Friday marks the annual March for Life event where hundreds of thousands gather in the streets of the nation’s capital to protest the murder of innocent children around the country. This year, President Donald Trump will be among the crowd and will be the first U.S. president ever to attend the event.
The Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission head, Russell Moore started a movement several years ago to coincide with the majority Catholic event and dubbed it the Evangelicals for Life. The Evangelical version, however, has largely turned into a pro-social justice movement seeking to redefine what it means to be pro-life — and by their definition, being pro-life also means being pro-socialism.
Russell Moore recently talked about what it means to be pro-life in his Sign Posts podcast and explained to his listeners this very re-definition of the movement to include social justice. While thankfully Moore rejects the notion that social justice in and of itself replace anti-abortionism altogether — like some Evangelical movements do — he does presume a social and economic system that is inherently Marxist to make his point.
According to Moore, one cannot be pro-life unless they “care about the life of the immigrant,” “care about sick people,” and “care about the welfare of black people” — all hot-button social justice issues. Of course, the higher one is on the intersectionality scale the more you have to care about them to be pro-life. It doesn’t matter if you care about straight, white men so long as you care about immigrants, blacks, and sick people.
But then he goes on to equate the pro-life issue with caring about social programs for these people. He says,
To care about human life doesn’t mean that we’re necessarily going to agree on what healthcare system model ought to look like, but it does mean that we agree that sick people matter. It doesn’t mean that we’re necessarily going to agree on what sorts of affirmative action programs we ought to have in our colleges and universities, but it has to mean that we understand and know that black lives matter, black people matter. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we agree on how many immigrants ought to come into the country every year, but it has to mean that the lives of immigrants and strangers and sojourners matter to God and ought to matter to us. So we can’t be the people who say these people are parasites. We have to say, “These are people created in the image of God.”
If you read (or listen, if you will) closely, you can see that Moore’s comments here are very carefully crafted to presume a system that already embraces socialism. He doesn’t say that we’re going to disagree on whether or not to have affirmative action programs — he says we’re going to disagree on “what sorts” of affirmative action programs. He doesn’t say that we’re going to disagree on whether or not we should implement a healthcare system — he says we’re going to disagree on what kind.
And nobody — literally nobody — has argued that these people are not created in the image of God. This is a highly irresponsible and foolish argument for one of the most influential men in the most influential Protestant denomination in the world to make. It’s an accusation against an entire group of people who reject social justice that paints a picture of “white supremacy” where it simply does not exist. The argument is essentially to be for these social programs or be a white supremacist.
It’s really time for Southern Baptists to wake up and smell the rat of political influence that’s overwhelming the denomination right now. You can read (or listen to) the entire podcast from Russell Moore at this link.
