William Barber

“Moral Mondays” Pastor William Barber Teams with Planned Parenthood

on May 30, 2019

Pastor and prominent Religious Left activist William Barber recently expanded the scope of his political advocacy by opposing an Alabama law that prohibits most abortions. The legislation is expected to undergo a series of court challenges that could potentially reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

Barber’s ‘Moral Mondays’ initiative first gained traction in North Carolina by protesting conservative policies instituted by the state legislature, including funding reductions for state programs. The initiative served as a template for Barber’s creation of “Moral Witness Wednesdays.” These initiatives are part of Barber’s larger organization Repairers of the Breach (BRepairers) that claims a moral obligation to support an expansive taxpayer-funded welfare state. BRepairers portrays itself as based upon a framework of moral and constitutional values rooted in religiously progressive initiatives such as how society treats women, the LGBTQ community, the poor, immigrants, children, workers, and people of color.

Barber aimed his past advocacy efforts in support of anti-poverty initiatives, including the revived Poor People’s Campaign and a slate of other groups equating a biblical responsibility to care for the poor with voting for candidates who espouse a Big Government welfare state.

Barber described state officials as immoral and hypocritical while speaking at a May 28 Montgomery rally in protest of the recently passed Alabama abortion ban. He criticized the Alabama officials as pro-life on the issue of abortion but not pro-life when it came to wages or increasing funding for the food stamp program in Alabama. The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) Minister teamed with Planned Parenthood Action and the notorious Southern Poverty Law Center to host the rally, in which he charged:

“The same politicians that claim they are for life fight living wages, and want to cut food stamps, and don’t want people to have health insurance,” he said. “There’s a lie going on somewhere.”

Barber has made other comments regarding the alleged hypocrisy of conservative Christians on his Twitter account:

“I’m in Alabama today to help expose the false moral narrative of political leaders who claim to be pro-life while denying people the health care, living wages, common sense gun laws, and environmental protections we need to sustain life.”

Barber’s organization seeks to draw moral concern to societal treatment of children, while at the same time the pastor advocates for unrestricted abortion-on-demand. This professed concern for the most vulnerable in society is difficult to square with simultaneous attacks on the Alabama abortion ban.

In his advocacy, is Barber primarily concerned with Christian ethics and morality? His ethics appear situational rather than informed by scripture or historical church teaching. It is concerning that a Mainline Protestant pastor is okay with and supports abortion practitioners. By selectively cherry-picking what he qualifies as biblical tradition, Barber justifies his ideological positions.

It is equally concerning that not only does Barber protest the abortion ban but that he partners with Planned Parenthood and the SPLC in doing so. Church officials should look to scripture and historic Christian teaching that informs church positions on ethical issues including the sanctity of human life. Individual pastors and the broader Christian polity should not define their own individual preferences for ethical questions already answered in the scripture and through the actions and body of Christ. No matter what denomination, Barber, or any other religious progressive attempting to justify abortion through the disguise of morality, the scripture that sustains Christianity is clear on human life:

Recent claims and protests against abortion bans (that seek to protect the most vulnerable population in society) make sense in that Barber directs initiatives that mistake social justice to exclude religious freedom and the right to life. Social justice, as used by the Religious Left, is sometimes code for Big Government programs misrepresented as biblical justice and concern for the poor, disadvantaged, and most vulnerable in society. If Barber was truly concerned with morality and protecting children, his organizations would not team up with those who have killed millions of children.[1] While Barber states that he is a Christian concerned with public morality, in reality he selectively ignores parts of the scripture that don’t comfortably align with the political Left.

[1] Planned Parenthood has its roots in the racist practice of eugenics and to this day African-Americans have an abortion rate four times higher than whites and Hispanics. Abortion has taken the lives of more black Americans than every other cause of death since Roe v. Wade was passed in 1973.

  1. Comment by William on May 30, 2019 at 5:29 pm

    Hope these folks live in rubber houses, wear rubber clothes, drive rubber cars, et al.

  2. Comment by David on May 30, 2019 at 8:33 pm

    If God values the unborn, why do nearly 75% perish prior to term? It would seem that God favors abortion and it is never wrong to walk in the ways of the Lord. What happens to the souls of these fetuses? They all go straight to heaven unlike the rest of us. It would seem that science tells us more about God than the Bible in this matter.

    Of course the whole debate hinges on whether there ought to be consequences for having sex. Concern for former fetuses are conspicuously absent in the pro life camp. Women are supposed to suffer the pain of childbirth. The use of anything to lessen this pain was thought improper until Queen Victoria took some ether. If we look at the ultra Orthodox Jews who oppose birth control of any sort, we commonly find families with 6 or more children. Those conceived late in the life of the parent’s are more likely have to have medical problems. There are good reasons for limiting birth.

  3. Comment by Loren Golden on May 30, 2019 at 10:57 pm

    No, sir, there are no good reasons for limiting birth, but there are good reasons for limiting conception.
     
