Though the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, the bloody genocide of abortion continues. Each day in America, more than 3,000 children are still being killed in the womb. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, abortion remains legal in all fifty states. Yes, many abortion mills have closed, but this has done little to stop the murder of the unborn. Under the reign of Roe, doctors typically perpetrated abortions, but now the mother, in increasingly more cases, has become the active killer, taking the life of her child through mail-order pills.     In view of this travesty, how can Christians who love life engage this battle? In this podcast Scott Brown and Jason Dohm, joined by special guest Bradley Pierce, president of the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, outline a blueprint for engagement. In addition to heartfelt outreach to mothers, they outline a 4-part strategy for the civil sphere: Become an educated voter, a genuine encourager of civil office-holders, a grassroots mobilizer, and a principled pro-life candidate. While not everyone can be involved on all four levels, every Christian should seek to stand on principle for every life—born or unborn—as they have opportunity.

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture. Our subject today is abortion, abolishing abortion, but more than that, how can people be involved in abolishing abortion? I think everybody agrees, who thinks biblically, that abortion should be abolished. Unfortunately, even though the Supreme Court ruled the way that they did, abortion is still legal in every state of the Union.

Every single state of the Union has laws that protect abortion and abortionists. And so we're here to say it's really, really important that we don't grow silent just because the Supreme Court did what they did. What they did actually takes us into a new level of involvement in every single state. So it's a different different field. And we've got Bradley Pierce with us to talk about, well, not just abolishing abortion, how about legalizing life?

Hey Bradley. Hey, it's good to be with you all. Bradley is also the president of the Foundation to Abolish Abortion. Bradley what, what's the website for that? It's faa.life.

L-i-f-e. Great, faa.life. Excellent. Yeah, I go there and you can get all kinds of resources and updates. I guess there are a couple of things we want to talk about.

You know, one really probably has to do with our relationship to the civil government. Should Christians be involved with the civil government at all, the secular state? What are your comments about that? I think absolutely. Yeah, we absolutely, especially in this country, we live in a country where in some ways every single person who's eligible to vote is part of the civil government because we live in a representative republic, constitutional republic, where we get to have a voice in who our representatives are, and for that reason alone, all of us have a tremendous privilege, and then because of that, we all have a tremendous responsibility to exercise that privilege and to do so in a Christian way.

And you know, even without that, every Christian we've seen throughout history, you know, go look at the Old Testament and all the prophets, almost all of them are speaking to the civil government and speaking God's truth to the civil government, to kings and to judges, to magistrates. And so absolutely speaking God's truth to the civil government is the heritage of what it means to be a Christian. Yeah, the whole idea of the separation of church and state doesn't mean what you think it means. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, separation of church and state means that the church should not exercise authority over the state, nor should the state exercise authority over the church. And I think we should, I think that's biblical, we should agree with that.

But that doesn't mean that the church doesn't speak to the state and doesn't engage the state or vice versa. And it certainly doesn't mean that we don't proclaim the truth as the church to those who are in government. And it doesn't mean that the people who are in government, yeah, that they should be bowing the knee to God and they should be governing in a way that's in accordance with God's laws. And, And all of those things are consistent with a correct definition of separation of church and state. You know, like I've heard some people say it's a separation of church and state, it's not a separation of God and government.

There you go. Hey, and that's what we're here to talk about. How do Christians get involved in speaking to the civil government and by extension everybody else? So you've talked about four stages of involvement and that's what we want to talk about. We want to have you talk to us about each one of those stages of involvement because it's important that Christians raise their voice and are involved.

So let's talk about stage one. What's stage one? Yeah, so you know on this issue and we're talking specifically about abortion and abolishing abortion, you know, this is people who have come to the realization that, you know, there's a Christians that come to the realization that God's law requires equal protection of the laws, that the same law is protecting us, should also protect these babies. We should be fighting for that to completely abolish abortion. You know, right now you mentioned in all 50 states abortion is still legal in some way or another, even after Dobbs.

And that's true. And it's true, it's legal for the abortionists. The issue is that although abortion clinics in many states are closing, mothers themselves are becoming, in the tens of thousands, the abortionists, ordering the pills, doing them at home. And so when it comes to what should we be doing about that, obviously we should be reaching out to and ministering to these mothers, coming alongside them, preaching the gospel to them, but also serving them, administering to them. So what we're really talking about today is, okay, what should we be doing in the political realm?

