As a healthy, well-adjusted man, I don’t use TikTok, and I cringe when I witness men unironically doing so—especially when they’re partaking in the latest lame dance “trend.” Even so, lots of bad content is produced there (viva la internet!), and I’m unlucky enough that some of it finds its way to me, scarring my eyes and causing my faith in humanity to shrink just a bit more.
I suffer through cursed content so you don’t have to. (Please, hold your applause until the end.)
Today, we’ll be diving into the deformed mind of a “progressive Christian”: Pastor Adam. I have no idea if he’s validly ordained, or what stripe of Christianity he’s part of, but he wears a collar and holds himself out as a religious leader, so that’s how I’ll treat him.
Pastor Adam has produced an 11-part TikTok video series (which you can also find on YouTube) called “A Progressive Christian Pastor Speaks On Abortion.” I’m not going to respond meticulously to every single point that he makes in every single one of the nearly dozen videos, for two reasons. First, frankly, he’s not worth the effort; these are one-minute max videos made to generate clicks, not to spark serious thought, so he’s lucky anyone’s engaging rigorously with his content at all. Second, I refuse to take seriously bad and bad-faith exegetical takes. Pastor Adam uses Scripture cynically, as a weapon to attack his political opponents; this causes his takes that are based on it to be stupendously shallow and incorrect. Moreover, Pastor Adam, I suspect, rejects much of Scripture (he has to, as a “progressive Christian”), and I won’t argue on the level of scriptural meaning with someone who believes that it’s valid to pick and choose which portions he accepts and which portions he rejects based on what comports with his political ideology. Accordingly, I will not dignify such behavior by attempting to respond to it on its own terms.
With those qualifications out of the way, buckle up.
I’ll admit that I was surprised by his first video (“Why Republicans are Being Played”) because, well, it’s exactly correct. His basic point is that, throughout Roe’s nearly half-century-long existence, the Supreme Court of the United States has been mostly comprised of a majority of Republican-appointed justices, and Republicans have had, at various times, a trifecta in the federal government—most recently from January 2016-2018. Despite it all, they have delivered nothing serious and lasting on this issue. Why?
“So that they can keep Republicans single-issue voters,” Pastor Adam says.
Bingo! Never let it be said that I can’t find common ground with leftists. When they’re right, they’re right.
And as much as I want to, I can’t even take issue with the message annoyingly emblazoned on the front of his shirt: “The Gospel is Antifascist,” it says. Sure it is! But that’s because the Bible is fundamentally anti-tyranny (e.g., Communism, socialism, anarcho-tyranny, corporatism—you name it), full stop. Recall how God deals with the pharaoh in Exodus. Tyranny is simply “rule for private gain,” which is, of course, inimical to all of salvation history—the culmination of which is the root-and-branch destruction of sin and death by the self-sacrificial death-by-crucifixion of God’s own sinless Son, Jesus Christ.
Part two (“Numbers 5, God, and Abortion”), part seven (“Exodus 21 and the Womb”), part nine (“The Bible Says Don’t Murder but then . . .”), and part ten (“Jephtha Kills His Daughter. God Approves?”) are all dishonest scriptural exegesis. See above. Hard pass.
In part three (“Jeremiah and the Womb”), Pastor Adam tells us, smugly, that the passage, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you . . .” (Jer. 1:5) only applies to Jeremiah because God is speaking directly to Jeremiah. I wonder if Pastor Adam, paragon of consistency that he is, I’m sure, thinks that all of the miraculous healings Jesus performed during his three-year public ministry were only for those whom He literally healed and have no deeper spiritual meaning for each of us. Or if, when Jesus told the woman caught in adultery to “go and sin no more,” he only meant that she had to do that, not all of us. To ask is to answer. This is little more than cynical lawyering, which he’s forced to engage in if he’s to save his pro-baby-butchering view from scriptural condemnation.
Fact is, God made each of, personally, and with deep love. It is a grave sin to destroy what God has made.
In part four (“Thou Shalt Not Kill”), he responds to the argument that “Thou shalt not kill” applies to the unborn. “Well, Christian,” he intones, “I’d be able to take your argument much more seriously if [you] actually believed it.” After all, in Pastor Adam’s telling, “conservative Christians” are “why we still have capital punishment,” are those “who tend to be the most pro-war,” and are those “who defend police officers who kill black people at three times the rate as white people.”
Not only is Pastor Adam a religious leader, he’s also a revolutionary moral philosopher possessed of penetrating insight and unparalleled intellect. He’s singlehandedly pioneered a brand new philosophical school: the “I only do good things if everyone else does” academy. I shudder even to think of daring to maybe gently suggest to someone as impressive as him that his position—that good things are only good and to be done provided that everyone else also does them, unfailingly—is ridiculous.
Put aside the merits of his condemnation of the positions of “conservative Christians” (query, e.g., whether allowing for the death penalty is necessarily not pro-life; it’s complicated) and whether he’s even factually correct about some of his claims. The fact that he’s seriously suggesting that the condition of his abandoning his pro-abortion position is that conservative Christians must agree with him about what their principles ought to mean is childish in the extreme.
If your principles depend wholly on how others behave, they’re not worth the breath you use to state them.
In part five (“We Believe in the Sacredness of Life”), he makes the tired argument that you’re not truly pro-life until you agree to enact into law his entire political wish list—universal health care, universal basic income, and making sure that there are zero homeless people—before doing anything about abortion. Need I explain why this is so dumb?
I shouldn’t have to, but I will anyway. (Never say I never did anything for ya.)
Just because we know there are lots of reasons people are moved to commit murder doesn’t mean that we’re morally obligated to eradicate every single such potential contributing factor—e.g., nutrition, schooling, mental health, abuse in homes, fair wages, etc.—before we put cops on the beat to apprehend, prevent, and arrest murderers. I’m not a fake or insincere “anti-murder” activist if I think the best way to handle murders happening at this very instant is to go after murderers directly, rather than wave a magic wand and hope that my decades-long, multi-pronged, indirect approach to confront everything except actual murdering happening right now will reduce said murdering.
In part six (“How Evangelicals Became Anti-Abortion”), he argues that the real birth of the “Religious Right” was opposition to racial integration, not concern for the unborn. Being anti-abortion was just a more acceptable way for evangelicals to continue being racist while holding on to their political power. (He never explains exactly how that works, but apparently being against the feticide is . . . racist. Because of course it is.) Regular readers of mine know that I’m anything but a David French fan, but he seems to be the only one who’s responded to this, so I’ll let him take it from here. The enemy of my enemy and all that.
In part eight (“When Conservative Heroes are Pro-Abortion”), we learn that President Richard Nixon was OK with abortion in certain circumstances. Umm, OK. So what?
People are wrong about stuff. Water is wet. Dog bites man. The sun will rise tomorrow. News at 11.
Finally, in part 11 (“How Republican Should Vote to Reduce Abortions”), yes, you guessed it: Endorse Pastor Adam’s entire political worldview and vote for Democrats (who definitely are not rabid on this issue, no sir)!
That last one is a howler and should be all that you need to hear to dismiss Pastor Adam as the fraud that he is. Nonetheless, let’s pray for him.
My gratitude for watching so we don't have to, Deion. The various points you raise knocking down his arguments are persuasive and well-formed--still, the part that will stick the most with me is your final sentence. Too often I forget that my foremost duty as a Christian is not to win the argument, but to help lead the soul of the wanderer back towards our Shepherd. Like St. Paul at the Acropolis I may think myself a skilled enough rhetorician to persuade my opponent to abandon his heresy; but what I really am is a man who probably needs to spend more time in prayer. Thank you for the reminder.