Planned Parenthood Provides Security for Church’s Chili-for-Choice

There you go, that’s a headline I never imagined writing.

Tending to St. James Episcopal Church’s Facebook page typically isn’t a lot of work for the Rev. Dawn Frankfurt, the church’s rector since 2011.

That changed last week.

That’s when people started posting they were outraged that the church on East Douglas in College Hill was playing host to a “Chili for Choice” fundraiser Jan. 22 – the anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that affirmed abortion as a constitutional right. The fundraiser for Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri will benefit Wichita’s clinic, which provides reproductive care such as well-woman exams and contraceptives but doesn’t offer abortion services.

“Tons of awful stuff was being posted on our Facebook page,” Frankfurt said. “Our reach was up to about 18,000 people. I almost immediately turned off the ability to make posts on our page.”
[…]

The event has been at St. James the past four years and had never been the subject of protest before, she said Tuesday.

“But last Monday when we came to work,” Frankfurt said, “the phones were just starting to ring off the hook. People were asking ‘Are you really hosting a chili event to celebrate 42 years of murder?’ ”

Some messages warned members of the church that they were going to hell.

“We knew immediately there was something going on,” Frankfurt said.

Read the whole thing. I hope that — rather than yelling that everyone inside the church is going to hell (words which will fall on ears that are deaf-by-choice to that sort of religious rhetoric) — the people who show up to protest will spend their time peacefully praying for the salvation of souls. That’s the action more likely to turn a heart and mind.

Wichita, recall, was where abortionist George Tiller was murdered by someone with a very poor understanding of the idea that all life is sacred.

When we start thinking that we know the heart and mind of God so well that we may decide who lives and who dies, we slip into a mode of Antichrist.

Reason enough for people to make their points as peacefully and prayerfully as they can.

I’ve never been convinced that a gathering like the one shown below has ever saved a life, or could ever save a soul and direct it toward the joy of a life lived in and for Christ.