The Bible in American Law and Politics. John R. Vile
the central holding in Roe, has enabled states to add waiting periods and other restrictions, the limits of which states have begun to test.
The Roman Catholic Church has long held that human life begins at conception, and Catholics were among abortions’ most vocal opponents, with mainline and Protestant churches initially taking a far more positive attitude toward the opinion, which most thought avoided outright abortion on demand. In time, however, evangelicals, many influenced by Francis Schaeffer, began to see the abortion decision as a sign of cultural decline, not only because it seemed to provide a way for individuals to deal with the consequence of childbirth outside of marriage, but also because they thought it was a denial of human dignity.
Historically, Roman Catholics have often pitched arguments on social policies in terms of natural law thinking, which they buttress with modern scientific research, and they largely continue to do so. Pope John Paul II’s The Gospel of Life (1995), in which he treats the issues of abortion, euthanasia, and the death penalty, also cites many Scriptures. Fundamentalists and evangelicals tend to resort to Scriptures in treating such issues (Dillon 1995).
As it turns out, however, the Bible does not directly mention the practice of abortion (Luo 2005), and opponents have had to argue from analogous situations or more general biblical principles. One analogous situation, which suggests that a fetus is not fully human, is found in Exodus 21:22–23, where a man strikes another man’s pregnant wife, causing a miscarriage, and he is obligated to pay a monetary penalty to her husband; the Septuagint translation of this passage further distinguished between an “unformed and a formed fetus” (“Abortion in the Bible” 1980, 221).
Both Catholics and evangelicals often cite the commandment against murder in Exodus 20:13 as well as Deuteronomy 30:19, in which God tells Moses that “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.” They are also fond of Psalm 139:13–14: “thou has covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” and Jeremiah 1:5: “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.” Similarly, the New Testament 4describes both John the Baptizer and Jesus in the womb (Jelen 1992, 141). Those who believe that unborn children bear God’s image further cited the admonition in Proverbs 31:8 to speak on behalf of those who are needy (Rosati 2019, 16).
One evangelical treatment of the subject, which, like corresponding arguments from Roman Catholics, devotes attention to the position of the early church on the subject, suggests that larger biblical themes might be a more important resource for those opposing abortion than specific proof texts. It specifically lists the doctrines of “Creation,” “Incarnation,” “Neighbor love,” “Enemy love,” “Peace,” “Justice,” “Liberation,” “Quality of Life,” and “Freedom, conscience and rights” (Gorman 1982, 97–99).
One of the great difficulties in this area, as in others that touch personal morality, is the recognition that even if abortion is identified as a moral wrong, this does not necessarily mean that it is the government’s responsibility to legislate against it or that it can necessarily do so effectively. Those who favor leaving the decision to women point out that in the years prior to the legalization of abortion, many women sought back-alley abortions that often posed serious threats to their health. A number of politicians, among them Mario Cuomo, one-time governor of New York who was a professing Catholic, distinguished their own personal morality from state policy.
See also Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience; Schaeffer, Francis; Ten Commandments
For Reference and Further Reading
“Abortion in the Bible.” 1980. Social Sciences. 55 (Autumn): 221.
Balkin, Jack, ed. 2007. What Roe v. Wade Should Have Said: The Nation’s Top Legal Experts Rewrite America’s Most Controversial Decision. New York: NYU Press.
Dillon, Michele. 1995. “Religion and Culture in Tension: The Abortion Discourses of the U.S. Catholic Bishops and the Southern Baptist Convention.” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 5 (Summer): 159–80.
Douthat, Ross. 2019. “The Abortion Mysticism of Pete Buttigieg.” New York Times. September 17.
Gorman, Michael J. 1982. Abortion and the Early Church: Christian, Jewish and Pagan Attitudes in the Greco-Roman World. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
Jelen, Ted G. 1992. “The Clergy and Abortion.” Review of Religious Research 34 (December): 132–51.
John Paul II. 1995. The Gospel of Life (Evangelium Vitae). New York: Random House.
Luo, Michael. 2005. “On Abortion, It’s the Bible of Ambiguity.” New York Times. November 13.
Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992).
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).
Rosati, Kelly. 2019. “Today’s Abortion Conversation: Where Do We Go from Here?” Evangelicals 5 (Fall): 14–17.
Tribe, Laurence H. 1990. Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes. New York: W.W. Norton.
Adams, Jasper
Although America is often called a Christian nation, it is also said to have a “godless Constitution” (Kramnick and Moore 1996). The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution clearly prohibits Congress from adopting an “establishment of 5religion,” while also protecting its free exercise. The first clause did not initially prohibit the continuation of the remaining state establishments, and controversy remained over how state establishments fit with the absence of a national one.
To this confusion was added a dispute, chiefly between Joseph Story (1779–1845), a Supreme Court justice, Harvard law professor, and legal commentator who, with some other judges, had contended that Christianity was part of American common law, and Thomas Jefferson, who just as emphatically believed that it was not. At about the same time, controversy developed over whether it was appropriate for Congress to allow processing and delivery of mail on Sundays, which is the traditional Christian Sabbath.
This provided the context for a widely disseminated sermon by Jasper Adams (1793–1841), a South Carolina pastor and president of the College of Charleston, which he delivered before the Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church of South Carolina on February 13, 1833. It was entitled “The Relation of Christianity to Civil Government in the United States,” and, it addition to being printed that same year, it has been reprinted in a book edited by Professor Daniel Dreisbach (1996).
Adams prefaced his sermon with three biblical texts: 1 Peter 3:15, which urged believers to give an account of themselves; Proverbs 14:34: “Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people”; and Revelation 9:15: “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.” Anticipating that Christianity would one day become universal, Adams observed that “there is no possible form of individual or social life, which it is not fitted to meliorate and adorn” (Dreisbach 1996, 39). Noting that the Hebrew nation had combined church and state, Adams viewed Constantine’s elevation of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire as the fulfillment of Isaiah 49:23, which had predicted a time when kings and queens would become nursing fathers and mothers. In contrast to many Protestants who saw this