“Immediatist vs Incrementalist” debate analysis, Part III: Social justice history vs TR Hunter
As I start, I’d like to reiterate why I’m pursuing this multi-part analysis of the “Immediatist vs Incrementalist” debate between Abolish Human Abortion’s T. Russell Hunter and Center for Bio-Ethical Reform’s Gregg Cunningham.
In a comment to my Part II post, an antagonized Hunter called my efforts a “freaked out obsession,” to which I responded:
My “freaked out obsession” is what I knew you knew but what you admitted 3x in the debate: that incrementalist pro-life advances save children’s lives. Yet you blow those children off. This is utterly unfathomable, loathsome, and ghastly to me. My “freaked out obsession” is for those children. They’re abstract collateral nothings to you. They’re not abstract to me.
The debate exposed Hunter’s admitted betrayal of preborn children being slaughtered by abortion today. This while Hunter has the chutzpah to claim moral superiority over those trying to save them and then inexplicably press to block their efforts.
Sound crazy? There’s more. Also exposed during the debate were the half-baked theories and accusations by which Russell makes his contradictory claims. It is these I’m dissecting in these posts for those with ears to hear.
Hunter’s most glaring error, and the collapsing foundation of his immediatist house of cards, was his revisionist history of social justice movements, absurdly claiming such leaders as William Wilberforce, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King, Jr., were immediatists.
Hunter’s flaw was in quoting their writings, which indeed expressed an absolutist moral view against slavery and segregation, but ignoring their work, which demonstrated an incremental approach.
I’ve pulled excerpts on the topic of social justice history from the debate into a video, below. In it Cunningham corrects Hunter on his fraudulent portrayal of social justice history.
Most telling is from 10:02 on, during Q&A, when Hunter first agrees with Cunningham that Wilberforce was not behaving immorally when supporting incrementalist legislation to redesign slave ships, an obvious attempt to slow down the slave trade.
So, Cunningham queries, why is it immoral for incrementalists to apply the same logic, such as with abortion clinic regulations? Watch Hunter squirm and go on to contradict himself by saying Wilberforce was wrong to engage in incrementalism…
[youtube]https://youtu.be/26BNFA8_NZs[/youtube]
(If you want to skip the video and just read the cliff notes, see Klusendorf’s post.)
There are innumerable examples throughout history of good people saving the lives of victims of oppression how they could, when they could – from Christians who rescued babies from infanticide during the days of the Roman Empire; to the Underground Railroad; to officers on the Titanic choosing women and children first to board the short supply of lifeboats; to daring efforts by such heroes as Schindler, Sendler and ten Boom to save Jews from the Nazis.
Noted Scott Klusendorf of Life Training Institute in his debate analysis:
Puzzling to me was Hunter’s claim that Lincoln never acknowledged incrementalism as a solution to slavery. Really? No less than Frederick Douglass had a different take, as Princeton Professor Robert George points out:
“Of course, politics is the art of the possible. And, as Frederick Douglass reminded us in his tribute to Lincoln, public opinion and other constraints sometimes limit what can be done at the moment to advance any just cause.”
Applied to abortion, George continues:
“The pro-life movement has in recent years settled on an incrementalist strategy for protecting nascent human life. So long as incrementalism is not a euphemism for surrender or neglect, it can be entirely honorable. Planting premises in the law whose logic demands, in the end, full respect for all members of the human family can be a valuable thing to do, even where those premises seem modest. Fully just law would protect all innocent human life. Yet sometimes this is not, or not yet, possible in the concrete political circumstances of the moment.”
Hunter’s reply was that pro-life incrementalists don’t trust the power of the risen Lord and thus don’t embrace immediatism. But wait. If Hunter truly believes the power of the risen Lord enables us to end abortion immediately, why wait for us?
Good question, which I’ll focus on in my next obsessed installment, “‘Immediatist vs Incrementalist’ debate analysis, Part IV: Straw men and the Bible.”
The biggest question is why is Hunter dogmatically standing on such a disproven and deadly falsification of social justice history?
I think Jonathon Van Maren of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform captured it in his comment on the debate:
In my analysis, Hunter is simply someone who started reading some abolitionist literature, and then began announcing that he’d rediscovered something about them and that he’d identified uniform trends across the board and throughout history before doing nearly enough reading or research.
As his historical case has steadily come apart under the weight of historical details he either ignored or just didn’t read, he increasingly cloaks his position in religious language in order to stave of criticism. It’s why his response to historical critique general takes the form of religious accusation or a pivot back to the immediatist argument.
