Memorial Tribute Former Surgeon General C.Everett Koop © A Genuine G-Shot.wmv

Dr. Koop.

C. Everett Koop

Before Dr. C. Everett Koop arrived in 1981 as Surgeon General could anybody ever name who the Surgeon General was? Koop also caused lots of editorial cartoons to be drawn about him because of his positions he took on health issues. Today’s cartoon below sums up the issues he tackled.

On 2-25-13 we lost a great man when we lost Dr. C. Everett Koop. I have written over and over the last few years quoting Dr. C. Everett Koop and his good friend Francis Schaeffer. They both came together for the first time in 1973 when Dr. Koop operated on Schaeffer’s daughter and as a result they became close friends. That led to their involvement together in the book and film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” in 1979.

In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented  against abortion (Episode 1),  infanticide (Episode 2),   euthenasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close look at the truth claims of the Bible.

In this 1979 film series they dealt with the big social issues and predicted what social problems we have in the future because of humanism. For instance, they knew that the Jack Kevorkians of the world would be coming down the pike. They predicted that there was a slippery slope from abortion to infanticide to youth euthanasia brought on by the materialistic worldview.

Koop exhorted evangelicals to protect unborn

HANOVER, N.H. (BP) — Former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, widely credited with energizing evangelicals against abortion, died peacefully Feb. 25 at his home in Hanover, N.H., at age 96.

The trailblazing pediatric surgeon developed a reputation as a preserver of life not only through groundbreaking surgeries and medical procedures, but through a morally, biblically based platform against sexual promiscuity and abortion, most notably before and after his two terms in the 1980s as surgeon general.

Koop also promoted the power of prayer in conjunction with medical science, famously praying at the bedsides of his patients.

In the 1979 book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” Koop and the late Frances Schaeffer made a case for the importance of mankind’s intrinsic God-given value in the preservation of humanity.

“If man is not made in the image of God, nothing then stands in the way of inhumanity. There is no good reason why mankind should be perceived as special. Human life is cheapened,” the two wrote. “We can see this in many of the major issues being debated in our society today: abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, the increase of child abuse and violence of all kinds, pornography (and its particular kinds of violence as evidenced in sadomasochism), the routine torture of political prisoners in many parts of the world, the crime explosion, and the random violence which surrounds us.”

Koop and Schaeffer endeavored to “awaken the evangelical world — and anyone else who would listen — to the Christian imperative to do something to reverse the perilous realignment of American values on these life-and-death issues” including abortion and infanticide, Koop reflected in his 1991 autobiography, “Koop: The Memoirs of America’s Family Doctor.”

Southern Baptist ethicist Richard Land has written that “it is difficult to overestimate the incredible impact” Koop and Schaeffer had on evangelicals in the 20th century.

“Everyone devoted to the pro-life cause owes an incalculable debt of gratitude to Francis Schaeffer and to Dr. C. Everett Koop,” Land wrote for National Right to Life in 2003. “First Schaeffer, and then Dr. Koop, helped inform and energize a whole generation of evangelical Christians to engagement with a culture that had veered dangerously off course from its Judeo-Christian foundations. The pro-life movement owes them an enormous debt.”

C. Ben Mitchell, professor of moral philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tenn., hailed Koop’s legacy.

“We have lost the nation’s doctor,” Mitchell told Baptist Press. “As a gifted physician and faithful Christian, he taught us how to heal both body and soul. As a public servant he helped us navigate some tumultuous waves, even causing a few of his own. As a protector of human dignity and the sanctity of human life he cared for the tiniest and most vulnerable among us.”

After the U.S. legalized abortion, Koop predicted the practice would lead to infanticide, passive and active euthanasia and toward a political climate that, in Nazi Germany, led to Auschwitz and other concentration camps, according to news accounts of his speeches.

Koop, a Presbyterian, vowed during confirmation hearings before the U.S. Senate not to use his post as surgeon general to promote his religious ideology and occasionally angered evangelicals as he worked to keep his pledge.

Koop provoked controversy among evangelicals by encouraging sex education in elementary school, the use of condoms to prevent sexually transmitted diseases and compassionate health care for AIDS patients, who were then overwhelmingly within the homosexual community. Yet personally, he opposed homosexuality and promoted pre-marital sexual abstinence.

Among Koop’s other initiatives were calls for a smoking ban and campaigns promoting healthy eating and physical exercise education.

Melinda Delahoyde, president of the Care Net crisis pregnancy centers which Koop helped found, mourned Koop’s death.

“Dr. Koop took a courageous stand on the issue of life when not many were willing to do the same,” Delahoyde wrote on Care Net’s website. “He truly made a lasting impact, as his legacy lives on today through Care Net’s life-saving work to people facing unplanned pregnancies.”

As surgeon-in-chief at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, Koop pioneered surgery on newborns, successfully separating three sets of conjoined twins and reconstructing the chest of a baby born with the heart outside the body.

Koop’s recent outreach includes a letter he wrote in 2009 to Sen. Harry Reid urging that congressional health care legislation include a provision allowing doctors and medical students to opt out of performing abortions.

