Posted By cmbuuck on January 21, 2010

Pro-Life Black Pastors Oppose President Obama’s Healthcare Plan…Christian Newswire, Monday, September 28, 2009… The following statement is in response to the recent public endorsement of President Barack Obama’s healthcare plan by Bishops from the “Church of God in Christ,” led by Bishop Charles E. Blake Sr.  This statement is made by Black ministers and pastors actively involved in the Pro-life Movement, including the chair of the National Black Pro-life Congress, the national director of L.E.A.R.N Inc. (Life Education and Resource Network), and the executive director of the Network of Politically Active Christians.  They pastor congregations in California, Texas, North Carolina, Michigan and Washington, D.C.  The Black Pro-life Movement is outraged by the recent endorsement of this administration’s health care proposal by some clergy of the Church of God in Christ.  As God-fearing individuals we encourage COGIC leaders to read and evaluate the President’s plan, including the Capps-Waxman Amendment, rather than merely parroting his words.  If unborn children cannot depend on the Church to carefully examine this bill to see if their lives will be protected from state-funded genocide, on whom can they depend?  Such an endorsement does not consider the devastating impact abortion is having in the black community.  Over 1,400 black babies each day are lynched out of their mothers’ wombs.  Clearly, this rate of prenatal murder in our community outpaces death by heart disease, diabetes, cancer, HIV/AIDS and violent crime combined.  We find it troubling that this endorsement does not acknowledge the deliberate targeting of the black community by Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry, nor decry the mental and physiological impact abortion is having on black women across America.  We recommend in the strongest terms possible that this endorsement be withdrawn until such time that the Obama administration adds language to the health care proposal that specifically prohibits taxpayer funded abortions.

Abortion and the Gospel…By Rev. Paul Stallsworth, United Methodist Church… Abortion is the public issue, in American society that stubbornly refuses to go away.  So, how is The United Methodist Church dealing with the abortion issue at the present time?  Two main strategies seem to have emerged.  The first and most common strategy is silence.  Many United Methodist leaders prefer to ignore the issue.  Pleased with the Obama Administration and its politics, some simply do not bring it up.  Fearful of the fallout that might result in their local churches, many do not bring it up.  They assert their main concern is preaching the Gospel and making disciples of Jesus Christ.  But that is exactly what many church leaders in Germany, during the Third Reich, said, as they remained silent and inactive about the plight of the European Jews.  A second strategy is emerging.  Call it the strategy of bridge building.  Some prominent United Methodists want to reach out to all sides of the abortion controversy.  So they engage in conversation with those on the pro-choice side.  Then they speak with those on the pro-life side. In doing so, they strive to reach a middle ground that will please the greatest number of church members.  However, there is a problem with the bridge-building strategy:  the bridge builders tend not to listen to the Church’s Great Tradition, the Church’s historic faith, which through the ages has been consistently protective of the unborn child and mother.  The bridge builders, it seems, are so busy reaching out to both sides, so busy listening to both sides, so busy searching for compromises and common ground, that they forget the teaching office of the Church and what should be regularly taught.  So they actually forget about the truth of Church teaching.  Using silence, an edited Gospel, or well intentioned bridge building – all of which avoid the truth about life and abortion – might be understood as behavior unbecoming of the clergy and bishops.  IN TIME:  The time is coming when The United Methodist Church – her bishops, clergy, and laity – will rediscover that the Gospel is the Gospel of Life. There is no other true Gospel than the Gospel of Life.  The Gospel of Life is for the weakest, the least significant, the helpless, among us.  That Gospel places obligations on the articulate to speak for the voiceless, on the strong to protect the weak, on the well placed to aid the vulnerable.  That Gospel inspires the willingness to act for the sake of the little one in the womb and for the sake of his/her mother.

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