    As for your ludicrous claim that “God favors abortion”, and your blithe assumption that “all (fetuses) go straight to heaven”, as I told you back in September, and again early last month (neither of which you saw fit to answer), miscarriages occur because we live in a fallen, broken, sinful world that is in rebellion against God. God does not, as you accuse, “favor abortion.” Among the blessings He promised to the Israelites, if they were to “pay careful attention to (the angel He would send before them) and obey his voice, (and) not rebel against him,” (Ex. 23.21) was that, “None shall miscarry or be barren in your land.” (Ex. 23.26) And again, “Children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb is a reward.” (Ps. 127.3)

    With respect to the eternal destiny of children (including the unborn) who die before reaching a supposed “age of accountability”, the Scriptures are silent. We are conceived in sin, and we are sinners from our mothers’ wombs (Ps. 51.9). Christ died to pay the penalty for our sins (Is. 53.4-6, Rom. 5.8-9, I Cor. 15.3-4), but our unrighteousness is imputed to Him, and His righteousness is imputed to us, thus saving us from sin and its penalty, death, only when appropriated by faith in Him (Rom. 3.28, Gal. 2.16, Eph. 2.8-9) and only in Him (Jn. 14.6, Acts 4.12). “But how are they to call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?” (Rom. 10.14) From the womb, the Lord loved Jacob and hated Esau, not because of anything they had done, but because of His purposes in election (Rom. 9.10-13). And yet, “Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise.” (Mt. 21.16) So then, it might be that children who die in the womb or in infancy can never be saved from sin and death, because they cannot express faith in Christ; it might be that some who die in the womb or in infancy are saved, while others are not, because of God’s purposes in election; or it might be that all children who die in the womb or in infancy are saved from sin and death, because He regards their “praise” (in the context of Mt. 21.16) as an expression of faith. Even if we suppose that the sixty million children who have died in the womb at the tender mercies of the abortionist are saved from sin and death and will rise with Christ when He returns on the Last Day, this no more justifies taking the lives of children while they are in the womb, than does the possibility that all members of a particular church are saved by faith in Christ from sin and death justify the actions of a lone gunman who enters that church and murders them all.

    All human life is precious to God, because human beings are all made His image (Gen. 1.26-27, 5.1, Jas. 3.9), and it is for this reason that the death penalty was prescribed for murder under the Noahic Covenant (Gen. 9.5-6). Under the Judicial Law (which is passed away under the New Covenant), the Lord prescribed penalties against men who strive against one another, when one of them strikes a pregnant woman, thus inducing her into labor: If “there is no harm (to the mother or the child), the one who hit her shall surely be fined. … But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life,” etc. (Ex. 21.22-25) In the Psalms, David praised God for how he was “fearfully and wonderfully made,” how God “formed (his) inward parts (and) knitted (him) together in (his) mother’s womb” (Ps. 139.13-16). In the second of the four Servant Songs in the Book of Isaiah pointing to Christ, the Servant said, “The LORD called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name. … The LORD…formed me from the womb to be his servant.” (Is. 49.1,5) And the Lord told Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” (Jer. 1.5)

    Human fetuses, like those who have been born, are human beings made by God in His image. To deliberately take the life of one (except in the rare case when the pregnancy threatens the very life of the mother) is tantamount to murder, tantamount to murdering God in effigy. The abortionist’s work is anathema to God, and unless he repents of it and turns in faith to Jesus Christ for forgiveness and salvation from sin and death, he will be eternally condemned for it.

  4. Comment by Lee D. Cary on June 1, 2019 at 11:17 am

    Wow, David! That argument just sort of takes your breath away.

  5. Comment by John E on June 10, 2019 at 12:24 pm

    By the “logic” of this comment, one can also say that because 100% of people die, that must mean God approves of murder.

  6. Comment by Diane on May 31, 2019 at 1:03 am

    The forced-birthers should be forced to adopt and raise every kid who’s currently in the foster care system. Then we can talk.

  7. Comment by Mike on May 31, 2019 at 8:34 am

    You always come up with these arguments that prove nothing. Abortion is nothing but murder, and has nothing to do with kids who are in foster care.To equate the two is either rank stupidity, or a desperate tactic to defend your own indefensible position. Just like the idea that those who are in favor of the death penalty for murderers should not object to abortion-there is no moral equivalence. The death penalty is clearly taught in the Bible as a righteous sentence for those who take the lives of other innocent beings (fighting in war is not included). Taking the life of the unborn is so clearly murder that I don’t see how you can even begin to justify it.

  8. Comment by Loren Golden on June 2, 2019 at 3:17 pm

    I suppose too, madam, that you would argue that only those who oppose the death penalty should shoulder the tax burden of keeping convicted murderers incarcerated for life?  Or that taxes should be raised only on those who favor federal government bureaucratic management of expensive social welfare programs?  Or that taxes to support controversial abortion provider Planned Parenthood should be levied only on those who insist on keeping abortion legal?

  9. Comment by BJNeyer on May 31, 2019 at 10:22 am

    Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will. enter into the Kingdom of Heaven; but he who. does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Matthew_7:21

    You cannot call yourself Christian, espouse immoral acts and cause others to commit sin. Abortion is a gravely sinful act. It is a rejection of God and his saving grace.

    Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you;
    Jeremiah 1:5

    We are who we are in our mother’s womb. If we are not human then, we will never be human. And, if we are not human now, what keeps us from killing one another simply because you are an inconvenience to me?

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