Koop was born Oct 14, 1916, in Brooklyn, N.Y., and, according to Reuters News, became interested in medicine after being badly injured as a child in a skiing accident and in playing football.

He was preceded in death by his first wife, Elizabeth, and by their son David. He is survived by their children Allen Koop, Norman Koop and Elizabeth Thompson, as well as by his second wife Cora, whom he married in 2010, according to news reports.
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Diana Chandler is Baptist Press’ staff writer. Get Baptist Press headlines and breaking news on Twitter (@BaptistPress), Facebook (Facebook.com/BaptistPress ) and in your email ( baptistpress.com/SubscribeBP.asp).

Dr. C. Everett Koop is pictured above.

I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control  and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline Republican.

On the Arkansas Times Blog on 3-7-13 the person using the username “the outlier” wrote:

Saline, every author you cite in your anti-abortion, copy and paste screeds is a fundamentalist Christian. We ARE NOT a fundamentalist theocracy. Many Christians do not share your view that the bible is inerrant and literally true. Like Rapert, you don’t think they are “real” Christians.

Guess what! You and Rapert don’t get to decide that issue.

I replied:

Outlier, on what basis do you say that murder is wrong? The founding fathers made it clear that our rights to life and liberty came to us from the lawgiver which was the God that revealed himself in the Bible. Read George Washington’s Farewell Speech.
Here is an outline of some of points he made in that speech, but the way when he said “religion” in this speech he was talking about Christianity.

Religion and Morality.
Are “indispensable supports” for “political prosperity.”
Are the “firmest props of the duties of Men and Country.”
The oaths in our courts would be useless without “the sense of religious obligation.”
“And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion.”
“Reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”
“Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge.”

__________

On the Arkansas Times Blog on 3-7-13 the person using the username “the outlier” commented:

“Read George Washington’s Falwell Speech.”—Saline

That is the mother lode of Freudian slips.

Next the person using the username “Perplexed” observed:
Without a doubt! The Arkansas ledge is hell-bent on creating a “Falwellian Society.” And I used the term “hell-bent” intentionally.

Arhogfan501 asserted:

How dare the Government require citizens to take responsibility for their sex lives! No one should have to endure the process of putting on a condom or popping a pill once a day!

Next thing you know, these liberals will be putting an abortion clinic next to the Food Court in that Tech Park they slapped us with last fall.

This is the beginning of the end for recreational abortion in Arkansas.

Songbird777 noted:

Babies have a right to live and not be chopped up for someone else’s convenience.

I commented:

Morality from religion is necessary for a government such as the founders set up in the USA. Don’t take my word for it but look at some of these comments from some of our founding fathers.

Joseph Story

Supreme Court Justice

Indeed, the right of a society or government to [participate] in matters of religion will hardly be contested by any persons who believe that piety, religion, and morality are intimately connected with the well being of the state and indispensable to the administrations of civil justice. The promulgation of the great doctrines of religion—the being, and attributes, and providence of one Almighty God; the responsibility to Him for all our actions, founded upon moral accountability; a future state of rewards and punishments; the cultivation of all the personal, social, and benevolent virtues—these never can be a matter of indifference in any well-ordered community. It is, indeed, difficult to conceive how any civilized society can well exist without them. (Source: Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1847), p. 260, §442.)

George Washington

“Father of Our Country”

While just government protects all in their religious rights, true religion affords to government its surest support. (Source: George Washington, The Writings of George Washington, John C. Fitzpatrick, editor (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1932), Vol. XXX, p. 432 n., from his address to the Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church in North America, October 9, 1789.) Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of man and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connexions with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who, that is a sincere friend to it, can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric? (Source: George Washington, Address of George Washington, President of the United States . . . Preparatory to His Declination (Baltimore: George and Henry S. Keatinge), pp. 22-23. In his Farewell Address to the United States in 1796.) [T]he [federal] government . . . can never be in danger of degenerating into a monarchy, and oligarchy, an aristocracy, or any other despotic or oppressive form so long as there shall remain any virtue in the body of the people. (Source: George Washington, The Writings of George Washington, John C. Fitzpatrick, editor (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1939), Vol. XXIX, p. 410. In a letter to Marquis De Lafayette, February 7, 1788.) * For the full text of Geo. Washington’s Farewell Address, click here.

Daniel Webster

Early American Jurist and Senator

[I]f we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity. (Source: Daniel Webster, The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster (Boston: Little, Brown, & Company, 1903), Vol. XIII, p. 492. From “The Dignity and Importance of History,” February 23, 1852.)

Noah Webster

Founding Educator

The most perfect maxims and examples for regulating your social conduct and domestic economy, as well as the best rules of morality and religion, are to be found in the Bible. . . . The moral principles and precepts found in the scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws. These principles and precepts have truth, immutable truth, for their foundation. . . . All the evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible. . . . For instruction then in social, religious and civil duties resort to the scriptures for the best precepts. (Source: Noah Webster, History of the United States, “Advice to the Young” (New Haven: Durrie & Peck, 1832), pp. 338-340, par. 51, 53, 56.)

