Christians Debate Abortion, and Google Manipulates Everyone
Today’s edition covers recent debates over Christian political strategy on abortion, an Afro-pagan singer decrying “religious racism” after losing followers, an interview about how Google manipulates its users, profound quotes from Medieval Christians, and more.
Wisdom says, “If you turn at my reproof, behold, I will pour out my spirit to you; I will make my words known to you.” (Proverbs 1:23)
Of Christian Concern
CHRISTIANS DEBATE HOW TO FIGHT ABORTION
Left to right: Jeff Durbin, Samuel Sey, Virgil Walker, Ben Zeisloft, and AJ Hurley. (Apologia Studios, Bibledingers, Conversations That Matter / YouTube)
These past two weeks saw three notable online debates between Christians over the best way to fight abortion. Each informal debate was a cordial clash between an abortion abolitionist on one side and a different kind of anti-abortion advocate on the other.
For context, the abortion abolitionist movement is an alternative to the pro-life movement, with important distinctions. Abolitionists—in contrast to mainstream pro-life leaders—maintain that all abortions should be illegal without exception, that abortive mothers should be subject to criminal penalties, and that legislators should not compromise on these points (that is, they should only support bills that establish protections for the preborn that are equal to those that exist for the born). Also, the abolitionist movement, unlike the pro-life movement, intentionally makes its arguments based on the Bible and the gospel of Christ.
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With that background, here are a few (very) brief highlights from the debates.
The first debate (last Thursday) was between Pastor Jeff Durbin of Apologia Church in Arizona and Christian writer Samuel Sey of Slow To Write. Sey challenged Durbin on whether his abolitionist position was consistent, posing different hypotheticals and analogous situations. For example, he asked whether Durbin would support a bill that penalized mothers who had abortions but excluded the death penalty for them.
Durbin argued that this hypothetical scenario committed a category error by conflating the identification of a crime with penology. He said that if such a bill existed, he would speak prophetically against it because of its partiality. When pressed, he said that while he would speak prophetically against the penology aspect of the bill, he would support it because it would not exclude mothers from criminalization. (In a subsequent video, he walked this back, clarifying that he would not support a bill that conflated the two categories and showed partiality to the mother.)
The second debate (this past Wednesday) was between Christian podcaster Virgil Walker and, again, Samuel Sey, hosted on the podcast Bibledingers. As in the previous discussion, Sey contended for the permissibility of an incremental approach to ending abortion—that is, an approach that “save[s] as many babies as possible” even if that means “choosing the lesser evil” (such as a heartbeat bill, which attempts to save only some babies) when complete abolition is not feasible. He again tried to demonstrate that abolitionists are inconsistent in their more uncompromising approach by challenging Walker on how he could be willing to vote for Donald Trump as president when Trump has proven himself to be “pro-abortion.”
Similar to Durbin, Walker said this analogy committed a category error. He argued that voting for a heartbeat bill would ensure that some babies would die, whereas voting for Trump would not because it is still possible to fight him on the issue in other ways.
The third debate (Thursday) was between journalist Ben Zeisloft of the Republic Sentinel and activist AJ Hurley of White Rose Resistance, hosted by Jon Harris on his podcast Conversations That Matter. Hurley made the case that “incrementalism is inevitable” because even if a law criminalized abortion, it would not be just if the punishment was not just by God’s standards.
Zeisloft agreed that increments are to some degree inevitable but maintained that incrementalism, defined as “explicitly pursuing change by degrees,” is “not something that God would want us to do as Christians” because it results in “codify[ing] iniquity.” He pointed to several verses to support the prohibition against codifying iniquity, especially asking Hurley about Isaiah 10:1-2, which curses those who “decree iniquitous decrees” and “keep writing oppression.”
Hurley said he understands the passage as applying to those who have the power to end abortion but don’t. Since its context is one in which absolute monarchs had the power to write decrees, he cautioned against interpreting it with “wooden literalism” without understanding the intention: to save lives.
By contrast, Zeisloft maintained that the approach God would bless is to call leaders “to repentance on this matter and saying, ‘What you need to do is establish justice for the preborn. Treat them as the human beings that they are,’ and then, you know, let them decide the increments. Dusty Deevers was saying that recently, if there has to be increments, let it be on somebody else’s conscience, and let them justify that before God. So maybe, you know, in 10 years…God blesses your labors.”
Many others online, including Abolitionists Rising’s T. Russell Hunter and Nathan Weisser, weighed in on the debates. Jeff Durbin and his co-hosts did a follow-up episode, featuring attorney Bradley Pierce, on Apologia Radio.
Also Noteworthy
A shot from Brazilian singer Anitta’s recent music video, in which she performs a Candomblé ritual (censor added). (Anitta / Instagram)
→ Famous Brazilian singer Anitta complains about “religious racism” after losing 200,000 social media followers for openly promoting Candomblé (an Afro-Brazilian religion that involves invoking spirits to possess one’s body) in a recent music video. Outspoken Christians in Brazil such as Sarah Sheeva and Pastor Flávio Amaral have spoken out about the situation.
