Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 22, 1993 TAG: 9309290324
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RANDY PIZZINO
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
I write as a pro-life evangelical Christian, and it is the attention of my fellow evangelicals that I most desire. Those outside the evangelical world are urged to listen in. Like us or not, we evangelicals are a significant subculture in size and influence.
In Wichita on Aug.19, Dr. George Tiller, an abortionist, was shot twice as he arrived at his clinic for yet another day of human slaughter. The woman now charged with attempted murder is Shelley Shannon. Whether she is guilty must, of course, be proved in court. For this discussion, let us assume that someone among the anti-abortion demonstrators in Wichita fired the two shots into Dr. Tiller's car and body.
That Dr. Tiller deserves the severest punishment is beyond debate. He has used his God-given hands and skills to assault God-given life. He has arrogantly advertised his readiness to kill unborn children in the latest stages of their yet most helpless days. Tiller is the proper object of moral outrage. If he dies without repentance, he will eternally regret his own birth and his violent interruption of thousands of other births.
My immediate concern, however, is that the moral outrage toward Dr. Tiller is more restrained toward the person who shot him twice. I am agitated with pro-lifers who think or say, "Yes, the person who fired the shots went too far. I would not personally take such a radical step to stop abortions. But I'm not surprised that some people feel driven to these extremes."
The mentality that allows for the most remotely possible or most indirect excusing of the shooting of Dr. Tiller is a further disturbing evolution of thought and attitude within the pro-life community.
Cal Thomas has contended in this newspaper that the events of Wichita reflect the slippery-slope connection between abortion and other acts of human violence. Thomas' usual perceptive abilities have here failed him. Wichita is part of a slippery slope, but one that has been engineered and greased by evangelical pro-lifers.
The best-known builder of the slope has been Randall Terry and Operation Rescue. Terry and his followers took the most publicized steps of civil disobedience as a way of stopping abortions. Operation Rescue opened the door wide for the disregard of the rule of law. Bombing clinics and shooting abortionists are the inevitable fruits. If one act of civil disobedience does not effect change, then a further and more radical step becomes logical.
The entire evangelical community must face these issues. Evangelicals are by definition dogmatists. We believe truth is definable and absolute. There is one true God, one basic human problem, and one way of deliverance from sin. Christ is the only Savior. We believe in guilt, judgment, heaven and hell.
Furthermore, all these elements of dogmatic belief are preached from evangelical pulpits. Ministers tell people they are sinful, guilty with only one hope of redemption. There are some in our society (our favorite tag for them has been "secular humanists") who sincerely believe that an evangelical church where such ideas are preached is a more dangerous place than the local abortion clinic. An abortion clinic is a place where fetal tissue is disposed of, but the evangelical pulpit is a place where the freedom, self-worth and dignity of autonomous human beings are assaulted and destroyed. Secularists see the evangelical pulpit as a primary culprit in our crowded mental-health facilities.
The imagination can be useful in anticipating consequences. Imagine that evangelical churchgoers in the Roanoke Valley are soon greeted on Sunday morning by protesters of Operation Freedom and Human Dignity. The protesters are indignant over the psychological abuse too long committed by evangelical ministers. The posters read, "Stop Guilt Manipulation ... All Beliefs are of Equal Value." The demonstrators scream at us, "Don't go in that place ... The minister will load you with guilt and fear." These sincere demonstrators use their bodies to block our entrance to our church buildings.
Yes, on my imagined Sunday morning, the demonstrators would be in gross moral and theological error, and would be violators of civil law. But any evangelical who gives sympathy to Operation Rescue or such efforts forfeits any right to speak in the public square against our secularist demonstrators.
The evangelical, pro-life community needs to think more clearly about our words and actions, and the consequences of both. We need to say, "Let us use all lawful means to stop abortion, and let us add to those means our earnest prayers that God will bring an end to our great national crime against ourselves and our children."
\ Randy Pizzino is pastor of Trinity Church in Roanoke County and a resident
of Franklin County.
by CNB