Ethicist shares lessons on conflict at 'Roe' prayer service
1/23/2003 WASHINGTON
(UMNS) - On the 30th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision
legalizing abortion, a Christian ethicist offered a biblical message as
old as the church itself: "Love one another."
Drawing on Paul's
letter to the Romans, Sondra Wheeler told those gathered for a pre-March
for Life prayer service that the apostle Paul's task in this document
was to tell both sides they were wrong and to address how they treated
each other.
"Paul condemns heedless self-righteousness on both
sides" in Romans 12, Wheeler told those attending the service at the
United Methodist Building, across the street from the Supreme Court.
This was the 15th such service organized by the United Methodist
Taskforce on Abortion and Sexuality, an unofficial network of United
Methodist clergy and laity. Jan. 22 marked three decades since the
Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision.
Paul's letter was like a
bridge across the chasm that divided the Christian and Jewish
communities in Rome, Wheeler explained. There were differences between
those who accepted Christ and those who did not. And, among the
Christians, there was a fracture between the people who believed that
Jesus, in fulfilling the Torah, reinforced all the dietary and other
laws of God's chosen people, and those who felt he represented freedom
from all that.
"It is a fight about how to honor God," not a
dispute about whether to worship God, Wheeler declared. Paul told the
Romans that such a fight between siblings must be conducted with
humility. He was aware, she said, of the tendency to maintain a sense of
cast-iron certainty while relegating all who disagree to the outer
darkness.
Paul urged the Romans to live peaceably with all and to
avoid conforming to the world. Wheeler said in her message, "The Bond
of Peace in a Church of Conflict," that Paul's advice applies to
contemporary issues such as abortion.
"The world will watch
avidly the spectacle of the church tearing itself limb from limb," the
Wesley Theological Seminary professor warned.
Paul urged
Christians to "hate what is evil while holding fast to what is good,"
she said. "The alternative to fighting as the world would have us do is
not indifference." It is honorable, prayerful discernment of God's will,
she said.
"To fight as Christians means we hold on to …
truth," Wheeler said. "What unites us as a church is … deeper and
more fundamental than all that divides us."
The Rev. Paul
Crikelair of Elverson, Pa., president of the task force, led the
service. The Rev. Paul Stallsworth of Morehead City, N.C., editor of
Lifewatch, the task force's newsletter, read the Gospel lesson and
served communion.
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