Published: September 26, 2009 07:18 pm         

STEPHANIE SALTER: Revelations on the backside of a call to public prayer

Listed as the seventh reason on a flier urging Christians to attend nationwide Life Chain prayer events next Sunday is “To provide God a witness to anoint and use to save lives and change hearts in each local area.”

Here in the Wabash Valley, the planned Life Chain anti-abortion gathering already has managed to change some hearts, but not in the way its supporters intended.

Many parishioners, congregates and members of Christian groups — people who took the time to read the front and back of a bright pink flier that accompanied recent church bulletins — were disturbed by what they saw. Life Chain’s message made them disinclined to join the Oct. 4 prayer gathering at the Vigo County Courthouse.

The problem for these followers of Christ lies primarily in the first two reasons listed for why Christians should attend the event.

No. 1 is “To join a national prayer chain that seeks God’s grace, mercy, and forgiveness for our nation.”

Forgiveness for what?

“The 9/11 attacks and continuing terrorist threats on America are surely linked to the catastrophe of legalized abortion,” says the flier, “as the innocent blood of America’s youngest citizens — victims of unspeakable terrorism themselves, by the tens of millions — cries out for justice. If God used a horrendous civil war to end institutional slavery in America, what might He use to end legalized abortion, which is a far greater threat to our nation than all foreign terrorists combined?”

Reason No. 2 continues in this vein:

“To better understand the impact legalized abortion is having on our country and why the Church must unite to end it.” Specifically, “We the Church can end legalized abortion and severely wound its family of allies — homosexuality, pornography, cohabitation, addictions, divorce, etc. — in any year we commit to do so.”

As a friend who received the flier last Sunday at her church observed, take out pornography and you’ve probably described several members of 90 percent of U.S. families.

Consider the equations: Divorced people, people living together outside of marriage, people struggling with addictions, gay people in or looking for committed relationships, producers and consumers of pornography — all are deemed equal negatives by Life Chain and all are allies of terrorism, which God deliberately rains down on us because this country permits some legalized abortion.

Do all these people then deserve to be “wounded” by their fellow Christians, who, according to Life Chain, have vowed to “engage the battle until the curse of legalized abortion is vanquished from our land”?

Life Chain was founded in the mid-1980s in Yuba City, Calif., as the organization, “Please Let Me Live.” Royce Dunn, Life Chain’s national director, was among those founders. Biographies available on the Internet say he was born and raised a Baptist and remains a Protestant. But his anti-abortion activism has produced a strong alliance with Roman Catholicism, including the Catholic Church’s official opposition to artificial contraception. (The current Criterion newsletter from the Indianapolis Archdiocese endorses Life Chain in an editorial.)

In a 2002 profile by Eric Reslock for a conservative Web site now known as the California Catholic Daily, Dunn acknowledged that contraception has been used for more than 2,000 years. But, he said, “The gravest threat humanity has ever faced is the contracepting mentality. Never has civilization ever faced such an aversion to children — it is a relatively new phenomenon.”

Dunn’s own awakening, Reslock wrote, occurred when he concluded that “an inseparable link” exists between abortion and contraception. Dunn termed himself “so guilty” because, all the while he railed against family planning and such organizations as Planned Parenthood, he said, “I was practicing it in my own home.” (Dunn has two children.)

In a paper he published, Dunn lamented “his personal loss at not having all the children God wanted him to have,” Reslock wrote.

With close to 20 participating churches and groups listed on the local Life Chain flier, there are, no doubt, many people who are in complete alignment with Dunn’s beliefs about contraception, and all seven reasons for attending the Oct. 4 anti-abortion prayer event.

After all, Life Chain has been organizing these public demonstrations for 22 years. Its Web site says people in more than 1,400 cities participated last year.

Unlike rowdy, confrontational anti-abortion groups, Life Chain has a code of conduct required of prayer participants. The code prohibits yelling, ill-mannered behavior and even “frivolous” chit-chat during a chain activity. Anti-abortion signs are encouraged, but only those approved by the national organization. In English and Spanish, they range from “Abortion Hurts Women” to “Lord, Forgive Us And Our Nation.”

Legally sanctioned abortion is now in its fourth decade as an issue that divides Americans, not into tidy “pro” and “anti” camps, but into all manner of belief sets.

Some people believe in abortion on demand with almost no restrictions while others believe anyone who is involved in an abortion should go to jail. In between the extremes sit most people, with a wide range of what is acceptable to them personally, spiritually and legally.

Some people, as we now know, believe that God so despises legal abortion in the United States, he has sent the 9/11 hijackers and other terrorists to punish us until we wake up and repent of that domestic “terrorism” and its “family of allies” — divorce, cohabitation, etc.

Those folks will be gathering from 2 to 3:30 p.m. next Sunday at the courthouse. May they have a meaningful — and informed — time together.

Stephanie Salter can be reached at (812) 231-4229 or stephanie.salter@tribstar.com.