Crisis Pregnancy and the Church

I’ll just get to the point. Truth be told, there really ARE pockets of conservative Christians who believe that females don’t usually get pregnant from legitimate rape. Mr. Akin is not alone in his view (which he has since corrected). I’ve been following a more personal situation for several years, one involving people I know, in which a 16 year old girl was brought in front of a church on church discipline chargers when she became pregnant after being raped by a much older member of the congregation. Years later, the older member was finally convicted of raping the teenager (with the testimony of her former pastor the main thing that led to his conviction), yet for the most part, the many Christians originally involved refuse to apologize to the now grown woman or acknowledge any wrong doing on their part. That situation involves my Christian alma mater and my Facebook friends. The big-C Church has a problem on this issue today because many little-c churches believe exactly what Akin said, and those who knew better looked away as it happened.

I appreciate this clear statement from Covenant Seminary and this article published at Christianity Today. Sometimes, it takes Christians getting their pants handed to them by those with whom they disagree on other things in the media to finally wake up to their own blind spots. For which I say, praise Jesus!

My hope is that Christians accept correction, own their problem, and go forward anew correcting left and right injustices perpetuated in the name of Christ over the years. Mostly, I’m convicted to put my money where my own personal mouth is – advocating for pregnant moms in crisis, because advocacy for THEM is advocacy for the children they carry, caring in whatever tangible ways I can for children in need once they are born, and so forth. By the way, did you know that Microsoft pays the adoption fees for their employees because they believe in the value of adoption?! Almost makes me want to switch back from my MacBook Air to some lesser performing Microsoft product. I truly have a lot of respect for Bill and Melinda Gates.

At the end of the day, I’m most perplexed by those who try to defend the indefensible. The personal need for repentance still seems the hardest thing for believers to grasp for themselves sometimes. Just accept correction. Doesn’t our theology more than anything else equip us to do that very thing—to repent?! And then stand in advocacy for those who can’t stand for themselves, both the unborn child AND their mother who was violated in the worst of ways, because Scripture clearly instructs that very thing (I recommend Generous Justice by Tim Keller as a primer on this topic).