Hunter must know by now - or perhaps he really is that simplistic – that his ideology is his own, not some revival of universal abolitionist views. But he’s gone too far down the road to start being nuanced or well researched now – and he’s convinced a lot of people that he’s some sort of prophet.
Keep the channel on. The train wreck is inevitable.
Also read:
Prologue
Part I: Let babies die today, we can save the rest later
Part II: There’s only one way to cut down a tree?
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Actually, Russell nor any Abolitionist I know has ever claimed 1) that Lincoln was an immediatist or 2) and Abolitionist. That was Gregg who erroneously claimed that Russell believed this to be the case and then you picked up on it and assumed that we think Lincoln was an immediatist.
Toby, if that’s true, then Hunter is at fault for not correcting Cunningham when he was directly asked the question (beginning at 13:08 in the video above):
Cunningham: Was Lincoln wrong to be both an immediatist and an incrementalist?
Hunter: I agree with what Harriet Tubman said, whenever they asked her about Lincoln. She said, “Well, Lincoln – this war is gonna keep on going until he makes the right decision and says he’s gonna abolish slavery.” This was after the Emancipation Proclamation. She was asked what’s the deal? What do you think about this? And she said, “If Lincoln decides to kill the snake, the war will be over, slavery will be abolished. But the thing is, you never wound a snake, because it will always jump back up and bite you.” I believe Lincoln repented as well. [Cunningham laughs.] Here’s the answer. Lincoln himself does not credit the incrementalists, the colonizationists or any of those people with the abolition of slavery. He credits the Garrisonians.
Confusing answer? It’s indicative of Hunter’s entire 3-hour debate performance. It appears Hunter was trying to claim Lincoln was an incrementalist who converted into a immediatist after the fact. BTW, it’s ludicrous to claim Lincoln would omit the Civil War and the deaths of 620,000 soldiers as the primary reason for the abolition of slavery.
Interesting that you would nitpick on a detail Hunter himself was obscure about.
So… you’ve now resorted to just flat out lying?
So sad.
But in all seriousness. Are you saying that you are absolutely certain of this historical analysis?
If you went and read Wilberforce’s works and he argued in his own works against this idea that he was morally an immediatist and even argued that the times that others sought to regulate the slave trade all came to naught, would you admit that you guys are actually the revisionists?
I mean to ask, is it worth while to correct your errors? Or will you, like the pro-choicers we argue with on the streets, just shift to some other argument when you realize you are wrong?
Why hello, TR, nice of you to join us with gaping nonspecific slurs.
Speaking of Wilberforce, may I suggest your time would be better spent responding to Gregg Cunningham’s request that you provide evidence of your claim during the debate that Wilberforce recanted his support of incrementalism. I checked with Gregg today, and it has been over a week since he asked you – and nada.
You know, it occurs to me that T. Russell Hunter et al must believe that it was wrong and evil for people to hide Jews during WWII. Shouldn’t they have tried to save every single Jew in Europe at the same time instead?
No JoAnna,
That would be incorrect. Immediatists try to save as many babies as they can in uncompromising ways. Hiding Jews would be the equivilant of going to an abortion clinic and pleading for the lives of children. YOu have misunderstood immediatism, very likely because people like Jill and other pro-life celebrities has intentionally misrepresented it for their listening audiences.
Readers, Jill repeats the same lies over and over hoping you’ll believe them. Make sure you’ve read her article here. Read the other ones. Notice that we’ve responded to these ridiculous claims over and over again. Don’t be deceived. http://blog.abolishhumanabortion.com/2015/02/would-aha-denounce-raoul-wallenberg.html
The great thing about this debate is TR Hunter is captured saying things on video he can’t edit or delete (such as that he knows innocent children are saved by incrementalist legislation), and rebutted with facts correcting his false assertions. He and AHA are so exposed here, and it was his own doing – his own big, totally unprepared mouth that got him into this.
Hmmm….T Russel Hunter sure likes to throw “liar! liar! pants on fire!” around a lot. He called NAvi a liar too. Now he calls Jill a liar. He can’t back up his accusations but sure likes to call names.
Here’s an idea AHA–if Jill is misrepresenting immediatism then why don’t YOU do a better job of explaining it to the rest of us? Linking to an article isn’t doing that. Hunter did a pitiful job representing immediatism apparently so why don’t the rest of you enlighten us?
After listening to this debate very carefully, I’m convinced that T Russel Hunter is using immediatism incorrectly. I have sympathy for some of the things he is saying, but he is not advocating immediatism. What he is advocating is what I would call “Jeremiadism.”
