As the Senate considers the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, and confronts the very real possibility that Roe v. Wade will be overturned, the Evangelical Right is busy making certain that all right-minded people know that Our Invisible Friend hates abortion. Albert the Pious, for instance:
The early church was decidedly, vocally, and courageously pro-life and opposed to abortion. One of the earliest documents of Christianity after the New Testament is the Didache, dated to around AD 80–120. The teaching describes two ways: the way of life and the way of death. The way of life demands that Christians “shall not murder a child by abortion nor commit infanticide.” Both abortion and infanticide were common in the Roman Empire. Christians were forbidden to murder any child, born or unborn.
Mohler offers this, too:
The only consistent biblical logic is to affirm the sanctity and dignity of every human life from the moment of fertilization.
Where to begin? It is true that there were people going around calling themselves ‘Christians’ late in the first century, but to suggest that there was a settled Christian doctrine about anything at that time is wildly untrue — and it’s difficult to understand how Mohler wouldn’t know that. The best book — of my acquaintance, anyway — about the multiplicity of beliefs going by the name Christianity during that period is Bart Ehrman’s Lost Christianities.
There was not even agreement at that time about which texts comprised The Bible, which is inerrant et cetera, et cetera.
And, speaking of the Inerrant Bible, we learn there that Our Invisible Friend …
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Drowned all of humanity in a great flood, including suckling babies and mewling kittens.
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Happily accepted the sacrifice of Jepthah’s daughter.
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Sent bears to kill a couple dozen children for laughing at a bald prophet
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Blithely overlooked incestuous rape among Kind David’s children.
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And myriad other offenses against ordinary decency, all of which suggest indifference to the well-being of children.
Seriously: Why would Our Bloodthirsty Invisible Friend care about abortion? Because he misses out on the opportunity to torment those children later?
And what about the thousands of children He passively allows to die every single day of starvation, pestilence, disease … on and on? Mercifully, He at least does not torment those children or their frantic mothers with the Good News that the Creator Of The Whole Big Universe wants to ‘save’ them.
And another thing: Does Mohler know that a fertilized egg has to survive till implantation in the wall of the uterus in order for it to develop and someday be born — and a majority of fertilized eggs don’t make it?
I say again: The clergy are the most intellectually corrupt class of men in American life.