Here are Points 1-12 from A Warning to the UK Church fleshed out - essentially a summary of where the UK Church is at with abortion:
1) Life begins at conception; made in the image of God, the unborn are equal in value to the rest of us.
See Psalm 51:5; Matthew 1:20-23; Genesis 1:26-27; Luke 1:41,44; 2:12,16; Psalm 139.
Modern medical science has also concluded unanimously that the life of a genetically unique human individual, distinct from the mother, begins at fertilisation. As a leading medical textbook says, “fertilization…is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new genetically distinct human organism is formed when the chromosomes of the male and female pronuclei blend in the oocyte” [Ronan O’Rahilly and Fabiola Mueller (2000) Human Embryology and Teratology, 3rd edn. New York: John Wiley & Sons, p. 8].
2) “Abortion”, the intentional killing of an innocent human being, is a violation of the Sixth Commandment.
This follows on logically and inescapably from point 1.
This connection is explicitly made in some of the earliest Christian writings, such as the Didache and the Epistle of Barnabas (both are late first or early second century).
3) “Abortion” is child abuse (a serious safeguarding concern).
This is explained here.
4) “Abortion” is child sacrifice (an idolatrous, blood-shedding outrage against the Living God).
5) “Abortion” in the UK is a genocide (a national crime against humanity).
This is explained here.
6) “Abortion” is taking place in the UK Church.
This has been known for a long time anecdotally and can be reasonably deduced from statistics we have on the prevalence of “abortion” amongst evangelicals in America and the extent to which UK evangelicals believe that “abortion” is justifiable (see below).
7) Not only is “abortion” a sin; doing nothing about “abortion” is a sin: there are numerous commands in Scripture to take proactive action against such evils.
See Isaiah 1; 58; Proverbs 31:8; Proverbs 24:11-12; James 1:27; Galatians 6:10; Luke 10:25-37; Leviticus 20:1-5.
8) UK Church leaders have been clearly presented with the truth about “abortion”.
The official government statistics for the baby genocide have been openly published for decades.
Several organisations have been working for years/decades to expose “abortion”, some focusing directly on churches and church leaders (such as CBRUK’s Brephos project), making information and resources available to them.
Since John Stott’s Issues Facing Christians Today (1984) and John Wyatt’s Matters of Life and Death (1998) in particular, the value of life in the womb and the immorality of “abortion” biblically have been clearly known to the UK Church.
Hundreds if not thousands of church leaders have been contacted personally by members of their own congregations and by others in the pro-life movement, and have been asked to respond to “abortion”. An overwhelming majority have responded negatively or failed to respond at all.
Recent events on the international stage (e.g. America, Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland) have brought “abortion” to the fore such that mainstream media have been talking about it.
5,000 Christian leaders were shown the reality of abortion outside HTB’s leadership conference in 2019 (read here).
Christian publications in the UK such as Premier, Evangelicals Now, Evangelical Times, and HEART frequently raise the issue of abortion to a wide readership.
9) UK Church leaders are still doing largely nothing about “abortion” (they are, variously, silently tolerating, indirectly condoning, expressly justifying “abortion”, both within and without the Church).
Inaction on “abortion” is perhaps most clearly seen against the backdrop of the great volume of activity in response to other issues: one does not have to go very far to uncover the UK Church’s response to racism, Covid-19, climate change, debt, homelessness...
10) Most Christians in the UK still believe that “abortion” is sometimes morally justifiable.
As well as a great wealth of anecdotal evidence, we have these statistics from an Evangelical Alliance survey showing that only a minority of evangelicals exhibit firm opposition to “abortion”.
The National Director of the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches, one of the most conservative evangelical groupings in the UK, confirms this picture: whilst “most” evangelicals oppose “abortion” generally when it is used as a form of contraception, “some” will be unsure when it comes to “rape” or “incest” or where the child is “severely disabled”. This range of views is described as valid and acceptable within conservative evangelicalism: they are “nuances”.
11) The UK Church has been called to repent over this in word and deed.
Several voices have called the Church in the UK to repentance in recent days. To name a few:
Andrea Williams of Christian Concern.
The front and first few pages of the most recent edition of HEART.
Admittedly these are relatively marginal voices but this is precisely the problem we are seeking to address: Why is it left to fringe “parachurch” ministries to call the Church to repentance over child sacrifice?
12) The UK Church at large is not repenting.
Though there has been some, very small response by a few individuals and churches to the above calls to repentance, in the grand scheme of things the UK Church has not heeded the call in any meaningful way, but instead has been focusing on “business as usual” whilst responding to other issues (e.g. Covid-19 and climate change) as directed by the Government and the mainstream media. There has been no real change with regards to “abortion”.
It is rare to find a church teaching on “abortion”, let alone striving in repentant prayer and action.
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