→ No mass graves of indigenous children have been found on the grounds of a former Catholic-run boarding school after a tribe claimed the existence of such graves in 2021. The presence of the graves would have suggested that the priests and nuns who ran the school, the focus of which was “to assimilate and acculturate indigenous Canadians into European Canadian society,” had “callously discarded the corpses of hundreds of dead schoolchildren in mass graves on the school grounds.” These accusations received massive mainstream coverage, and the ensuing “moral panic” resulted in “at least 85 Catholic churches across Canada destroyed by arson, vandalized, or desecrated”—attacks that found justifications from Canadian politicians like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Three years later, after nearly $8 million of Canadian funds have been spent to uncover the alleged human remains, no remains have been found.
→ New York could become the 11th state in the U.S. to legalize euthanasia, a violation of God’s commandment against murder (Exodus 20:13). “Since 2002, nine nations in the world have legalized euthanasia, including Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.”
→ Psychology researcher Dr. Robert Epstein, in an interview with Daily Wire podcaster Michael Knowles, says, “bias in Google search results can change people’s views about anything at all,” including (in Knowles’ words) “questions that touch on human nature, God, our relationship to one another and to the cosmos…” Epstein’s research shows that Google has manipulated voters before elections and is likely to do so in the future. Since his findings expose perhaps the most powerful organization in history, Epstein suspects foul play in his wife’s death from a 2019 car accident. | Not-So-Fun Fact: “Don’t be evil” used to be Google’s motto. In 2015, it was changed to the more subjectively interpretable “Do the right thing.”
Church History Tidbit
Wisdom From the Middle Ages
Image: Pixabay
Here’s some historical food for thought—a smattering of famous quotes from Christians in the Middle Ages (click on the author’s name for more about the quote).
"You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." —Augustine of Hippo
"To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible." —Thomas Aquinas
"There are those who seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge; that is curiosity. There are those who seek knowledge to be known by others; that is vanity. There are those who seek knowledge in order to serve; that is Love." —Bernard of Clairvaux
"For I do not seek to understand so that I may believe; but I believe so that I may understand. For I believe this also, that ‘unless I believe, I shall not understand’ [cf. Isaiah 7:9].” —Anselm of Canterbury
"The things, good Lord, that I pray for, give me the grace to labor for." —Thomas More
The Bible, Briefly
The Sons of the Prophet (Part 3)
Elijah destroying the messengers of Ahaziah, by Gustave Doré, 1866. (Public Domain)
Scripture sometimes mentions groups of prophets and “sons of the prophets.” What can their biblical appearances teach us about Old Testament prophesying? Last week and the week prior, we observed their first appearances and how there were. We now consider what they did exactly.
What did they do?
Old Testament scholar Ira M. Price convincingly argues that the sons of the prophets “were evidently largely dependent upon the charity of Israel and the people of God.”* His cited evidence:
one of their wives is seen to be poor (2 Kings 4:1-7)
the Shunammite woman provides a house to Elisha on his journeys (4:8-11)
the sons of the prophets gather food in apparently uncultivated fields (4:39)
the man from Baal-Shalishah donates food to them (4:42-43)
Elijah’s servant Gehazi requests money and clothes from Naaman (5:21-24)
Instead of regular work, Price supposes, the sons of the prophets were occupied with study and worship (1 Samuel 10:10-13; 19:18-24), running prophetic errands for their masters (Samuel, Elijah, and Elisha, respectively; e.g., 2 Kings 9:1-12), and the regular duties of a prophet (e.g., 1 Kings 20:35-43).
On the last point, though, Price does not imagine that all of the sons of the prophets received revelations. Neither was the receiving and delivering of God’s messages limited to the sons of the prophets. As Amos famously says, “I am not a prophet, nor am I the son of a prophet” (Amos 7:14 NASB).
Their Prophetic Abilities
That said, perhaps this amendment could be offered to Price’s conclusion: the sons of the prophets do sometimes seem to manifest some prophetic abilities as a group.
For example, when Elijah and Elisha were taking Elijah’s final journey before he would be taken up to heaven (2 Kings 2:1-12), making a few stops along the way, two separate groups of the sons of the prophets knew in advance, presumably by divine revelation, that the LORD would take Elijah away that day. Elisha already knew, too, and didn’t want to discuss it: “Yes, I know it; keep quiet” (2:3, 5).
Also intriguingly, after the LORD took Elijah, when the sons of the prophets at Jericho saw Elisha returning from the profound experience, they immediately knew, “The spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha” (2:15).
Consider that this episode occurs in the context of several unsettling miracles and mysterious prophetic activities:
Elijah, “sitting on the top of a hill,” repeatedly called down fire from heaven to consume soldiers that Ahaziah sent to fetch him (1:9-15)
Elisha uses Elijah’s cloak (which seems to take on an almost talisman-like significance, or at least symbolic significance of Elijah’s power) to part the Jordan River (2:13-14)
Elisha curses a group of small boys who mock him for his baldness, resulting in their being mauled to death by two she-bears (2:23-25)
Elisha, when the king of Israel asks him for a word from the LORD, requires a musician to play before he receives a prophecy (3:15)
In that context, the sons of the prophets’ knowledge that the LORD would take Elijah suggests these men also had some measure of prophetic giftedness, though a smaller portion than Elijah and Elisha. They seem to portray an almost spooky spiritual awareness, including limited foreknowledge and a keen perception of spiritual authority or power.
Next week, we’ll conclude this study of the sons of the prophets by considering their title and summarizing our observations.
To be continued…
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*Ira M. Price, “The Schools of the Sons of the Prophets,” The Old Testament Student 8, no. 7 (1889): 244–49. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3156528.
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