I wrote this as a fare thee well to the FB group, American Solidarity Party of California: I think it's time for me to leave. Thank y'all for letting me observe your interaction, something of your goals and ideals, but I think you and I are not the match that I'd hoped we might be. I am with you on most everything, except where you seem to have an abstract vision of "the unborn." Please don't think that I am an advocate of "the right to choose." I believe modern notions of freedom of will are a denial of the freedom in Christ to which Paul so well points. Further, I do think that a fertilized egg in a woman's belly is nothing trivial. I do think that an implanted embryo is among the clearest of promises of the coming of God's Reign. I do think that a fetal heartbeat is a sign of the breath that God breathed into the Adam dust sculpture in the Garden. However, I also think that the new life that is in early stages or late stages of human disclosure has in itself anything but sanctity. It instantiates sanctity only as it is gifted with it, as the mutilated body of Jesus is gifted with glory on Easter Sunday. At this time when churches are about to be told by the American Supreme Court that it is the state that is to determine (with Adam and Eve at the foot of the Tree) what is good and what is evil for their daughters and the lives that are emerging in their wombs—even if by horrific violence—I fear that a judgment that all life has sanctity does not, in its abstraction, point the way forward. Had you spoken at this point with more concreteness, closer to the ground, with compassion and solidarity with those whom pregnancy is still a question to be addressed through prayer, I may have been in a position to linger with y'all. I am but a poor Wesleyan looking for a politics of the lowly Nazarene, a politics of the gospel, a politics that does not yield so quickly to calculation, but waits, abides, remains, with the children and women who by no wish of their own have found themselves impregnated.
There then followed some really kind responses. I said that I wasn’t out to debate anyone, but would respond if that seemed helpful. Desmond, an admin, invited me to do so. This is what I wrote:
Desmond and Barbara, I'll do my best to respond briefly and I hope adequately. I'll focus on what you said, Barbara, but with attention paid as well to Desmond's comment about value. Forgive any truncated arguments.
Barbara: "A woman actually has a choice before she becomes pregnant."
Craig: I don't think "choice" is a very helpful guide in addressing the issues associated with abortion. That is not to say that human life is determined by prior causes or is not to be help responsible for what has been done. It's just that human behavior—and the complex way the past and the future are entangled in the tasks a local church faces on any given day—cannot be reduced to choices.
Barbara: "At the moment of conception it is a separate human being with own DNA and genetic code."
Craig: I am suspicious of the notion of "a separate human being." I do believe that a particular human being has a unique genome and that two or more human beings will not be adequately imagined or thought as if they were together "one being." However, the gospel is very seriously concerned to make every boundary between human beings extremely porous. That's what I understand the mutilated body of the crucified/resurrected Jesus perhaps most importantly to entail.
Barbara: "Also a soul created in the image and likeness of GOD. Right?"
Craig: First, I don't believe in "souls" as they have been classically conceived (e.g., as "spiritual entities" dwelling in material bodies). I rather think of souls as bodies longingly at work, above all at work vis-a-vis God. Second, to be created in the image of God, it seems to me, is not about what a human being is in itself, but about the way it is engaged by God. The *in* is very important in the phrase, as is its placement there.
Barbara: "How can we not support her and speak up for the innocent child?"
Craig: I do think a child is to be protected and defended, verbally and otherwise, shortly and long after the day of their birth, but also *before*—and by that I mean *during* pregnancy, but also *before conception*, i.e., before there is the union of a sperm and an egg. I think life together is to be life in which children are hoped and prayed for both while they live and far in advance.
Desmond: It "sounds like you believe that the . . . value of [the] soul [of a fetus or embryo] isn't necessarily of the same value as that of a person outside the womb. You're saying that the value of the soul develops with the physical development of the body."
Craig: This is not what I wish to say. I don't trust "value" much either, but in any case I would say something like, the importance of an embryo or fetus is wrapped up in the importance of a household and village, a tribe and nation. In some cases the fetus or embryo is more important than the lives of one or more members of those human fellowships. (If I may point to a fictional story, the importance of the fetus at the center of the movie *Children of Men* is greater than that of its main adult characters.)
And so, what I may say at the end here (and forgive how long this has become) is that human life is not to be reduced to abstract individuals with value. Humans live together and are so entangled with each other that the gospel commands us to love our neighbors as ourselves. To determine how a local church is to respond to the pregnancy of one of its children or the slow and painful death of one of its elders of advanced age, traditions will likely provide initial guidance, but in the end it must be the agonizing prayers of the ecclesial body, a social body that will not be separated from the one who may or may not be born, may or may not leave hospice care alive.