A Jeremaid is a form of witness within the Christian tradition of calling the nation to repentance for falling grievously into sin. What TRH is actually arguing is that the pro-life movement needs to be a Jeremaid movement calling the nation to repent for the sin of abortion. The goal is repentance and conversion to Christianity (and the end of abortion as a result).
However, he is clothing his arguments in the rhetoric of immediatism, when it is clear from his arguments (and how he and Cunningham seem to be talking past one another) that he actually is trying to re-define immediatism to stand for Jeremaidism.
I have sympathy for this kind of witness, and I believe that a great awakening is possible in America that could radically shift the culture on a number of issues very quickly. However, TRH thinks that his particular flavor of reformed Christianity is the necessary vehicle (Catholics are not Christian in his view), and he thinks that his Jeremaid approach is the only way to bring an awakening and change the culture.
This is simply wrong. In fact it is kind of crazy as this approach is incapable of seeing the actual work of transformation and awakening that is taking place through a number of means. For example, the miraculous impact of 40 Days for Life – prayer and fasting work, without negative witnessing, but loving witness.
TRH’s arguments bears all the signs of a megalomaniac who can not permit evidence that others might have equal or more light.
[…] Part 1 Part 11 Part 111 […]
Douglass’ oration reflecting on the life of Abraham Lincoln is one of the better speeches in American history, and he delves into the tension between the art of the possible and complete justice:
“The name of Abraham Lincoln was near and dear to our hearts in the darkest and most perilous hours of the Republic. We were no more ashamed of him when shrouded in clouds of darkness, of doubt, and defeat than when we saw him crowned with victory, honor, and glory. Our faith in him was often taxed and strained to the uttermost, but it never failed. When he tarried long in the mountain; when he strangely told us that we were the cause of the war; when he still more strangely told us that we were to leave the land in which we were born; when he refused to employ our arms in defense of the Union; when, after accepting our services as colored soldiers, he refused to retaliate our murder and torture as colored prisoners; when he told us he would save the Union if he could with slavery; when he revoked the Proclamation of Emancipation of General Fremont; when he refused to remove the popular commander of the Army of the Potomac, in the days of its inaction and defeat, who was more zealous in his efforts to protect slavery than to suppress rebellion; when we saw all this, and more, we were at times grieved, stunned, and greatly bewildered; but our hearts believed while they ached and bled. Nor was this, even at that time, a blind and unreasoning superstition. Despite the mist and haze that surrounded him; despite the tumult, the hurry, and confusion of the hour, we were able to take a comprehensive view of Abraham Lincoln, and to make reasonable allowance for the circumstances of his position. We saw him, measured him, and estimated him; not by stray utterances to injudicious and tedious delegations, who often tried his patience; not by isolated facts torn from their connection; not by any partial and imperfect glimpses, caught at inopportune moments; but by a broad survey, in the light of the stern logic of great events, and in view of that divinity which shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will, we came to the conclusion that the hour and the man of our redemption had somehow met in the person of Abraham Lincoln.”
Actually,
Douglass was an Immediatist in the sense that we are immediatists. He can look back and appreciate what Lincoln finally did, but he called and cried for the immediate and total Abolition of slavery and opposed incrementalism.
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I think you need to check your history of Frederick Douglass. He split with Garrison actually over this debate. Don’t take someone else’s sloppy scholarship for granted, do your own research, read him in his own words.
Toby, I don’t get the distinction. Can you elaborate? People hiding Jews weren’t pleading with the government to save the Jews. They were acting in civil disobedience. So the parallel doesn’t really work.
I have read Douglass. He split with Garrison because he wanted to start his own newspaper “The North Star.” As far as I know from what I’ve read of Garrison (his own autobiography) he remained an immediatist. He met with Lincoln on occasion and talked about his frustration with him at the same time he admired him and had respect for him. But he was an immediatist both in principle and practice.