And stage one of that is that we all need to be what I would call educated voters. We need to be voting. We need to be registering to vote. We need to be exercising our ability to vote. Again, I think that's something that God has allowed us a privilege in this country and we then have a responsibility to use it and not to use it, you know, ignorantly but to educate ourselves.

So that means, you know, researching the people who are on the ballot all the way up and down, all the way from dog catcher to president, and understanding where they are on this issue of life, because They all have, you know, something to do with it from your local district attorney, who may be the one who's prosecuting, you know, those who are, you know, aborting children all the way to the president, who may be enforcing laws that prohibit abortion pills from going through the mail or maybe in or you know who may be appointing Supreme Court justices who will be enforcing the equal protection clause or what have you. So we all need to be educated voters. We need to be asking these candidates where they stand on this issue and making sure that they stand for abolition and equal protection and educating ourselves on that. So that's really I think stage one and that's where I think most Christians are already and certainly should be, but if you're not, you know, I think begin vote, get registered to vote, begin voting, but before but don't vote, please don't vote unless you're going to be an educated voter and know who you're voting for and why you're voting for them and that if they if they are not public on this issue you've asked them where they stand on it.

This hits home as a self-confessed lazy voter. Lazy voter meaning research often begins for me the day that I'm planning to vote. It's a scramble to try to find out a few factoids that will distinguish one from the other. Obviously, party affiliation says a lot about the basic platform that is being represented there, but that's simply not enough. I think the days when you could just vote a straight ticket, you know, choose R over D and think you've been a responsible voter, those days are long gone.

So I can't afford to be the lazy voter anymore. Well in a lot of cases the real, you know, as far as shifting politics, you know, by the time we get to the general election, you know, a lot of the work's already been done because it really happens. The most important stuff, you know, really in primaries, I should say that is in the primaries, right? That's when you decide what does it mean to be a Republican? Is it a Republican someone who's just, oh yeah, we can just, you know, mothers can still abort their children, but we're gonna stop the clinics.

Or is a Republican somebody who we're saying, no, it needs to be equal protection. Murdering anyone needs to be illegal for everyone, right? That's where we decide that is in the primaries. And that's where I would say, we really need to get out and we really need to be voting there and, you know, and making sure that that, you know, that that's who's representing that party. And of course, obviously, you know, parties are just a structure.

I mean, ultimately, we're Christians first and foremost, You know, I'm not dictating exactly how people need to vote party-wise, but that's, you know, that's how we need to be voting. We need to be educated and voting in both the generals and the primaries. And here's a way that this can happen in your church. This is what happens in our church. We have a young man who informs us every election cycle about where everybody stands on the critical issues.

And this is a guy that we know, he thinks like we do, and he goes right down the line. You might, if you, you know, it's so, it's so hard to keep up with all the candidates. But maybe, maybe somebody in your church could be appointed. You at least need somebody you trust. Somebody you trust.

Who's doing the research. Do we all have to do all the research every election? Probably not, but you got to have somebody you trust who has done the work. Yeah, that's been a real blessing in our church. Something that I've thought about for a while is, I have not yet seen a church implement this, but I'd love to see churches even kind of coming up with their own what I would call candidate survey that says what do you think about this issue, this issue, this issue, maybe to have ten questions and then getting the, you know, getting the addresses of all the candidates, which is actually fairly easy.

Once you know where to get it, it's fairly easy to get. And they're sending letters out to all of them and ask them how they answer on these things. And I think most candidates would answer because they understand that a church represents quite a few voters. And again, it's not that you're then telling you know the people in the church, hey here's how you need to vote, you're just you're just publishing the mail, right? When they send their their letters back and they answer in a certain way, you're just saying, hey here's how all these candidates, here's the people who refused to answer our survey, here's the candidates who did answer.

And I think churches could even do that and I think it'd be very helpful. Because like you said, a lot of it's just, a lot of us are just ignorant. So by the way, for people who are viewing now, we're actually working through quickly what there's more content for on a series of videos you did in conjunction with Love Life that's available. We'll put the link up to promote what you did with there, but each of these four stages will have to go faster than the time that you had allotted to you on that so we want people who are interested in going deeper to go there. Yep, yep, amen.

