I have debated with Ark Times Bloggers many times in the past on many different subjects. Abortion is probably the most often debated subject and I have noticed that many pro-life individuals are now surfacing on the Arkansas Times Blog.  Here are some examples. Arhogfan501 asserted: 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. The person using the username “baker” commented: Planned Parenthood (PPA) does not nor cannot provide mammograms, indeed no affiliate has the necessary license. PPA is an abortion provider and at some 900 plus killings a day rather prolific.

Here is another debate I got into recently on the Arkansas Times Blog and I go by the username “Saline Republican”:

On 3-22-13 on the Arkansas Times Blog Verla Sweere wrote:

Saline–a real pro-life person respects the lives of those already with us. We want them to have food, shelter, medical care, education and a quality of life you would deny them. Remember your commandments–love thy neighbor as thyself, do not bear false witness, etc. How long since you have given even lip service to those?

I responded:

I would deny that government is the answer to all our problems. However, I do not want unborn babies to be eliminated because of financial problems in our country. If you want the best path to a growing economy then check out the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman.

Baylor University philosopher and bioethicist Baruch Brody has commented:

In an age where we doubt the justice of capital punishment even for very dangerous criminals, killing a fetus who has not done any harm, to avoid a future problem it may pose, seems totally unjust. There are indeed many social problems that could be erased simply by destroying those persons who constitute or cause them, but that is a solution repugnant to the values of society itself. In short, then, if the fetus is a human being, the appeal to its being unwanted justifies no abortions.

Baruch Brody, Abortion and the Sanctity of Human Life: A Philosophical View (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1975), 36-37.

____________

_________________

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.

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.

___________

Francis Schaeffer Whatever Happened to the Human Race (Episode 1) ABORTION

_____________________________________

Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR

Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism(from Part 4 of Whatever happened to human race?)

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical flow of Truth & History (intro)

Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of History & Truth (1)

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of Truth & History (part 2)

Whatever Happened To The Human Race?

– Revisited

This year is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of Whatever Happened To The Human Race? It is a most remarkable book.  In a list of ‘the books that changed me’, this unquestionably ranks in my top five.  I have just re-read it, with unexpected profit.

The entire project
Whatever Happened To The Human Race? was more than just a book written by a theologian and a doctor, namely, Francis Schaeffer and C Everett Koop.  It was an ambitious project that included the book, a series of five films, plus a study guide.  The book was first published in the US in 1979, with a British version the following year.  The project was launched in the UK in 1980, with a tour of major cities by Schaeffer and Koop.  Later that year, we in Aberystwyth, were among the first in the UK to show the films publicly – at the university, over three consecutive Friday evenings.

Cinematographically, they were not great films.  While they were technically a vast improvement on Schaeffer’s predecessor, How Should We Then Live?, gaffes and bloomers remained.  There were the rather twee shots of Schaeffer in a car junkyard, representing the ugliness of materialistic thinking, and there were the all too healthy-looking ‘slaves’ trudging up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, depicting the atrocities of slavery.  Yet one haunting image did hit the spot – everyone remembers the hundreds of plastic dolls washed up on the shores of the Dead Sea, portraying the horrors of mass abortion.

As literature, the book was never destined to be a classic.  It was full of Schaeffer’s jerky style with Koop’s medical addenda all a little too obviously interleaved.  Indeed, the two men were not great presenters, either in print, or in public.  In fact, they were a genuinely odd couple.  Schaeffer was the non-establishment theologian, with a goatee beard, dressed in mountain gear, and founder of a study centre for hippies and others in Switzerland.  For this he was vilified and largely ignored by some, while others regarded him as the greatest Christian thinker of the twentieth century.  On the other hand, the dapper Koop, with his austere Dutch-style beard and neat bow tie, was straight from the American establishment, a paediatrician of international renown, who was later to become the Surgeon General of the United States under President Reagan.  What an unlikely pair!