JoAnna,
Thank you for the question. What I am saying is that Abolitionists are not against saving as many as we can through moral incrementalism. That is to say, we make memes, go to clinics, produce resources, hold signs, go to high schools, churches, government buildings, strip clubs, to expose the evil of abortion. We open our homes to women in need, we adopt children, etc. All of these things are measures by which we incrementally seek to save as many babies as we can. Me typing here is an incremental means to persuade others of the rightness of immediatism.Immediatism is not to be confused with over nightism or “all or do nothingism” as some of our opponents like to frame it either because they do not understand it themselves or like Jill Stanek because they intentionally like to confuse and deceive their unquestioning supporters (I say this about Jill because these things have been explained to her ad nauseum and she still insists on misrepresenting us). Now if Corrie Ten Boom or people on the Underground Railroad would’ve acted in ways or communicated that they would only help rescue light skinned slaves, or male slaves, or Polish Jews, that would be unrighteous incrementalism That is reflective of the legislation being passed today as “pro-life.” It is legislation which dictates that only some babies will be protected, while legislating which babies can be slaughtered. It communicates to our culture that some human beings are more worthy of protection because they can feel pain (unless of course people like Jill pass their anesthesia legislation they are pushing for in Montana, which ironically undoes their efforts for pain capable legislation). Hopefully that clarifies a bit.
Read some more Douglass, from the same speech I quoted: “Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible. Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.” What is that, but a tacit approval of incrementalism by Douglass?
Douglass and Garrison split over the U.S. Constitution, no less. Garrison was convinced it was too incremental, inherently pro-slavery, and wanted to take his axe to it, so to speak. Douglass came to believe the Constitution could still function in a society free of slavery. These were serious issues, not mere personality conflicts over whose turn it is with the printing press.
AHA is missing critical points, including the fact that the prolife movement was essentially solely committed to overturning Roe v. Wade with a constitutional amendment, but after years of bearing no fruit, and perhaps bad fruit, they shifted tactics to something that they think and I do today has a greater chance of succeeding, faster and saving more lives while doing it. That’s what this issue is about, saving lives, none of us can stand before the throne and thump our chests about how correct we are on judgement day, and I say that as a guy who perhaps takes pride in being right.
I think the Immediatist case rests, necessarily, on thinking that the Incrementalist approach delays the time when abortion is made generally illegal, (or “totally illegal” if you want to exclude things like ectopic pregnancies, etc. – cases where the danger to the woman is such that there’s not going to be any making that illegal).
If I was arguing for the Incrementalist side, I’d say the problem is that there’s no proof of such, nor any logic that says it’s so.
[…] so we return to my “freaked out obsession,” those preborn children caught in that unknown span of time between now and “no matter how […]
“Slavery was not ended in a single day, nor with a single law. Freedom for Blacks was won bit by bit. Even with the Civil War, Blacks did not obtain freedom right away, nor were they even welcomed by all of the troops fighting for the North.”??
This is true. The anti-slavery gradualists consistently stood against the immediatists and forestalled emancipation for decades until the passage of the 13th amendment. Over these decades Immediatists like William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, the Grimke Sisters, the Tappanites, Levi Coffin, James Rankin, and nearly all the active workers of the Underground Railroad loudly and consistently called for the total and immediate abolition of slavery and moved the culture along as a result. By the time of the war, abolishing slavery had become a necessity due to abolitionist agitation and the great cultural conviction that the war was ultimately being fought to free the slaves. The gradualists, always in the vast majority, finally bent to the moral suasion of the immediatists and following the North’s triumph in the war capitulated to their call. ??
Of course the abolitionists rejoiced that all their years of toil and consistent agitation for abolition had come to fruition. They actually interpreted the 13th amendment itself as the long hard fought for fruit of their work. Likewise, Abraham Lincoln credited the “moral power” of “the Garrisonians” (immediate abolitionists), specifically for transforming the countries views on slavery and providing the necessary resolve and demand for emancipation that made it the necessary next step following the northern army’s victory in the Civil War.??It is true that the emancipation proclamation was a clever war measure on Lincoln’s part and that it was never an actual bill or declaration of abolition (and it certainly did nothing to abolish slavery itself), but it did however encourage even the most vocal abolitionists (and former opponents of Lincoln’s like Garrison and Douglass) to believe that he would soon do the right thing. As the immediate abolitionist and underground railroad worker/northern army nurse Harriet Tubman believed, Lincoln, as soon as he determined to fully emancipate the slaves and “crush the head of the snake,” would be used by God to bring the war and slavery to an end only after Lincoln determined to fully emancipate the slaves in the manner that the immediate abolitionists had long been agitating for. Tubman, like so many others, understood that Lincoln had to repent of his own incrementalism and say enough was enough, and lay the axe to the tree. (Yes, the tree and axe analogy was used by 19th century abolitionists as well).
