Florida Bishop Calls Church to
“Distinctly Christian Perspective” on Abortion
Rebekah Sharpe
March 04, 2009

Many left-leaning religious officials justified their support of pro-choice candidates in the past election by shunning the supposed single-issue obsession of pro-lifers. But one Florida United Methodist bishop says this concern provides no excuse for ignoring abortion.

Bishop Timothy Whitaker of the United Methodist Florida Annual Conference commented in a February edition of his newsletter: “We often hear the truism that it is foolish to become obsessed with a single issue, such as abortion. Of course, it is a mistake to single out one moral concern to the practical exclusion of others in our daily discourse, ethical reflection and political attention. Nevertheless, the fact that a few would be so foolish is no excuse for the rest of us avoiding being engaged in an issue.”

Although United Methodist officials have in recent decades routinely sided with abortion rights causes, Whitaker is one of the very few United Methodist leaders openly to question unrestricted abortion rights.

Bishop Whitaker acknowledged the importance of many of the debates that plague American society, saying, “Other issues must be addressed as profound moral concerns and urgent practical problems. Yet their rightful demand for our attention is no excuse for failing to be concerned about abortion. We are capable of dealing with more than one, or several, moral concerns at the same time.”

Calling it a “vexing” issue, Whitaker attributed the pro-choice stance to America’s “social environment shaped by the value of individual freedom.” But he told readers to remember that the “freedom we exercise in the case of an abortion is more than the liberty to live where we desire or to hold whatever religious or political opinions we choose, since the exercise of this freedom results in the extermination of another human being.”

The bishop cited novelist Walker Percy’s “Sign-Posts in a Strange Land,” which noted the behavior of chromosomes immediately following the fertilization of the egg during an embryo’s conception. (Percy also had a medical degree.) Whitaker contended, “There is one fact that will continue to affect public debate and personal moral reasoning, and that is the reality that a human life begins with conception.”

The Florida bishop recognized that biological realities do not always translate well into specific policy fixes, and “there are sometimes complex political reasons why a particular government refuses to fully enact in civil law a moral rule.” Whitaker noted that the example of the early church shows that Christians have always opposed abortion. He said: “The Christian community distinguished itself in its very beginning by opposing infanticide and abortion, both of which were commonplace in the Roman Empire. For Christians in the American context, finding our way to this historic Christian perspective has not been easy.”

Whitaker admitted that difficulty with regulating abortion would persist, ruminating that “Christians who are citizens of the United States will always have somewhat different political judgments — as citizens — about what is possible and acceptable regarding the legal solution to the moral problem of abortion.” He offered the solution that, “As Christians, we should continue to move toward a distinctly Christian perspective and practice,” regardless of the values of culture or limitations of government’s ability to be moral.

In particular, among United Methodists, Whitaker remarked: “The movement of the General Conference over time to strengthen The United Methodist Church’s pastoral guidance and witness about abortion is encouraging. As we embrace more fully the larger historic and ecumenical Christian witness about abortion, we shall grow in our ability to develop a distinctive Christian identity in a pluralistic society and a secular government.”

A Mississippi native, Bishop Whitaker was elected to the Southeastern Jurisdiction’s college of Bishops in 2001. He is currently serving his third four-year term as Bishop of the Florida Annual Conference. He is known for his scholarship of early church history. If you are interested in reading his comments in their entirety, you can find them in Florida’s February 9, 2009 e-newsletter.