God "rejoices" over abortions says Episcopal priestess

The Episcopal Church has to clarify God’s official position on abortion – at least so says a priestess of the church, who claims that a proposed rite for post-abortive women conflicts with church theology and that the Deity “rejoices” when women elect to abort their children, reports Peter J. Smith, LifeSiteNews.com.

Rev. Nina Churchman wrote a letter to Episcopal Life Online expressing her outrage upon learning that her church has developed a healing rite for post-abortion women sorrowful over their abortion that seems to have language alluding to “sin” and “guilt.”

Churchman said she “was sickened to discover that the rite for abortion is couched wholly in terms of sin and transgression.”

The priestess also took particular umbrage with the words, “I seek God’s forgiveness” and the words “God rejoices that you have come seeking God’s merciful forgiveness.”

“The Episcopal Church, by resolution, has long held that women have the freedom to choose an abortion,” asserted Churchman. “It is not considered a sin.”

The Episcopal Church’s “long held” position permitting abortion dates back to 1967, when the church began to lobby for abortion in limited cases (i.e. rape, incest, fetal deformity, health of the mother), which by 1994 had become a full-blown defense of a right to an abortion. The church’s previous position on abortion, had lasted much longer. As late as 1958 the church had expressed an unequivocal defense of over 1900 years of Christian tradition against abortion, stating, “Abortion and infanticide are to be condemned.”

“Women should be able to mourn the loss of an aborted fetus without having to confess anything,” declared Churchman.

“God, unlike what the liturgy states, also rejoices that women facing unplanned pregnancies have the freedom to carefully choose the best option – birth, adoption or abortion – for themselves and their families.”

“The wording of this liturgy focuses solely on guilt and sin instead of the grief and healing that may accompany a very difficult but appropriate decision to terminate a pregnancy,” said Churchman.

Instead Churchman expressed her determination that the church should reject the rite at the next General Convention and do away with the references to “sin” and “guilt.”

The proposed post-abortion healing service had been the idea of Georgette Forney, president of Anglicans for Life, who had obtained an abortion when she was 16. Forney had asked the church to create a healing service for women like herself seeking healing, and the Episcopal General Convention had approved the development of the project.

The result was a rite addressing “the pastoral needs of women and men and who have experienced miscarriage, abortion or other trauma in the childbearing or childbirth process” in a book called, “Rachel’s Tears, Hannah’s Hopes: Liturgies and Prayers for Healing from Loss Related to Childbearing and Childbirth.”

The 2009 General Convention of the Episcopal Church will consider and vote on the rite when it convenes July 8-17 in Anaheim, California.

Report from the Christian Telegraph 

 

NOTE: My Thoughts on the Above Article

The above article surely highlights some serious issues relating to the Episcopal Church in America, from a Biblical perspective.

1. The area of church leadership is of concern, even leaving out the issue of priests, what is a woman doing in the place of leadership within the church. Surely the Scriptures are clear on this.

2. The Episcopal Church in America has landed on the wrong side of the abortion debate. Abortion is a crime against humanity and a sin. I wouldn’t have thought this was a difficult position to reach for Bible believing Christians, but perhaps that is the real essence of the problem – perhaps these are not Bible believing Christians?

US PASTOR SENT TO JAIL FOR OFFERING ABORTION ALTERNATIVES

On Friday the Rev. Walter Hoye of Berkeley, California, was ordered to serve 30 days in county jail by Judge Stuart Hing of the Alameda Superior Court. Rev. Hoye had been found guilty on January 15, 2009, of unlawfully approaching two persons entering an abortion facility in Oakland. Judge Hing had also ordered him to stay one hundred yards away from the abortion facility for three years. However, Rev. Hoye refused this term of probation and would not agree to a stay-away order. Therefore, the judge denied the defense motion to stay the sentence pending appeal. Mr Hoye was taken into custody from the courtroom, reports LifeSiteNews.com.

At a hearing on February 19, Judge Hing stated that he had not intended to impose any fine or jail time on Rev. Hoye if he would agree to stay away from the abortion facility. After Rev. Hoye refused to agree not to offer alternatives to abortion-minded women, Judge Hing imposed a 30-day sentence and $1130 fine.

Dozens in the African-American and pro-life communities from around the nation who came out in support of Rev. Hoye were outraged by the sentence.

“It is absolutely incredible that in America an individual can be sentenced to jail for engaging in peaceful free speech activity on a public sidewalk,” remarked Allison Aranda, Staff Counsel for Life Legal Defense Foundation. “Rev. Hoye is being singled out for particularly harsh punishment because he refused to agree not to offer help to women considering abortion. Where is the justice in that?”

Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, today denounced the sentence leveled against the pastor.

Rev. Hoye, said Pavone, “has just begun serving a sentence which is blatantly unjust. Rev. Hoye did no violence, but rather attempted to stop violence by his prayerful presence at an abortion mill in Oakland.

“He was right to refuse to promise not to approach the abortion facility. By intervening for these children, he simply seeks to fulfill the command, ‘Do to others what you would have them do to you.’ No government can put a cap on peaceful efforts to save children from violence.”

Rev. Hoye is an African-American pastor who says he feels a special calling to work for the end of what he calls the genocide by abortion taking place in the African-American community. As part of his efforts, he stands in front of an abortion facility in Oakland with leaflets offering abortion alternatives and a sign reading, “Jesus loves you and your baby. Let us help.”

In response to Rev Hoye’s efforts, the Oakland City Council passed an ordinance making it a crime to approach persons entering abortion centers to offer alternatives to abortion. Approaching women to encourage them to enter the clinic is permitted, according to City policy.

According to 2004 statistics from the National Center for Health Statistics, about 37 percent of pregnancies of black women end in abortion, compared with 12 percent for non-Hispanic white women and 19 percent for Hispanic women.

LLDF Legal Director Catherine Short and attorney Mike Millen, who also represented Rev. Hoye at trial, are currently challenging the constitutionality of the ordinance on Rev. Hoye’s behalf in federal court. They say they are hopeful the ordinance will be struck down and Rev. Hoye vindicated.

Report from the Christian Telegraph

AUSTRALIAN STUDY: DRAMATIC DROP IN ABORTION, LOW PROPORTION OF GAYS

An extensive study of Australian attitudes towards sexuality and Australians’ sexual behaviour has revealed that younger generations of Australian women are obtaining abortions much less frequently then the previous generation, reports John Jalsevac, LifeSiteNews.com.

Dr. Julia Shelley of Deakin University in Melbourne, one of members of the team of researchers conducting the study, told NEWS.com.au, “We’ve plotted a sudden decline in the abortion rate that is so low it harps right back to the time when abortion was illegal and rarely practiced.”

“That means that a young Australian woman these days is about as unlikely to have an abortion now as her grandmother was back in her day.”

The study, begun in 2005, involved 8,205 randomly selected Australians (4,124 females and 4,081 males) being interviewed about various issues related to sexual health and behaviour. “The main aim of the study is to follow a nationally representative group of Australians over their lifetime documenting both the natural history and patterns of health and relationships,” reads the official description of the study.

According to the study, less than 5 percent of women born in the 1980s have had an abortion, which is significantly less than the 14 percent of older women. Dr. Shelley pointed out that the peak time for women to obtain an abortion is between the ages of 20 and 25, indicating that the figure of 5 percent for women born in the 1980s is unlikely to climb much higher over time.

The researcher attributed the decline in the abortion rate to several factors, including an increased use of contraceptives and a change in attitude that favors giving birth to children in Australia. According to Shelley, Australia is presently experiencing an increase in birthrate.

However, Shelley was only willing to admit that women increasingly deciding not to abort, and instead to give birth to their children “may partially” explain the fall in abortion, instead putting most of the emphasis on an increased use of contraceptives, brought about thanks to an increase in sexually transmitted diseases.

“If women generally are now more willing to have babies if they fall pregnant then it may partially explain the fall in abortion among younger women,” she said.

However, she indicated “safe sex” practices are the primary reason for the decrease in abortion rates. “Widespread sexual education trailed the sexual revolution by some decades and I think the effect of that only more recently cut in and change practices,” she said.

“But probably more significantly, the occurrence of HIV and AIDS has vastly increased condom use which has the side effect of stopping unwanted pregnancies.”

The study also indicated that an extremely small fraction of the Australian population self-defines as “homosexual.” Only .66 percent of women and 1.03 percent of men defined themselves as homosexual. This figure is well below the “statistic” of 10 percent that is often touted by homosexual activists. The extremely low percentage of homosexuals in the population agrees with the findings of other similar studies in Western countries.

Besides those who self-defined as homosexual, another 1.26 percent of women and 1.23 percent of men defined themselves as bi-sexual.

However, the study also found that Australians have extremely liberal attitudes towards sex and marriage, with 86 percent of women and 88 percent of men agreeing that sex before marriage is acceptable.

Report from the Christian Telegraph