The message of the project
So, you may ask, what was so impressive about Whatever Happened To The Human Race?  Why is it regarded as a landmark in evangelical endeavour?  The answer is quite simple – first, it identified a dreadful problem (rampant abortion, covert infanticide and threatening euthanasia), second, it explained the origin of that problem (the advance of secular humanism coupled with the decline of biblical Christianity) and third, it outlined the solution (Christians must believe that the Bible is true and live and act upon its teachings).  In other words, it was a total package that was both entirely believable for the brain, and fully satisfying for the heart.  And that was Schaeffer’s great gift.  He would take you back into history, often to Genesis, to show the development of an argument, and then he would take you forward to show the logical consequences of that argument, whether it was existentialism, or the resurrection, or genetic engineering.  Once he had systematically shown you the entirety of the problem, you felt much more obligated to respond.  So, forget the weird garb, the squeaky voice and the unpolished prose, it was his rigorously-argued and (usually) convincing content that was king.  Here was the man committed to true truth.  Like no other Christian leader in the twentieth century, Schaeffer had grasped the zeitgeist and he equipped ordinary Christians to engage with the big issues, as well as with unbelieving men and women.

The opening three chapters of Whatever Happened To The Human Race? deal with abortion, infanticide and euthanasia.  Twenty-five years ago, this exposé came as a bombshell to many evangelical Christians – we had no idea what was going on in our local hospitals and clinics.  The sheer logic of Schaeffer and Koop’s argument – that once a society has accepted abortion of the unborn (as we had in 1967), then it would soon be infanticide for the newborn, and finally euthanasia for the elderly –- was appalling.  Yet, twenty-five years on, who can gainsay their prophetic analysis?

The legacy of the project
Furthermore, Whatever Happened To The Human Race? had a credenda and an agenda.  Schaeffer and Koop would never be satisfied with us merely tut-tutting and sitting on our hands.  They wanted us up and doing. ‘Let those of us who share a high view of people use wisely these days when we have influence and the freedom to strike a great blow for the humanity, dignity, and sanctity of individuals’ (p. 90).  Their chapter 6 was entitled ‘Our Personal Response and Social Action’ and it galvanised evangelicals throughout the UK into action, like never before.  As a result many of us got involved with pro-life organisations.  I co-founded Evangelicals for LIFE, in order to encourage believers into the educational, political and caring work of LIFE, which was generally regarded suspiciously as an admirable, but largely Roman Catholic, organisation.  Soon evangelical Christians were becoming local LIFE group treasurers, speakers, carers, chairmen, and so on.  Throughout the 1980s we blossomed and LIFE’s approach and expertise became the paradigm for many newly-formed Christian pro-life groups.

This, above all, was the impact of Whatever Happened To The Human Race?  It got evangelicals informed and then responding in practical ways.  And that legacy is still alive today – look at the proliferation of pro-life publications, pregnancy crisis centres, political lobbying, and so on since 1979.  OK, it is still patchy, still insufficient, but without Whatever Happened To The Human Race?, it would be significantly less.

The importance of chapters 4 and 5
Twenty-five years on, re-reading Whatever Happened To The Human Race?  I was struck not by the rehearsal of the bioethical issues – they have dominated and changed the course of my life since 1979 – but what I found refreshingly gripping were chapters 4 and 5, ‘The Basis for Human Dignity’ and ‘Truth and History’.  I had forgotten them.  In these, modern philosophy, and secular humanism in particular, are given a ‘right old kicking’.  Schaeffer and Koop demonstrate just how irrational and bankrupt they are, and how they inevitably produce the ghastly dehumanisation that surrounds us today.  And twenty-five years on, we have to admit that their thesis was spot on – we do still think that man is nothing more than a machine, we do view ourselves as mere accidents of the universe.  One of their grand sweeping, but entirely accurate, assertions is, ‘Suddenly we find ourselves in a more consistent but uglier world – more consistent because people are taking their low view of man to its natural conclusion, and uglier because humanity is drastically dehumanised’ (p. 9).

After their devastating critique of secular humanism, comes the cavalry – the absolutes of historic, biblical Christianity.  What a puny, limping thing secular humanism is alongside the robustness of true truth. ‘Where all humanistic systems of thought are unable to give an adequate explanation of things, the Bible as God’s statement is adequate’ (p. 124), and (this is sweet!), ‘God gives the pages, and thus God gives the answers’ (p. 125).  Here is evangelism – engaging with modern men and women to show them the paucity of their worldview, and then the genius of Christianity.

