DA: I have been a member of the Old Bridge United Methodist Church in Woodbridge for about six years now.

PTS: What attracted you to this United Methodist congregation?

DA: We were attracted to this church for the same reason I suspect a lot of church shoppers are: dissatisfaction with the rigidity of the previous church we had attended, which was not a United Methodist church. That was the negative part. The push. The pull was the fact that the pastor of this church was a very charismatic, very interesting fellow who preached great sermons, who preached the Word. The church also had, at that point in time, a regular program for kids, which is what gets most boomers.

PTS: Did your pastor preach on the life issues or not?

DA: No. However, our congregation is located in an area of Virginia which is, relatively speaking, quite politically conservative, which is very atypical of many mainline, run-of-the-mill United Methodist churches. We are close to a Marine base, Quantico. And of course lots of people from Woodbridge work at the Pentagon, so it is a much more conservative congregation than I think a lot of United Methodist churches are. I teach an adult Sunday School class, but I do not use my Sunday School class to proselytize my point of view. That is an unwise thing to do, in my opinion. Even so, over the years, people from the church have talked to me about the issue and have become active members in the local right-to-life organization in our area.

PTS: Several from your congregation have, of their own volition, chosen to become pro-life participants.

DA: I do not want this sound too much like 1970’s "lifestyle evangelism," but I think there is an awful lot to be said for the fact that when people understand that pro-lifers do not have horns, that you are reasonable, that your pro-life convictions are seamlessly integrated into your view of what it means to be a human being and a Christian, they can understand that this point of view simply makes sense. They decide that this pro-life guy is part of something that they would not find bad to be a part of as well.

PTS: Good statement. But, Dave, I would like to explore something. You were willing to attend a United Methodist congregation in which the pastor was basically silent on abortion. At the same time, you were the editor of the leading political, pro-life newspaper in the nation. Did that require a kind of split personality on your part? Or were you just practicing tolerance in a high degree?

DA: There are two separate issues here. First, were he to have been preaching a pro-abortion line or a soft-on-abortion line, then of course I would have had either to go and talk directly to him or to leave. One or the other. And second, there are lots of ways to do things for life in The United Methodist Church. For example, I made sure that the delegate from our church who went to the Virginia Annual Conference was staunchly pro-life. Also, the alternate delegate was pro-life. In addition, as a pro-lifer, I went down to Annual Conference and worked the corners, worked the halls, and talked to people. So there are opportunities in the congregation and beyond that allow me to make it clear where I am coming from.

PTS: I am going to be a bit of a devil’s advocate here. When your pastor was quiet on the abortion issue, that meant that it was CBS News and the Washington Post and the general Hollywood elite who formed the ethos of your congregation on the abortion question. I mean, when we pastors are silent on abortion, then the mass media forms our people. The elite, mass media are going to have their say anyway. But when we pastors are quiet on this issue, that just gives a blank check to the mass media to advance their thinking on abortion among our people. I am surprised that your pastor’s silence did not make you more edgy than you were.

DA: It has been my experience, in 57 years on this earth, that people are not the shapeless lumps of clay that we tend to think they are. They are not just little robots at the mercy of CBS News and the Washington Post. People are quite capable of coming to their own conclusions and being absolutely immune to the position of their pastor, for example, if he becomes suddenly pro-abortion. They are quite capable of making up their own minds. After all, as we both know, the people in the pews are often much more pro-life than their pastors are. Maybe it was because my pastor preached an ethic of responsibility, of interdependence, of taking care of the powerless and the unprivileged, that I found his sermons captivating. Also, I used his own sermon material in conversations about abortion with him and his assistant and others.

Again, there are always two ways to do things. You can say, "Well, my pastor did not say this about abortion." Or you can work with him. Being a good liberal at heart, he might have felt either that he should not be talking about abortion at all or that he should not be taking a stand on abortion at odds with the position of the larger denomination. I explained to him, on more than one occasion, that you can read The United Methodist Church’s position on abortion a little bit more ambivalently than perhaps he did. But he never did anything overtly to promote the cause of abortion. And in many personal situations and in outside ministries, he subtly did many things which were very helpful—including supporting crisis pregnancy centers.

PTS: One thing that I have noticed in many United Methodist churches is that if the pastor is silent on the matter of abortion, squeamish about it and therefore silent, that can tend to radicalize the pro-life people in the pews. They become not more thoughtful about it, like you were, but rather they become impatient and angry and aggressive against that particular pastor. You can understand the dynamics in play here.

DA: I would think that would be true, no matter what the issue. We tend to forget that, although our issue, abortion, is the paramount issue, it is not the paramount issue to everybody in the congregation. There are other people, within that same church, who are angry at the pastor for not speaking out on another issue. I have a great deal of empathy for the position that pastors are in. This is why so many pastors do not speak about anything controversial: because, for example, if you say what pro-life people want to hear, they will love you; but others will go after you. Therefore, pastors try not to say anything at all. That is why I appreciate the subtlety with which my pastor handled that issue and other related issues. And I think—yeah, you are right—people do get angry at their pastor. But the challenge for the pro-life United Methodist is that you do what you can with what you have, and that you move your pastor and your congregation in the direction that you want. In a state of impatience and anger, you just create an equal and opposite reaction from other people and polarize the church, which, I believe, is the wrong way to go.

PTS: What features within United Methodism, naturally, on their own, lead people to become more pro-life?

