downed tree because said tree effectively shut down an abortion clinic. That’s what Abby Johnson did last year when wind from Hurricane Harvey blew a tree down and blocked the road next to an abortion clinic in Austin. No, this isn’t snark.

I could go on, but these and other incidents have me wondering if my pro-life friends, and the pro-life movement in general, are being used to erode our privacy through the back door. Why, for instance, would you try to change the definition of rape so that only abortions that are the product of “forcible rape” qualify for taxpayer funding — when by definition, ALL rape is forcible? And why would you even consider keeping a brain-dead woman on life support when, by definition, brain death is legal death?

I have become almost a libertarian in my social views in recent years. I believe that there are certain areas where government should just stay out. That’s why, for instance, I oppose hate speech laws — even in the wake of the recent outbreak of trolling and harassment on social media. It’s undeniable that the status quo is unacceptable. But I believe there’s a way to curb this nonsense without opening the can of worms that would result from hate speech laws.

I fear that we may end up going the same route if we ban abortion. Unless I’m very wrong, banning abortion could open the door to allow government to get further into our bedrooms. These disturbing tactics do little to change that impression.

Why am I so concerned about the pro-life movement’s tactics? Well, I have seen first-hand what happens when a group embraces despicable behavior as standard operating procedure. Most of my longtime friends know that in my days as a student at the University of North Carolina, I lost the first six months of my freshman year to a hypercharismatic and borderline cultish campus ministry, Waymaker Christian Fellowship. This outfit had no qualms about outright deceiving people about who they really were and laying the guilt on in layers.

After I got out, I accidentally discovered that their church, King’s Park International Church in Durham, had once been the Carolina chapter of Maranatha Campus Ministries, one of the more notorious campus cults of the 1980s. KPIC’s pastor, Ron Lewis, didn’t have the guts to withstand potential But when I told my former friends in that bunch about this, their response was more or less, “So what?” They were so determined to be part of “what God was doing” that they not only condoned Pastor Ron’s deceit, but became complicit in it. Indeed, one of my former “brothers” from that era, Reggie Roberson, is now KPIC’s lead pastor (though Pastor Ron has the title of “bishop,” and holds the real power). For more details, take out my periodic chronicle of that era at Child of the Truth.

Whatever good this group may have done was wiped out by their embrace of a mentality that revolved around deceit, guilt-tripping, control and digging holes under others. I see a similar parallel with the pro-life movement. The tactics I outlined may wind up pushing away people like me, who on paper would be receptive to pro-life arguments.

The pro-life movement has a hard sell to make in order for me to identify with them again. And until it cuts out the nonsense that passes as “mainstream,” it won’t even begin to make it.

That being said, though, I wonder — what am I missing on abortion? I’d sure like to know. And I’m certainly open to being persuaded.