Okay so let's go to stage two. What's stage two? Yes, stage two you're an educated voter now now kind of you want to go to the next level, it's being a genuine encourager. That is contacting the elected officials in your area, starting with, number one, your state representative, and then number two, starting with your party chairman, right, your Republican Party chairman, contacting them and just saying, hey, I'd like to take you out for lunch and take them out to lunch, get to know them, start a relationship. You know, a lot of times we kind of shouted our screens or we blast off tweets or Facebook and whatever and we never really have a connection with these candidates, with the representatives, with the people that are running our local parties, and that's not, you know, I think we're called to have relationships, to love others as we'd want to be loved, and that's how we'd want to be treated.

So that's the way that we should treat them, is we should really come alongside them, encourage them, thank them for their service, and ask them what's important to them, and then share what's important to us, and just be a genuine encourager. I think Scripture repeatedly talks about honoring those who are in government, and that's one way that we can do that, and we pray for them, and we talk to our churches and encourage our churches to pray for them. And so that's stage two, is being a genuine encourager and begin to get to know your local officials personally, beginning with your state representative and your Republican Party chairman. Bradley, one of the things you said on the Love Live video on stage two that I thought was obvious in hindsight but profound, It wasn't obvious to me until you said it, and then I thought, well, of course. We're not electing robots.

We're electing human beings, people, many of which get precious little encouragement from their supporters and a lot of pushback from vocal minorities. So there's tremendous value in just being a source of encouragement to people who are actually on our side or mostly on our side on these issues And they've always got the vocal minority chirping in their ears and rarely getting encouragement. Amen. Okay, so stage one, become an educated voter. Stage two, become a genuine encourager.

Stage three, what's that? Yeah, stage three, I would say you're now, you know, again, this isn't for everybody at this point. This is something that, okay, you got some more time, you want to have more impact, you become a grassroots mobilizer, right? Now you're an educated voter, so you kind of know what's going on you now establish a relationship with at least a couple of your local officials and now you want to start mobilizing other people start now trying to influence your the government in your area And so whether it be with your local county party, you don't even have to drive an hour or fly across the state or what have you, this can be something within 15 minutes that you just start working there in your county to pass a resolution on this subject, supporting abolition and equal protection, getting that pass at your local level, and that creates lots of great opportunities, not just to have influence there, but it's also to educate, to call people to repent, to be prophetic, and to also connect with other people in the area, as you start to raise this standard, it starts to, it's like a magnet, it just attracts other Christians in your area who also care about the subject, and now you get connected with one another, And that's how you then start to, to get stronger, right, because we're stronger together.

And so you start to then mobilize people in your area for this. And that may be, you know, restricted to your county, or it may be the whole state or you may be part of some national organization, but it doesn't have to be. It can start very close to home with just a very little bit of time, but start to try to push a resolution to be passed by your county party that encourages the state to abolish abortion. That's a great place to start as a grassroots mobilizer. Bradley, I thought the story you told in the Love Life segment under stage three was remarkable, which was that you were expecting to take it a long to take a long time to have an impact, but that actually you found at the at the county level there was so little involvement that on really on the first try they adopted the things that you were hoping that they would adopt in that some future future point.

And we might all find this to be true that there are so few people who are expressing interest and willing to invest time at a very local level that we don't have to anticipate that it'll take years. It might take months. It might take weeks. Right. Yeah, well there's a saying that politics goes to those who show up and there's very few people who show up and advocate and we get the government that we deserve a lot of times.

And, you know, whenever we just whenever we check out, and a lot of us because we get we have our eyes on the national government, and we think, wow, I cannot make an impact there. And yeah, most of us can't, I mean it's very difficult to impact that but things you know things trickle up and so you know having an impact locally can be extremely important and that can lead to then things higher up and also having an impact locally you know we saw just with all the COVID stuff here a few years ago that you know our local officials can be the people who oftentimes they can have the most power over us and our lives and our homes and our businesses and so that's something we need to not always just be looking at the national offices but be looking local as well. Okay, become a grassroots mobilizer. Let's go to number four. Number four is again kind of the next level of this and that is you want to not just have influence on government, you want to have influence in the government and you do that by being what we call a principled candidate.