DA: I claim no expertise on United Methodism. But what is interesting about The United Methodist Church, as you well know, is the tremendous history of and emphasis on social action. On feeding the hungry, on ministering to those who have nothing. The typical United Methodist church will have a ministry to the homeless locally and will support ministries and missionaries around the world. And what is the principle? The principle is that if people are naked, you clothe them. If they are homeless, you find them shelter. If they are in jail, you go and visit them. And for someone like me, who has argued for 25 years now, that if you just think about the unborn child for more than two seconds, you will see that little one as the most homeless of all, the most powerless of all, the one who is most at our mercy. It is not difficult to make that case. To make people then move in the pro-life direction is another question. But United Methodists can actually figure it out quite quickly. You will either get a real strong response, such as, "This is different." Or oftentimes, in my experience, you will find people who say, "You know, there is something to that."

PTS: How do you respond when someone refers to The United Methodist Church as a "pro-choice denomination?"

DA: Like so many mainline denominations, The United Methodist Church has an official policy on abortion, Paragraph 161J in The Book of Discipline, which certainly can be read as, and has been interpreted as, supporting many pro-abortion initiatives. The official policy is wrapped up in all those fuzzy buzz words which, at one level, sound almost pro-life. But in the end, the denominational elites manage to wind up supporting, almost inevitably, pro-abortion initiatives. There are some good ingredients in the denominational policy on abortion, but they are encased in a cake with all kinds of bad things. You need to clear away all the bad stuff and get down to the core truths and virtues that United Methodism stands for. United Methodism’s core truths and virtues are absolutely compatible with a vigorous outreach to the crisis pregnancy centers, with pro-life educational and legislative initiatives, and also with the general notion that the unborn child is someone who naturally should be the protected subject of any concerned United Methodist.

PTS: Any last word to us?

DA: If you do this pro-life work for a long time, as both you and I have, you realize that there are two main temptations. There is the temptation to become impatient on the one hand, or, on the other hand, to become so willing to settle for so little that you look at the status quo and simply say, "As long as it does not get any worse, I can live with it." Those are temptations we can fall into. But what is important is an objective assessment of where we are within The United Methodist Church and within the culture as a whole. You could list a hundred things, which I have done, especially in the last couple of years, showing or demonstrating or proving that this culture is becoming more and more receptive to the pro-life message—both because of its inherent beauty and because of the inherent ugliness of its opposite, support for abortion. I just wrote a News and Views article today about a parental-notification bill passing the House in New Hampshire. Even as recently as two years ago, that was unthinkable. But now the unthinkable is becoming the possible, and the possible will become the reality. Will it be tomorrow? No. But again, we are here for the long term. I am not trying to co-opt God for my account, but I think the principles established in the Sermon on the Mount make it clear to Christians, in particular, that pro-abortion is not where we can ever be.

PTS: I think it is fascinating, Dave, that over the years The United Methodist Church really has been decidedly pro-choice. And yet, there are many United Methodists, practicing their vocations in the world, who are decidedly pro-life. You are one good example of that. George W. Bush, President of the United States, would be another outstanding example. He is very articulately pro-life, while he belongs to a denomination that is at present pro-choice.

DA: But using President Bush as an example, you do not have to speak about abortion 12 hours a day, seven days a week. You need to speak out when it is right, when it can be helpful to what you believe in. And you can be there when it counts. And the President has always been there when it counts. The things that he says, the messages that he delivers, and the personal witness that he is, as a human being, are very strongly helpful to the pro-life movement. I have said this many times: President Bush is the essence of the man meeting the moment. If I sat down and listed the qualities that I would look for in a man who could help change the culture of death and nurture the culture of life at this point in time, it would be hard for me to describe a better man than the man we now have in the White House. God richly blessed this nation when we elected George Bush as President.

PTS: Dave, thank you very much for the interview this afternoon. I am deeply grateful for your time, and I believe that the entire Lifewatch community will be grateful for and edified by what you have said. Again, our thanks to you.

DA: My pleasure, and your publication, Lifewatch, is a must-read for my office.

If memory serves correctly, on Good Friday 1990, a review copy of Confessing Conscience: Churched Women on Abortion (Abingdon, 1990) was delivered by the postman to our home, then in New Jersey. A hurried reading revealed the book’s generally, though not uniformly, pro-choice perspective on abortion. That day registered as a low point in this pastor’s participation in the ordained ministry of The United Methodist Church.

Thirteen years later, during Holy Week 2003, another book—Holy Abortion? A Theological Critique of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (Wipf and Stock, 2003) by Michael J. Gorman and Ann Loar Brooks—arrived in our mailbox. The date of its delivery registered as one of the high points in this pastor’s participation in the ordained ministry of The United Methodist Church.

For over thirty years this book, Holy Abortion?, or one like it, has needed to be written. Why? Because for over thirty years The United Methodist Church has been officially associated with the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC), its predecessor organization the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights (RCAR), and their radical pro-abortion ideology. At long last, finally!, Holy Abortion? tells the truth about RCRC and its pro-abortion program.

In Holy Abortion?, Dr. Gorman and Ms. Brooks do not fight RCRC’s pro-abortion propaganda with propaganda of their own. Rather, they use sophisticated, extensively footnoted scholarship to make their points and their arguments. Above all, this brief book of 77 pages, which is actually an extended essay, is a worthy work of theological analysis.