"The Abortion Controversy addresses the many myths
surrounding just that: the historic abortion controversy in
America—theologically, ethically, scientifically, politically,
constitutionally, and socially.
More important, John V. Stevens, Sr., focuses on its affect on
the distinct roles of church and state. For example, how is the
issue of abortion and the so-called immortality of the soul
assigned to the fetus—also referred to as the “sacred gift of
life”—being used as a tool by Rome and Evangelical leaders to
shift the balance of power between church and state in America
and Europe back to the medieval model of a church that once
dominated and controlled the agenda of the state, and dictated
its will to kings and emperors? This is a central theme
throughout.
In many respects, John's groundbreaking book combines, as does
nothing ever published before or since, the art of understanding
political science, or the making of public policy, with
prophetic or biblical insight. Revealed through that insight is
the inherent danger of wittingly or unwittingly using what many
of America's conservative Evangelical and Catholic
faithful—including yours truly—consider to be a vitally
important moral and social issue, as a means of securing
political power.
Issues involving “life” go beyond abortion to include such
questions as the use of discarded human embryos in stem-cell
research, euthanasia, and birth control—all once primarily
Catholic issues. Whether or not these issues can be assigned
motives, they remind me of the art of espionage, in which
purposeful misdirection and deception are used to further larger
and more central hidden agendas. And as with modern medical
science and drug usage, there is the unwitting aspect—the law of
unintended consequences.
For example, 19th century national reformer E. G. White warned
that many apparently noble issues—including the heated political
matter of temperance and prohibition in her day—would attach
themselves to sinister attempts (that is, premeditated movements
that went far beyond the control and original intent of their
founders) that would rob people of their basic civil and
religious liberties.
One of these was a national Sunday closing law, which violated
the Establishment Clause separating church and state in the
First Amendment. Today, such “catalyst” issues to which John
refers—specifically abortion—ultimately result, he argues, in
what White foresaw as the rise and development and
establishment of the prophetic “image of the beast.” As the
oppression of a Roman church that for centuries dominated the
will and purposes of kings and emperors, so too in America would
it rear its ugly head again, in the land where religious freedom
is presently guaranteed.
Highlighting Revelation 13, verse 14, White wrote, “[As did] the
papacy, a church that controlled the power of the state and
employed it to further her own ends,” so too, “in order for the
United States to form an image of the beast [in the likeness of
Rome], the religious power[s] must so control the civil
government that the authority of the state will also be employed
by the church to accomplish her own ends” (The Great
Controversy, p. 443). This formula is making its way, whether
one sees the movement as deliberate and intentional, or not.
Every Christian and non–Christian should read this provocative
but insightful book. Doing so might just might make you rethink
everything you believe about the issue of “life.”
Gregory W. Hamilton, President
Northwest Religious Liberty Association
5709 N. 20th Street
Ridgefield, WA. 98642
Web: www.nrla.com
Office: (360) 857-7040
Cell: (360) 910-4882
