(This is part two of a series. Tap here to read the first half, which focused on scriptural examples of God’s people who virtuously supported flawed heathen leaders.)

Voting is an essential part of Christian stewardship, as we seek to use the authority God has given us to make a difference in this present culture where God has placed us, even though the authority He has given us (our vote) is small. When we vote, we should not focus on electing leaders who will personally follow our religious practices and strict strategies, but instead we should strive to support leaders whose policies will allow Christians to be the “salt and light” God calls us to be.

The governmental and religious realms are distinct God-given jurisdictions which should each acknowledge the authority of the other. During the early history of the nation of Israel, these jurisdictions overlapped for a time – but they had clearly become distinct hundreds of years before Christ. Christians rarely have had the luxury of supporting secular authorities who fear God, but Moses’ example of selecting “men who fear God” always applied primarily to God’s people, not to a secular society.

In the New Testament, Moses’ standards were applied to congregational leadership but not to governmental leadership. Even during the early history of the nation of Israel, most of the political leaders of God’s people were far from righteous (and some of God’s best leaders committed the most extreme sins), yet people who followed God honored and supported the flawed leaders He chose. David was careful to honor King Saul even while Saul was seeking to kill David.

Timing is urgent when we consider how a political leader will impact a genocidal holocaust, because the longer the holocaust continues, more people will be killed. So it is proper for those who serve God to support leaders and measures which may help end the holocaust more quickly, even if their proposals are imperfect. Letting more people die while trying to build support for an unrealistic “perfect” law dishonors both people and their God.

Mordecai and Esther were not allowed to reverse an evil law (which had demanded that all Jews would be killed), so Mordecai and Esther asked their pagan King to enact an additional law which allowed the Jews to defend themselves against their attackers. Today’s absolutist anti-abortion factions would likely consider such an “incremental” proposal to be an “iniquitous decree,” but it was effective in ending that planned holocaust.

Does history offer any examples of holocausts which were ended by righteous rulers? I have found none. Instead, history seems to indicate that a narcissistic leader like Churchill is typically empowered by our sovereign God to lead urgent life-saving (and nation-saving) political tasks which often are too “dirty” for perfectionistic Christians to accomplish.

Are Christians then helpless to do anything in our nation to end the American Holocaust of abortion? Should we follow those who make the pledge to refuse to offer any support for any politician who falls short of penalizing every abortion as murder (in an effort to “immediately” end every abortion)? Or shouldn’t our primary goal first be to seek to support politicians who will allow Christians to pursue efforts to protect the lives of vulnerable children?

Of course, it is also appropriate to pray for the salvation and conversion of each and every leader, and to help move those politicians closer to principles which will eventually save the lives of all children. But if we wait for a perfect leader while failing to support the flawed leaders God has given us, we may be guilty of not only disobeying God but also delaying the end of this Holocaust.

Because we respect religious freedom (as explained previously), public sentiment is essential to consider even when seeking to correct great wrongs in our nation. We must not ignore the sentiments of those whose religion differs from our own, even if we know that they are wrong. As Lincoln said “With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.”

Could public sentiment be consistent with setting our course toward ending abortion? Yes!

Even with all of the confusion and conflict in our nation today, most Americans (of all political parties) still say they support protecting all human lives, especially the most vulnerable. Most Americans also believe the teachings of science. Most Americans say they want to protect and nurture our nation’s children. Even non-religious people typically support these positions (along with the vast majority of religions). This is ample “common ground” to work toward a solution.

Can we leverage such public sentiment to end the American Holocaust?

People who support “Science” should know that the unique genetic identity of each individual human life is established at the moment of fertilization, when the sperm penetrates the egg. Such scientific truths will never change no matter how many people support abortion, because the presence of DNA in pre-born humans will never change. Every premature baby, every ultrasound, every birth is a constant reminder to all of the value of preborn human life. No matter how many years abortion continues, those frequent reminders of our common humanity will always be with us, always having the potential to impact the public sentiment of our nation, if we will simply speak the truth.

Our nation was established on the foundational principle that every human being created by God has unalienable rights, especially the right to life. But from the beginning, we fell short of our own high principles: if a person was a slave, their rights were denied because they were considered to be their master’s “property.” Our inconsistencies caused great conflict, until our Constitution was amended to ensure equal protection for all.

Today, our nation’s conflict over abortion results from inconsistencies which can be corrected by another Constitutional amendment. The simple, common-sense, scientifically sound principles of the Life Amendment (www.lifeamendment.org) fulfill the principles upon which our nation was established, and can be presented in ways which are consistent with public sentiment. If every human being (from the beginning of biological development) is recognized as a “person,” the principles of the Fourteenth Amendment will ensure that every magistrate in our nation will be required to protect vulnerable human life before and after birth. In any pregnancy-related dispute, the due process rights of both the woman and her baby would be protected.

But some anti-abortion people today believe that to end this Holocaust we must focus upon enacting absolute justice, ensuring that a woman who aborts her baby will be punished in the same measure as a woman who kills a child who was already born. Such a perspective creates a huge challenge to overcome, as public sentiment overwhelmingly sympathizes with pregnant women who experience difficulties which lead them to abort their babies. Even if ultimate justice demands equal treatment for every murder, refusing to settle for anything less than such an extreme solution actually delays the end of the Holocaust, resulting in more deaths.

By focusing on a scientific and common-sense definition of human life, we can hope to educate the majority of our nation, establishing enough public sentiment in three-fourths of our nation’s states to require magistrates in every state to protect human life before and after birth. (Under a states-rights approach, or any alternative which falls short of a Constitutional amendment, abortion would always be an option to any woman free to travel to a pro-abortion state.)

With the Life Amendment providing basic Constitutional protection for all, our nation’s religious leaders would then be free to continue focusing on the huge task of leading our nation to a full repentance against our Abortion Holocaust. In such a context, it would be proper for religious leaders to take a hard-line abolitionist approach, focusing on religious principles which forbid the shedding of any innocent blood and demanding that every abortion be subject to God’s justice (while always remaining mindful of His mercy through Christ, whose sacrifice fulfilled the terms of God’s justice).

But in our nation today, when the vast majority of religious leaders refuse to even mention the abortifacient “birth control” methods which are used by so many of the women who sit in their own pews, and when child aversion within the church has so vastly reduced the birth rate among Christians, pastors and other leaders must themselves repent before they can hope to effectively lead their congregations to repentance. Unrepentant pastors cannot hope to lead the nation to repentance.

A congregational approach to correcting the injustice of abortion can also be expected to properly focus on sectarian distinctions, even though such distinctions would be inappropriate or unrealistic when applied to secular politics.

Such an absolutist religious approach can work alongside a “common ground” political approach to save our nation from the Abortion Holocaust.

In the years leading to the Civil War, only a few major political leaders dared to take an absolutist abolitionist approach to slavery. Abraham Lincoln himself avoided publicly advocating actions which would immediately end slavery, although he himself opposed the institution. But the influence of abolitionist preachers in their congregations had a huge impact on public sentiment. Eventually the abolitionist leaders and preachers who were skeptical about Lincoln acknowledged what God had accomplished through him.

So if we truly seek to end abortion as quickly as possible, the principles of the Life Amendment are most consistent with the principles which established the United States of America. In the meantime, we need to look for opportunities to offer positive support to any flawed leaders God has given us to move us closer to that high goal, even if their actions do not fully embrace our religious and strategic agenda.

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(Notes documenting the sources of information provided above will be added here soon.)