TO BE
SILENT is to be Complicit
Pastors Should Speak Up for Those Called Outside of Church Walls as Much as Inside
BY JOHN STONESTREET AND TIMOTHY D PADGETT
I n recent days( and within days), the British
Parliament rushed through legislation to legalize medically assisted death for terminally ill adults and passed a bill to“ decriminalize” late-term abortion. Led by the increasingly extremist Labour party who are enabled by the moral confusion of a supposedly Conservative opposition, Britain is, as C. S. Lewis warned, progressing in the wrong direction. In response, Peter Hitchens asked,“ Parliament votes for the abortion of the old, shortly after voting for the even more ruthless abortion of the unborn. Are we now ruled by a death cult?”
Speaking against bills like this is a bare minimum requirement of following Christ today. As Stanley Hauerwas has often challenged,“ In a hundred years, if Christians are people identified as those who do not kill their children or their elderly, we will have been doing something right.” In the U. K. however, with few qualified exceptions, there’ s been mainly silence. As Andrew Walker quipped,“ The Church of
48 THE RENEWANATION REVIEW