Evangel Presbytery: Abortion and the Church

New Warhorn Media post by Tim Bayly:

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Thank you men for your work on this.

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Are there plans for a printed version? Any estimated timeframe?

There are plans for a printed version. We still have to figure the timeframe. Please pray for resources to make this happen.

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Thank you for your hard work on this publication. I don’t know if any further revisions or editing is planned, but it seemed to me there were two sections in which the argument could be strengthened.

In Chapter 1, the first section, “A Grim Progression”, suggests a much stronger record for continual Christian decency in wartime than I believe in fact exists. 14th century warfare in Europe, from the opening of the Hundred Years War to the internecine Italian fighting, was characterized by the “chevaucée”, extortion of towns, and inordinate reprisals. The 17th century Wars of Religion were hardly if at all better, especially in Germany and the “Low Countries”.

Admitting this does not I think damage the overall thesis - the remonstrances of the clergy would surely have had more effect if the repute of the Church itself had not been in shambles in those eras. It is true that some, at least, of the clergy at that time condemned these abuses strongly as our clergy have in the modern era largely not. But the impression the current text conveys is that not only standards but practice of just war was held to a consistently high plateau in “Christendom”, which thesis if actually meant would be a historical inaccuracy.

The second point I hesitate to raise as I admittedly find economic matters confusing at the best of times. But I thought it odd that in Chapter 2, in the section “Societal Arguments - Economic Considerations”, there were no sources for the claim, “To the best of our knowledge, the world’s population will reach 10 billion by 2050 and then first stagnate and finally decline,” especially as most projections I have run across casually - it’s not a speculation of particular interest to me - seem to assume continued and growing use of “birth control” and abortion in the future. It would be at a minimum hard to explain a decline in population on any other terms, certainly. Has anyone studied the situation making assumptions of more ethical behavior?

If you could shed any light on these items I’d appreciate it greatly.