??Of course it is true that even the work of the immediatist takes place over time and that is why the doctrine of immediatism has never been opposed to the long hard work of constantly laying the axe to trunk of the tree or struggling to pull the roots up over time as long as it takes. ImmediatISM is not simply a synonym of immediate in the way that modern day anti-abolitionists so constantly frame it.?? That immediatism produces gradual results has always been recognized and understood by abolitionists.
As historian Aileen Kraditor writes in “Means and Ends in American Abolitionism,” the abolitionist’s conception of his role in society as an agitator was focused practically and consistently on the principle and goal of immediate change rather than the goal of producing incremental victories. “The goal for which [the abolitionist] agitated was not likely to be immediately realizable,” Kraditor writes.
She continues, “It’s realization must follow conversion of an enormous number of people, and the struggle must take place in the face of the hostility that inevitably met the agitator for an unpopular cause. Hence he would be denounced not only as a contemner of the general will but also as a visionary. The abolitionist knew as well as well as their later scholarly critics that immediate and unconditional emancipation could not occur for a long time. But unlike those critics they were sure it would never come unless it were agitated for during the long period in which it was impracticable.” (p26). ??As Kraditor continues to explain: “To have dropped the demand for immediate emancipation because it was unrealizable at the time would have been to alter the nature of the change for which the abolitionists were agitating. That is, even those who would have gladly accepted gradual or conditional emancipation had to agitate for immediate and unconditional abolition of slavery because that demand was required by their goal of demonstrating to White Americans that Negroes were their brothers” (p. 27).??
William Lloyd Garrison, the most vocal and active proponent of immediate abolitionism (also the most hated by gradualists), understood this principle fully and freely explained that, “We have never said that slavery would be overthrown by a single blow; that it ought to be, we shall always contend.” ??As the American Anti-Slavery Society (the “ICAS” of the 19th century) stated in its first annual report, the well-meaning gradualists who opposed their focus on immediate abolition had entirely mis-understood immediatism and falsely opposed their ideology and strategy. The American people, the AASS argued, would be “moved” to abolish human slavery by a “powerful array of true principles” and only ever transformed by an uncompromising call for “total, immediate, and unconditional emancipation.” The AASS in turn exhorted gradualists to cease toiling on increments and regulations but to instead, “urge the naked truth,” and “insist upon reformation now.” The AASS explained that immediatism would bear fruit that was “sufficiently gradual,” and “practical reformation” would be produced only “after the sternest immediatism of doctrine” was consistently proclaimed and adopted.??Of course the abolitionists understood that they were dealing with a mass of slavery supporters and anti-slavery incrementalists who could not even imagine immediate unconditional emancipation and an apathetic culture which had long become accustomed to the argument that the only way to abolish slavery would be to do it gradually (because they feared that it would be dangerous to grant black people their freedom from bondage over night in the way that they eventually received it), but this only encourage the abolitionists to keep on calling for repentance of the national sin of chattel slavery. And they well knew that calling for incremental change (just as we know today) only put off abolition and even after decades of work and millions of dollars would only ever produce incremental change.??
As the historian William E. Miller argued in his monumental work “Arguing Against Slavery” (1996), the American abolitionists learned to denounce all forms of compromise and procrastination regarding their position and appeal from studying the work of earlier British abolitionists who were constantly thwarted, delayed, and distracted by calls for regulation and gradual abolition. As Miller records, the American abolitionists, like the English abolitionists before them became convinced by history and experience that “any kind of procrastination” had to be vociferously denounced. ??Miller adds, “As Martin Luther King and his cohorts fighting against racial segregation in the twentieth century had had repeatedly to explain “Why We Can’t Wait” (the title of one of his books), so in the previous century the English Abolitionists, in their long struggle, had finally come to see that they had to say “immediately”–because anything gradual stretched out into never. If you were serious about ending slavery, history had shown, you had to cut through that endless self-deceiving delay” (p. 74).??The call and cry for immediate abolition was that which imbued the abolitionists movement in America with its strength and moved the whole country along to emancipation.
As Wendell Phillips, standing over the coffin of William Lloyd Garrison recollected, “[Garrison] seems to have understood–this boy without experience–he seems to have understood by instinct that righteousness is the only thing which will finally compel submission; …that only by the most absolute assertion of the uttermost truth, without qualification or compromise, can a nation be waked to conscience or strengthened for duty” Phillips, “Funeral Oration for William Lloyd Garrison”). ??As a contemporary historian of American abolitionism recorded, “It was the custom in that day to inveigh against immediatism as “impracticable.” “You cannot,” said our opponents, “emancipate all the slaves at once; why, then, do you propose so impossible a scheme?” Our reply was, that slaveholding being a sin, instant emancipation was the right of every slave and the duty of every master. The fact that the slaveholders were not ready at once to obey the demands of justice and the requirements of the Divine Law militated not against the soundness of the doctrine of immediatism or against its power as a PRACTICAL WORKING PRINCIPLE. The minister of the Gospel does not cease to proclaim the duty of immediate repentance for sin because he knows that his message will not be immediately heeded. It is his duty to contend for sound principles, whether his auditors “will hear or forbear.” He dares not advise or encourage them to delay repentance for a single hour, through he knows that in all probability many of them will do so until their dying day.” ??
