Last week, I found myself at local sports bar watching Monday Night Football with a friend. Not long after we arrived an older gentleman sat next to us and started chatting me up about the game. That抖阴ap not unusual because that is what people do at sports bars. What came next was …聽 unusual?
My new friend, Paul, avoided all the normal social norms and identified himself as a libertarian-leaning former Trump voter. It didn鈥檛 stop there. He then asked my opinion on abortion rights and Herschel Walker.
At first, I thought I was suffering recompense for some unknown karmic infraction. It turns out Paul, a 70-year-old Irish-Catholic man, was genuinely struggling with the Herschel Walker abortion controversy and whether the government should regulate access to abortions. By accident of time and place, Paul and I were now joined in dialogue about one of the great moral and political issues of our time.
My first thoughts on abortion were formed by my childhood pastor in Washington, DC. My church was a small, conservative Black Baptist church affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. I took it as gospel truth that two sins broke God鈥檚 heart more than any other: abortion and homosexuality. I never thought to doubt the theology and scriptural analysis underlying his position. He said what the Bible meant, and I simply went along.
My reliance on my childhood pastor as my sole source of biblical truth began to change in college. At Morehouse College I minored in philosophy and religion. In one of my introductory religion classes, the class was challenged by our professor to find where in the Bible abortion was explicitly mentioned. Our class, full of burgeoning religious scholars, aggressively searched our Bibles with the certainty of the ignorant confident we would be successful in our quest. Much to our surprise, we didn鈥檛 even find a hint of abortion in the Bible. In fact, there is scant evidence in biblical texts that supports or condemns abortion.
There is ample evidence that early Christians had robust and nuanced teachings on abortion. My Baptist fore parents held strong anti-abortion convictions. However, those anti-abortion convictions were not absolute. Baptist teaching on abortion was always held in tension with a much stronger Baptist conviction that each person was free to make their own decisions on matters of faith without any coercion or interference from the state. For Baptists like me, this means, as people of faith, we should not compel others to adhere to our doctrinal teachings because to do so violates a person鈥檚 conscience. In Baptist teachings, the freedom of conscience is crucial to religious freedom.
I鈥檓 not morally comfortable imposing my specific religious beliefs on others through the use of state-sanctioned power. Some will argue I鈥檓 ignoring that most laws, especially those proscribing certain behaviors or actions, are grounded in a belief those actions are morally repugnant to civil society, i.e., murder. Those proscriptions are different because they derive from shared societal norms.
I鈥檓 against the use of state power to impose the religious beliefs of one group on others. There is no shared societal norm regarding the beginning of life. There isn鈥檛 a shared or consistent belief among Christian traditions on abortion. In fact, several Jewish women have filed lawsuits in Kentucky, Indiana, and Florida, arguing that the various state abortion bans violate their religious freedom because they impose Christian teachings of when life begins.
As an adopted child and Baptist minister, I have strong feelings about abortion. I鈥檓 thankful my birth mother chose not to abort me. I also believe it is important that our nation remains a place where women are free to make that decision.
The Herschel Walker abortion controversy gnaws at me on a deep level. It doesn鈥檛 bother me that he paid for an abortion, but it is the hypocrisy of those who claim moral superiority for being anti-abortion. As Dana Loesch made clear on her podcast, it is about wielding the power of the state to impose their religious worldview on others.
I believe this is the reason Paul鈥檚 soul is uneasy. Why my soul is uneasy. This is also why I continue to have hope. I have hope because two people as different as Paul and me can agree our nation deserves better than folks who believe in pursuing power simply for power鈥檚 sake.
Terrance Carroll is a former speaker of the Colorado House. The first and only African American to ever hold that position in Colorado. He is a Baptist preacher, attorney, and former police officer. He is on Twitter @speakercarroll.
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