We will not shut up
In the aftermath of the new Texas “heartbeat law” and the Supreme Court’s refusal to overturn it, President Harrison was pilloried for his approval. He replied on social media: “SIXTY THREE million. I’m just not shuttin up.”
And this is precisely what his detractors want. They want to gag him, our church body, and members of Synod – including pastors and representatives of our schools and universities – from expressing any support of the pro-life movement. The arguments are the usual canards: we hate women, we only care about babies when they’re in the womb and when they’re born we don’t care about them, men have no right to an opinion on this issue, we don’t support crisis pregnancy centers, the Bible never addresses abortion, the Bible was only written by men, etc.
One lady decided to take a different tack with me. She deflected by attacking my opinions dealing with American historiography. Although this is an irrelevant distraction, there is something to be said about historical symbols of the past and why it is not wrong to honor our ancestors and our heritage in spite of their flaws.
When I’m in uniform, I stand at attention when the flag of the United States is posted. I have affection for the flag in spite of the fact that it flew over slave ships, segregation, war crimes, ethnic internment camps, adventurous imperialism, and in spite of the fact that every stripe represents a slave state when the states declared their independence. Moreover, Old Glory flies over the Holocaust of the Unborn. At the time of Roe, gone was the old Federalism of the founders that decentralized such decisions and allowed the people of the states to protect the unborn. Hamiltonian Nationalism has replaced Jeffersonian Federalism. Until now, the State of Texas has been powerless to protect the powerless.
Perhaps the pendulum is now starting to shift from Hamilton back to Jefferson.
And speaking of Jefferson, I admire him. I don’t honor Jefferson because he was a slave-owner, his eighteenth-century views on race, or because he did not believe in the divinity of Christ. I honor him in spite of those realities. I love my country, its history, its heritage, its heroes, and its symbols: slavery and the Holocaust of the Unborn notwithstanding. Slavery was eventually abolished, and one can hope that abortion will be as well. Perhaps a hundred years from now, there will be museums dedicated to this Holocaust, and the world will look in horror at what their ancestors did.
And nevertheless, hopefully they will continue to uphold the Fourth Commandment by honoring their male and female ancestors (as the Hebrew text reads), flawed as they were.
At any rate, thank you President Harrison and to other leaders of our Synod for defending the unborn, created in the image of God, knit together in their mothers’ wombs, known by God, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.
We will not shut up indeed.
The Rev. Larry Beane is pastor of Salem Lutheran Church, Gretna, La. This article is reposted by permission of the author and The Gottesdienst Blog.
Be Informed
Need reasons for hope in the midst of political chaos? Joy Pullman explains.
Be Equipped
Is gender dysphoria real and, if so, has it created a gender ideology that’s harming our children? Abigail Shier has done the research.
Be Encouraged
“As lesser men cower in the face of the risk, the cost of standing up to the system becomes steeper and steeper. While you will not be locked up for saying the truth, yet, you will be demonized, stigmatized, deplatformed. You may lose your job. The end result is America’s ability to get the course correction it desperately needs gets delayed. And at some point, if more people don’t stand up and fight hard, the nation is going to die. Having said that, we must inoculate ourselves against excessive, if fashionable, pessimism. The truth may not prevail. But until then, there’s a heartwarming amount of defiance left in this country.”
Help support our efforts to contend for the freedom to proclaim the faith. Click here to learn more or to donate.
