Published September 18, 2024
With the Republican Party’s shift on abortion and the exultancy of Democrats concerning “reproductive freedom,” one thing should now be clear to American Christians: Whoever wins in November will represent to some degree a deeper, more significant victory. That victory is not merely the triumph of the sexual revolution, where the popular imagination is gripped by the idea of sex as recreation, free of any obligations or commitments. It is the victory of a deeper vision of what it means to be human—to be radically free, autonomous, and responsible for self-creation. That is one lesson we can draw from the fact that most Americans are to varying degrees in favor of abortion.
It was clear in the aftermath of the fall of Roe v. Wade that the pro-life movement had no real strategy for addressing the way forward from that point. It was caught off guard by the comprehensive nature of the backlash so that in retrospect the victory now seems a Pyrrhic one, followed by nothing but defeats and setbacks everywhere the question has been put on the ballot. American churches now face an analogous question: What is the plan forward for such churches given that the political landscape is about to make explicit the underlying abolition of man that the modern revolution of the self represents? Online cosplayers may well continue their posturing and polemics as if nothing has changed. But congregations are generally made up of real people who live in the real world. They have jobs, mortgages, and student loans. They have to be in the world, even as they are called not to be of it. How is the Church to minister to such?
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Carl R. Trueman is a fellow in EPPC’s Evangelicals in Civic Life Program, where his work focuses on helping civic leaders and policy makers better understand the deep roots of our current cultural malaise. In addition to his scholarship on the intellectual foundations of expressive individualism and the sexual revolution, Trueman is also interested in the origins, rise, and current use of critical theory by progressives. He serves as a professor at Grove City College.