The other rousing chapter, entitled ‘Truth and History’ asserts the historicity of the Bible, that is, how Christianity is rooted in history.  If you think that Schaeffer was always entangled with abstruse philosophy, then read this.  It starts with Abraham (the historicity of Adam and Eve has been established in the previous chapter) and ends with Thomas’ declaration, ‘My Lord and my God!’ In between is an exegesis of ‘… all truth finally rests upon the fact that the infinite-personal God exists …’ (p. 135).  Yes, it is heavy-duty apologetic, but also heart-warming exposition.

Whatever Happened To The Human Race?

was a great Christian book.  It still is.  And a revised US version is currently available, as a paperback, from Crossway Books [ISBN 0-89107-291-8].  No other Christian book, published before or after, has attempted, and succeeded, in developing such a fundamental biblical approach to bioethical issues.  My meagre contribution, Responding to the Culture of Death, draws heavily on the Schaeffer and Koop approach, and I gladly acknowledge my indebtedness.

In conclusion …
Whatever Happened To The Human Race? was also a wake-up call to unaware and lethargic Christians.  Who would dare say, a generation on, that we do not still need its message?  Human life is still cheap, and becoming still cheaper – created in the image of God, destroyed at our convenience.

Let Schaeffer and Koop have the last words.  ‘We challenge you to be a person in this impersonal age … put the people in your life first … come to your senses … you and those around you are people, made in the image of the personal God who created all people in His image.’ (p. 89).  ‘The only thing that can stem this tide [of abortion, infanticide and euthanasia] is the certainty of the absolute uniqueness and value of people.  And the only thing which gives us this is the knowledge that people are made in the image of God.’ (p. 148).  ‘In the end we must realise that the tide of humanism, with its loss of humanness, is not merely a cultural ill, but a spiritual ill that Christ alone can cure’ (p. 157).

I have debated with Ark Times Bloggers many times in the past on many different subjects. Abortion is probably the most often debated subject and I have noticed that many pro-life individuals are now surfacing on the Arkansas Times Blog.  Here are some examples. Arhogfan501 asserted: 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. The person using the username “baker” commented: Planned Parenthood (PPA) does not nor cannot provide mammograms, indeed no affiliate has the necessary license. PPA is an abortion provider and at some 900 plus killings a day rather prolific.

Here is another debate I got into recently on the Arkansas Times Blog and I go by the username “Saline Republican”:

The person with the username “the outlier” said on 3-22-13 on the Ark Times Blog:

“You cannot honestly describe yourself as “pro-life”, Saline. You are anti-abortion.”

I responded:

Am I pro-life?
Frank Beckwith put forth a good definition of a pro-life view:

The pro-life position is subject to somewhat varying formulations. The most widely accepted and representative of these can be defined in the following way: The unborn entity is fully human from the moment of conception. Abortion (narrowly defined) results in the intentional death of the unborn entity. Therefore, abortion entails the intentional killing of a human being. This killing is in most cases unjustified, since the unborn human being has a full right to life.

Later I noted:

Special Sanders asserted, “Any person with the slightest intelligence knows that these measures are not going to have the desired effect. If women can’t get abortions in Arkansas, they will get them in other states OR they can and will simply go to the internet and buy abortion methods which while not deemed SAFE, is NOT illegal.
Women in Arkansas simply want access to “safe” abortions with experienced medical professionals in the healthcare field that are skilled in pregnancy terminations.”