That is you are a candidate and you're not just a candidate, not just a party man. You're running on principles, on biblical principles, and that's why you're running and you either are that candidate or you're recruiting somebody else to be that candidate or you're helping someone who's already declared their candidacy. But, you know, it's one thing to have great policy and we know, okay, well we need equal protection, we need to abolish abortion, we got the bills, we got the resolutions, but ultimately it has to be real people taking and running for and winning real offices to actually implement these things. And so that's what we have to, we have to either be that or we have to recruit people and help them and get behind them to get them into office. And so that's what stage four is.

You know, it's not for everyone. Not everybody can lead and be that candidate, but everyone can help and either get out and blockwalk or make phone calls or just make a donation, you know, to candidates. And, you know, doing that also makes us more educated voters, right? If we're getting involved, then we're going to know a lot more about what's going on. And that's good for everybody.

That's good for those candidates and having accountability there. And again, many, I think many of us should consider and, you know, running for office and holding those positions. And I think it's good for a lot of us as well that are considering helping candidates and supporting candidates to remember that, not every candidate is gonna be perfect. In fact, none of the candidates are going to be perfect. You can have a perfect bill, you can have a perfect policy, but none of the candidates are going to be.

You're always going to be dealing with human beings who have, you know, they may have tons of integrity, but then you're gonna have disagreements with them about they think this is the best policy and you think this is the best policy. So, you know, we need to have minimum standards of integrity and that they're a Christian and get behind them, but at the same time we also need to understand that these are real people. We're not gonna agree on everything, but we have to agree on the most fundamental things. You might be watching and wondering why I've never done anything like this before. Why would I do it now?

I think the answer to that question is we're at the legislative starting line. Previously any good legislation would be eventually struck down by the Supreme Court because the Supreme Court was viewing everything through the lens of Roe versus Wade. Now that that lens has been removed, you can actually do things legislatively that will stand the scrutiny of the Supreme Court. And so this is really the first time in a generation that we could actually do very meaningful things in this category legislatively when we really couldn't before. And it's going to require people, Christians, engaging in all four of these stages in order to get from here to there.

Good, good stuff. Okay, become an educated voter, become a genuine encourager, become a grassroots mobilizer, become a principal candidate. That's great, very practical. May the Lord bless it and multiply it in the world. Bradley, any last things you want to say to the listener?

Yeah, I would just encourage people to, you know, if you don't already know about abolition and equal protection to learn more about it, You can find out plenty of information online about that. Go start with our website, faa.life, or go to our YouTube channel. It's hosted at Abolish Abortion Texas. We have a lot of great info there. But just find out what this is going on because I think this is an area in which we are a product of our culture and we have, there's more, there's nearly 3, 000 children being killed every day and abortion still today, even after the DOPs decision, which the data is showing that abortions have not gone down really at all after the DOPs decision.

But yet, we act like, a lot of us are very apathetic and we don't act like there's a genocide going on. And so I would just encourage everybody listening to this, you know, are we loving our neighbor as ourselves? If it was us, you know, dying tomorrow, how would we want our neighbors and our brothers and sisters to be acting? And then that's how we need to be acting as well. Three thousand abortions a day means 9-11 every day.

On 9-11, the towers came down. It was very dramatic. Three thousand people died. That's happening every day. Remarkable.

Remarkable. Well, Bradley, thank you. Thank you for joining us on the podcast, and we'll keep talking about this as time goes on. We really appreciate your work and hope everybody goes to your website and piles on. It'd be really great.

Well thank you, thanks for the opportunity to talk about it. Yeah and thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. I hope you can join us at our next conference, Build, Dwell, Plant in St. Louis, all about family life, and then our national conference next April in 2024 on making disciples. That should be a really, really great conference.

And we also have a pre-conference preaching conference with Steve Lawson and Alex Strauch and Kevin Swanson and myself and a singles conference before our national conference. So hope, hope you all can join us and hope to see you there. Thanks for listening to our podcast. You can find past episodes and many more resources by visiting our website at churchandfamilylife.com