Jan. 24 Flashback: A toxin that is poisoning the church

I’m so old I can still remember when all the very important people were scared of blogs.

This is from January 24, 2012, “Abortion politics and the corrosive sin of pride“:

The anti-abortion political movement in America overall is “a self-serving exercise in self-righteousness, self-congratulatory grandstanding and disinterest in the most pressing matters of human rights and dignity in our world today.”

It is not only that, but it is pervasively that. Self-righteousness, self-congratulatory grandstanding and disinterest in the most pressing matters are what this movement is for. They are a feature, not a bug. They are not an unfortunate side-effect threatening the original purpose of the movement, but rather they are and have always been central as cause and motive, as driving force, as raison d’etre.

Brother Horan laments the long record of futility and ineffectiveness associated with the “March for Life.” “For nearly 40 years people have been doing the exact same thing with no progress of which to speak,” he writes.

But that’s not really true. For nearly 40 years, these marchers have been extraordinarily successful. Year after year they have accomplished their goals, achieving just what they set out to do. Year after year they have savored their self-righteousness, congratulated themselves, grandstanded and distracted themselves from the most pressing matters of human rights and dignity. Year after year after year the march has been a great success.

I am certain that Brother Horan would disagree with me about such a sweeping application of his criticisms of this one event, but he dwells among the Franciscans and I dwell among the evangelicals and I can only bear witness to what I have seen.

And what I have seen is that the anti-abortion political movement in the evangelical church arises from and feeds into a self-righteous pride that corrodes everything and everyone it touches. It is the indignant self-deception of the anti-kitten burning coalition writ large. It is the never-ending quest for Satanic baby-killers to provide a foil for our relative righteousness.

The anti-abortion political movement, in other words, is a sin from which American evangelicalism needs to repent. It is a toxin that is poisoning the church.

Read the whole thing here.