_________
Frank Beckwith answers this argument very well concerning the coat hangers:

The chief reason this argument fails is because it commits the fallacy of begging the question. In fact, as we shall see, this fallacy seems to lurk behind a good percentage of the popular arguments for the pro-choice position. One begs the question when one assumes what one is trying to prove. Another way of putting it is to say that the arguer is reasoning in a circle. For example, if one concludes that the Boston Celtics are the best team because no team is as good, one is not giving any reasons for this belief other than the conclusion one is trying to prove, since to claim that a team is the best team is exactly the same as saying that no team is as good. The question-begging nature of the coat-hanger argument is not difficult to discern: only by assuming that the unborn are not fully human does the argument work. If the unborn are not fully human, then the pro-choice advocate has a legitimate concern, just as one would have in overturning a law forbidding appendicitis operations if countless people were needlessly dying of both appendicitis and illegal operations. But if the unborn are fully human, this pro-choice argument is tantamount to saying that because people die or are harmed while killing other people, the state should make it safe for them to do so. Even some pro-choice advocates, who argue for their position in other ways, admit that the coat hanger/back-alley argument is fallacious. For example, pro-choice philosopher Mary Anne Warren clearly recognizes that her position on abortion cannot rest on this argument without it first being demonstrated that the unborn entity is not fully human. She writes that “the fact that restricting access to abortion has tragic side effects does not, in itself, show that the restrictions are unjustified, since murder is wrong regardless of the consequences of prohibiting it…”9 Although it is doubtful whether statistics can establish a particular moral position, it should be pointed out that there has been considerable debate over both the actual number of illegal abortions and the number of women who died as a result of them prior to legalization.10 Prior to Roe, pro-choicers were fond of saying that nearly a million women every year obtained illegal abortions performed with rusty coat hangers in back-alleys that resulted in thousands of fatalities. Given the gravity of the issue at hand, it would go beyond the duty of kindness to call such claims an exaggeration, because several well-attested facts establish that the pro-choice movement was simply lying. First, Dr. Bernard Nathanson — who was one of the original leaders of the American pro-abortion movement and co-founder of N.A.R.A.L. (National Abortion Rights Action League), and who has since become pro-life — admits that he and others in the abortion rights movement intentionally fabricated the number of women who allegedly died as a result of illegal abortions.

How many deaths were we talking about when abortion was illegal? In N.A.R.A.L. we generally emphasized the drama of the individual case, not the mass statistics, but when we spoke of the latter it was always “5,000 to 10,000 deaths a year.” I confess that I knew the figures were totally false, and I suppose the others did too if they stopped to think of it. But in the “morality” of the revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics. The overriding concern was to get the laws eliminated, and anything within reason which had to be done was permissible.11

Second, Dr. Nathanson’s observation is borne out in the best official statistical studies available. According to the U.S. Bureau of Vital Statistics, there were a mere 39 women who died from illegal abortions in 1972, the year before Roe v. Wade.12 Dr. Andre Hellegers, the late Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Georgetown University Hospital, pointed out that there has been a steady decrease of abortion-related deaths since 1942. That year there were 1,231 deaths. Due to improved medical care and the use of penicillin, this number fell to 133 by 1968.13 The year before the first state-legalized abortion, 1966, there were about 120 abortion-related deaths.14 This is not to minimize the undeniable fact that such deaths were significant losses to the families and loved ones of those who died. But one must be willing to admit the equally undeniable fact that if the unborn are fully human, these abortion-related maternal deaths pale in comparison to the 1.5 million preborn humans who die (on the average) every year. And even if we grant that there were more abortion-related deaths than the low number confirmed, there is no doubt that the 5,000 to 10,000 deaths cited by the abortion rights movement is a gross exaggeration.15 Third, it is simply false to claim that there were nearly a million illegal abortions per year prior to legalization. There is no reliable statistical support for this claim.16 In addition, a highly sophisticated recent study has concluded that “a reasonable estimate for the actual number of criminal abortions per year in the prelegalization era [prior to 1967] would be from a low of 39,000 (1950) to a high of 210,000 (1961) and a mean of 98,000 per year.17 Fourth, it is misleading to say that pre-Roe illegal abortions were performed by “back-alley butchers” with rusty coat hangers. While president of Planned Parenthood, Dr. Mary Calderone pointed out in a 1960 American Journal of Health article that Dr. Kinsey showed in 1958 that 84% to 87% of all illegal abortions were performed by licensed physicians in good standing. Dr. Calderone herself concluded that “90% of all illegal abortions are presently done by physicians.”18 It seems that the vast majority of the alleged “back-alley butchers” eventually became the “reproductive health providers” of our present day.
FOOTNOTES

