The United Methodist Church has been a subject of controversy for years as it supports legalized abortion within the context of supposedly being a Christian denomination. Now, one pro-life advocate has uncovered a quote from a Methodist pastor who says that caring about unborn babies who die in abortions is “idolatry.”
Sarah Terzo, who has a knack for documenting the history of the abortion debate and the abortion advocacy movement by posting quotes from pro-abortion activists through the years, posted a new quote today that features Minister John M Swomley.
Swomley is an ordained United Methodist minister, Terzo explains and, from 1960 to 1984 he was professor of Christian Ethics at St. Paul’s school of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri. At the time he was active in ministry, he was president of Americans for Religious Liberty and a longtime board member and sometimes vice president of the American Civil Liberties Union and chair of its Church – State committee. So here is a Christian pastor serving on the board of a prominent pro-abortion group.
Here’s what he had to say about pro-life Americans in his 1999 book Compulsory Pregnancy: the War against American Women:
“Opponents of abortion in America have attributed to fetal life a sacredness that is actually idolatry… Fetal idolatry denies a woman’s right to control her body, her life, her destiny, all of which must be sacrificed to an embryo or fetus once she is pregnant…
Fetal idolatry shows no mercy. … One of the major critiques of idolatry about unborn life is its lack of concern for the abundant or purposeful life to which all of us should be called. No one of us should be an unwanted child or have to experience emotional abandonment or lack of compassion and love in childhood.”
Granted, the quote is from 1999, but has much changed in the United Methodist Church since then? Unfortunately, no.
In January, Bill Mefford, director of civil and human rights at the UMC’s Washington office, used the March for Life to mock the event with a sign and picture he posted on Twitter, saying, “I march for sandwiches.” Many are upset that a church leader used a solemn event to liken an unborn baby to a sandwich.
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Last year, Methodist Health Care Ministries, whose logo claims they are serving humanity to honor God, gave almost half a million to the nation’s top abortion provider Planned Parenthood. In 2013, a pro-abortion article was posted on the General Board of Church and Society website and the United Methodist Church opposed the bill to ban late-term abortions.
This is why pro-life Methodists have left the denomination over the last couple of decades and continue to leave the church in droves, causing historic low membership rolls for the church.