????????Compromise may very well be the art of politics, and politics might very well be the art of the possible. But immediatism has always been the art of the desired end and the causal power driving all great moral transformations and cultural reformations. This is true regardless of how long it takes for the transformation to truly come into effect. The time it takes for a nation to turn from its wicked ways and change its course is only as long as it takes for that nation to repent before, or be judge by, Almighty God. That it takes time to put the pieces of the nation back together is no fault of immediatism or failure on the part of God. That is the way things are. But, and this needs to be clearly understood by all who are engaged in this current conversation, unless we call for the total, immediate, and unconditional abolition of human abortion, we will never see it, except as the result of our own conflagration.
-Russell
I’m still confused, Toby. Pro-lifers want to save all babies, too. But AHA does not, as Jill’s analysis has clearly shown, and as T. Russell Hunter said in his debate with Cunningham. AHA is okay with some babies dying if saving them does not meet their immediatist philosophy. Do you want me to quote the relevant portion of the debate?
That somebody says that someone says something or does something or believes something does not make it so.
I have literally been used by God to save babies myself and will continue to do so as I focus on calling for the abolition of human abortion rather than focus on calling for the abolition of abortion procedures.
The doctrine and practice of immediatism has never been opposed to long hard work or constant and consistent toil on behalf of those whom we are seeking to save. ImmediatISM is not simply a synonym for “immediate” in the way that modern day anti-abolitionists so constantly frame it.?? It never has been and it never will be (regardless of how many people the fool into believing that this is the case).
Immediatism is about what we call for, work for, focus on, and demand. We demand the Abolition of Human Abortion (rather than the regulation of the practice of abortion or the banning of this or that procedure or place that the evil deed is done). We seek the establishment of justice for ALL pre-born human beings (rather than seeking to establish laws which protect human beings who have reached a certain age or stage of development or who meet the current criteria our culture deems worthy of first order protection such as being conceived in consensual sex and possessing the right number of chromosomes).
We view abortion as a national sin and focus on the evil of abortion in and of itself as murder, seeking its total abolition. Our opponents agree with us morally that abortion is murder but do not treat it practically as murder in and of itself. They focus on fighting the way that abortion is done and to whom and seek to limit the number of abortions that take place by dealing with abortion methods or practice by degrees.
The anti-abolitionists of our day want to keep this stark difference from the view of their fans, financial supporters, and future staff members. We want to get their fans, financial supporters, and future staff members to repent of placing their faith in the incremental measures and schemes of the past Four Decades. We want these pro lifers to cease their focus on abortion methods or permissions and stop putting bandaids on the corpse of this culture of death and go instead out onto the streets, to the mills, and everywhere else demanding the abolition of abortion, repentance of the sin of child sacrifice, and help us pass laws to establish justice in keeping with that resolution. We want people to unify together under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and work on the ABOLITION of abortion rather than focus on its regulation.
This is the difference and all the incrementalists talk about how we hate babies and would save a baby in a box that was dying ten feet away from us because its not all the babies and we would have to take steps to get to him, is nothing but a paranoid attempt to keep their own people from looking at what we actually are saying and doing.
Can you not see the irony of your last paragraph, T. Russell Hunter? You do what you accuse incremenatlists of doing.
What’s that?
[…] die today, we can save the rest later Part II: There’s only one way to cut down a tree? Part III: Social justice history vs TR Hunter Part IV: Straw men and the Bible Part V: Sacrificing children to the idol of abolitionism Scott […]
[…] die today, we can save the rest later Part II: There’s only one way to cut down a tree? Part III: Social justice history vs TR Hunter Part IV: Straw men and the Bible Part V: Sacrificing children to the idol of abolitionism Part VI: […]
[…] die today, we can save the rest later Part II: There’s only one way to cut down a tree? Part III: Social justice history vs TR Hunter Part IV: Straw men and the Bible Part V: Sacrificing children to the idol of abolitionism Part VI: […]