9Mary Anne Warren “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion,” in The Problem of Abortion, 2nd ed., ed. Joel Feinberg (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1984), 103. 10 See Daniel Callahan, Abortion: Law, Choice, and Morality (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 132-36; and Stephen Krason, Abortion: Politics, Morality, and the Constitution (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984), 301-10. 11 Bernard Nathanson, M.D., Aborting America (New York: Doubleday, 1979), 193. 12 From the U.S. Bureau of Vital Statistics Center for Disease Control, as cited in Dr. and Mrs. J. C. Wilke, Abortion: Questions and Answers, rev. ed. (Cincinnati: Hayes Publishing, 1988), 101-2. 13 From Dr. Hellegers’s testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Constitutional Amendments, April 25, 1 1974; cited in John Jefferson Davis, Abortion and the Christian (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1984), 75. 14 From the U.S. Bureau of Vital Statistics Center for Disease Control, as cited in Wilke, 101-2. 15 See Davis, 75. 16 See note 10; Callahan, 132-36; Krason, 301-10. 17 Barbara J. Syska, Thomas W. Hilgers, M.D., and Dennis O’Hare, “An Objective Model for Estimating Criminal Abortions and Its Implications for Public Policy,” in New Perspectives on Human Abortion, ed. Thomas Hilgers, M.D., Dennis J. Horan, and David Mall (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1981), 78. 18 Mary Calderone, “Illegal Abortion as a Public Health Problem,” in American Journal of Health 50 (July 1960):949.

_____________

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 1) ABORTION

_____________________________________

Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR

Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism(from Part 4 of Whatever happened to human race?)

Francis Schaeffer experienced doubts early in his ministry about Christ and the Bible but he worked his way through that.

Compassionate Engagement: A Brief Survey of the Life of Francis Schaeffer, Part 2 – The Early Years

________________

Here is a great pro-life cartoon:

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  November 2, 2012 – 8:52 am

  It is not possible to know where the pro-life evangelicals are coming from unless you look at the work of the person who inspired them the most. That person was Francis Schaeffer.  I do care about economic issues but the pro-life issue is the most important to me. Several years ago Adrian Rogers (past president of […]

  By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

  The following essay explores the role that Francis Schaeffer played in the rise of the pro-life movement. It examines the place of How Should We Then Live?, Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, and A Christian Manifesto in that process.

  November 2, 2012 – 8:46 am

  This essay below is worth the read. Schaeffer, Francis – “Francis Schaeffer and the Pro-Life Movement” [How Should We Then Live?, Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, A Christian Manifesto] Editor note: <p> </p> [The following essay explores the role that Francis Schaeffer played in the rise of the pro-life movement.  It examines the place of […]

  By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

  Who was Francis Schaeffer? by Udo Middelmann

  November 2, 2012 – 8:11 am

  Great article on Schaeffer. Who was Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer? By Francis Schaeffer The unique contribution of Dr. Francis Schaeffer on a whole generation was the ability to communicate the truth of historic Biblical Christianity in a way that combined intellectual integrity with practical, loving care. This grew out of his extensive understanding of the Bible […]

  By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

I have debated with Ark Times Bloggers many times in the past on many different subjects. Abortion is probably the most often debated subject and I have noticed that many pro-life individuals are now surfacing on the Arkansas Times Blog.  Here are some examples. Arhogfan501 asserted: 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. The person using the username “baker” commented: Planned Parenthood (PPA) does not nor cannot provide mammograms, indeed no affiliate has the necessary license. PPA is an abortion provider and at some 900 plus killings a day rather prolific.

Here is another debate I got into recently on the Arkansas Times Blog and I go by the username “Saline Republican”:

____________

The person going by the username “Steven E” asserted:

Not snarky and unsubstantiated lunacy as stating that it is not life, or whatever nonsense you spouted.

It is fine to go after those that spout only from faith, but what about biology?

I replied:

Steven E asks, “It is fine to go after those that spout only from faith, but what about biology?”
______
How about the secular man Dr. Bernard Nathanson who left the abortion movement in the 1970’s because he was convinced the unborn baby could experience pain? Is that an argument from biology? (Dr. Nathanson later converted to become a Catholic from agnosticism.)

At the time of Dr. Nathanson’s death in 2011 I read this article by Dr. George. Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He is a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics and previously served on the United States Commission on Civil Rights.
“Bernard Nathanson: A Life Transformed by the Truth about Abortion.” (Feb 11, 2011)

(Here is a portion of that article.)

Nathanson later in his life became a pro-life advocate.In 1985, Nathanson employed the new fetal imaging technology to produce a documentary film, “The Silent Scream,” which energized the pro-life movement and threw the pro-choice side onto the defensive by showing in graphic detail the killing of a twelve-week-old fetus in a suction abortion. Nathanson used the footage to describe the facts of fetal development and to make the case for the humanity and dignity of the child in the womb. At one point, viewers see the child draw back from the surgical instrument and open his mouth: “This,” Nathanson says in the narration, “is the silent scream of a child threatened imminently with extinction.”