James Wilson

Signer of the Constitution

Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants. Indeed, these two sciences run into each other. The divine law, as discovered by reason and the moral sense, forms an essential part of both. (Source: James Wilson, The Works of the Honourable James Wilson (Philadelphia: Bronson and Chauncey, 1804), Vol. I, p. 106.)

In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented  against abortion (Episode 1),  infanticide (Episode 2),   euthenasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close look at the truth claims of the Bible.

I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video below. It is very valuable information for Christians to have.  Actually I have included a video below that includes comments from him on this subject.

___________

Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 5) TRUTH AND HISTORY

Published on Oct 7, 2012 by AdamMetropolis

________________

No one engaged a humanist society with the gospel better than Francis Schaeffer.

Compassionate Engagement: A Brief Survey of the Life of Francis Schaeffer, Part 1

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The Francis and Edith Schaeffer Story Pt.1 – Today’s Christian Videos

The Francis and Edith Schaeffer Story – Part 3 of 3

Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE

Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis

________________

Mrs. Schaeffer became a missionary in Switzerland.

Associated Press / April 4, 2013

____

Picture of Francis Schaeffer and his wife Edith from the 1930′s above. I was sad to read about Edith passing away on Easter weekend in 2013. I wanted to pass along this fine article below from the blog of Dora Dueck.

April 2, 2013 · 8:04 am

↓ Jump to Comments

A gesture and a death

A gesture and a death jostle for my attention at Borrowing Bones this morning, so I think I’ll let both of them be and if they illuminate one another in any way, well, so much the better.

Like so many other ‘watchers from afar’ I followed news of the papal conclave and the election of Pope Francis with keen interest, then satisfaction. It’s too early to know how, or if, he’ll manage the challenges facing the church, but media reports are full of pleasure at the signs of difference and new direction: the name, the simpler quarters, the calmer clothing (black shoes, not red), the washing (in the ritual footwashing ceremony just past) of two women’s feet as well as a Muslim’s, his warmth with people. Much of this is gesture, perhaps, though genuine gesture, it seems, and thus: so far so good. (I like Martin Marty’s take on it with an April Fools theme at Sightings.)

One gesture on Easter Sunday was especially moving — the one where he kissed the handicapped child. The way the child embraced him in return and how he then stayed with that embrace seemed to me not so much a sign of Pope Francis’ ‘new style’ as it was an unplanned revelation of his essential spirit. (It can be seen near the end of this short news clip.)  http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/pope-francis-celebrates-easter-sunday-18848773

Then I heard that Edith Schaeffer had died Easter Sunday, at age 98. Edith and Francis Schaeffer were a kind of celebrity couple in the Christian world during my youth and early parenting years, famous not just for their ministry of L’Abri in beautiful Switzerland but also for their writings. What they gave me was the assurance I needed that religious faith could be strong intellectually and also culturally rich. I enjoyed Edith Schaeffer’s writing style, somewhat rambling but smart and spiritual and packed with ideas. What is a Family gave me metaphors for the family life we were trying to create (family is a mobile, for example), ditto The Hidden Art of Homemaking with its encouragement of small gestures that enliven acts of service (a flower on the tray, for example, alongside the soup and sandwich). And the autobiographical The Tapestry, with its much wisdom tucked into the narrative. 

Francis died and Edith grew older and eventually stopped writing, and then son Frank Schaeffer began writing about his parents, exposing their many faults as well as his own, and so my heroes were greatly reduced, no matter how many grains of salt I put to what he was saying. And yet, and yet, as Frank himself remarks in his tribute to his mother this weekend, she was a brilliant and marvellous woman. In the years of my early adulthood, I was hungry for models, and through her books she taught me one good thing after the other. I’m so grateful for her role in my life.

Here’s one lesson in The Tapestry, from the first hours of her honeymoon, that I’ve thought of often in the 30-some years since reading it, and have had my share of occasions to try to emulate. Edith writes of how she and Francis left the wedding festivities and stopped at a drug store to cool off with a milkshake. She was wearing an elegant white going-away suit she had sewn herself.

…then when swirling around to get off, I found that someone else’s milk shake had been spilled on the stool. My skirt was hopelessly stained with chocolate milk, ruined….that stained skirt kept going through my mind’s eye, with all the carefully hand-whipped seams and Paris-couturier type of work I’d done on it… It was a vivid first lesson..of the basic fact of relationships –that people matter more than things!…I had started to make a fuss about it, but…I stopped short and didn’t mention it again. Stopped in mid-air, so to speak, I had made a decision that was not perfectly kept in our lives together, but which was made time after time. The decision was to stop, try to recognize the total value of what was happening, and make a deliberate choice that the broken, torn, spilled, crushed, burned, scratched, smashed, spoiled thing was not as important as the person, or the moment of history, or the memory.

President Obama talks a lot about hope and change but how does that apply to unborn babies? This editorial cartoon touches on this issue.

(Francis did a great job in his film series “How Should we then live?” in looking at how humanism has affected art and culture in the Western World in the last 2000 years. My favorite episodes include his study of the Renaissance, the Revolutionary age, the age of Nonreason, and the age of Fragmentation.)

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