______________

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 1) ABORTION

_____________________________________

Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR

Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism(from Part 4 of Whatever happened to human race?)

________________

I read a very good article back during the middle of the Republican Presidential Primary about Michele Bachman and how her pro-life views evolved after reading the works of Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop. Here it is:

Bachmann: Christian Writer Francis Schaeffer Shaped Pro-Life Views

by Steven Ertelt | Des Moines, IA | LifeNews.com | 7/26/11 12:06 PM

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is one of the several pro-life advocates seeking the Republican nomination to face pro-abortion President Barack Obama and she cites Christian writer Francis Schaeffer as an influence on her pro-life views.

In a campaign stop to speak to local residents at a church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Bachmann shared her testimony and talked about the Christian faith she and her husband share. That faith, which has matured thanks to the writings of Schaeffer, has led Bachman to a pro-life view that has seen her compile a 100% pro-life voting record in Congress and adopt dozens of foster children.

“One thing that Dr. Schaeffer said is that [God is] not just the God of theology. He’s not just the God of the Bible,” Bachmann said, according to the Des Moines Register. “Since he is the Creator God, he’s the father of biology, sociology, of political science, of you name the subject. … And that altered our way of thinking, that God had something to say about our career.”

“Francis Schaeffer also said that life is the watershed issue of our time, and how we come down on how we view human life will impact all other issues,” she said. “And so Marcus and I decided we didn’t want to be pro-life only, just as speaking… We wanted to live a life of being about pro-life.”

The Register indicates Bachmann told the audience that, upon the encouragement to put her pro-life views into action, she and her husband began counseling and praying with single mothers and helping them get to pregnancy and adoption centers to provide further practical support instead of abortion.

“This is not to condemn any woman who here has ever had an abortion or participated in one,” she said, according to the newspaper. “Because God is there also with grace and mercy in that situation, but to say that he is the life-giving only God who has answers in the midst of our trying times.”

Dave Andrusko, of the National Right to Life Committee, says he is not surprised Schaeffer helped shaped Bachmann’s faith and pro-life views.

“There are a couple of reasons it’s useful to talk about Congresswoman Bachmann’s talk—her testimony. Like almost all the GOP candidates current running, and most of the few who may still jump in, she is staunchly pro-life,” he says. “Schaeffer is perhaps best known to pro-life veterans for co-authoring with Dr. C. Everett Koop (later Surgeon General) the hugely influential “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” Both as a book and a video series, the impact of “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” cannot be exaggerated. It awakened and mobilized Evangelical Protestants as nothing before had ever done.”

He called the Bachmanns “loving pro-lifers” who have expressed their Christian faith and pro-life views “through the hands and feet” of action.

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

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  November 29, 2012 – 7:30 am

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  January 1, 2012 – 12:51 am

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  December 25, 2011 – 12:45 am

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  December 18, 2011 – 12:41 am

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  December 11, 2011 – 12:37 am

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  December 4, 2011 – 12:33 am

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  November 27, 2011 – 12:26 am

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  November 20, 2011 – 10:03 am

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  November 13, 2011 – 12:13 am

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  November 6, 2011 – 12:01 am

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  November 8, 2012 – 7:56 am

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

  November 2, 2012 – 8:52 am

  It is not possible to know where the pro-life evangelicals are coming from unless you look at the work of the person who inspired them the most. That person was Francis Schaeffer.  I do care about economic issues but the pro-life issue is the most important to me. Several years ago Adrian Rogers (past president of […]

  By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

  The following essay explores the role that Francis Schaeffer played in the rise of the pro-life movement. It examines the place of How Should We Then Live?, Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, and A Christian Manifesto in that process.

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  By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

  Who was Francis Schaeffer? by Udo Middelmann

  November 2, 2012 – 8:11 am

  Great article on Schaeffer. Who was Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer? By Francis Schaeffer The unique contribution of Dr. Francis Schaeffer on a whole generation was the ability to communicate the truth of historic Biblical Christianity in a way that combined intellectual integrity with practical, loving care. This grew out of his extensive understanding of the Bible […]

  By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)