The Pulpit’s Plight on Abortion : Pro Choice: Most mainline Protestant churches, finding the issue too controversial, provide little leadership for congregants who support women’s right to terminate pregnancies.

In a year of intensified interest in the issue of abortion, “pro-choice” churchgoers looking for moral encouragement are finding little leadership in mainline Protestant congregations.

Leaders of Operation Rescue quote the Bible as they blockade clinics and defend their civil disobedience in court. The Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese observed “Respect Life Sunday” throughout the region Oct. 1 with homilies on the urgency of protecting the unborn.

But most so-called mainline Protestant denominations--even those with articulated pro-choice policies--have, for the most part, been willing to regard the issue as a matter of individual conscience, not concerted action.

The overtly religious, crusade-like opposition to abortion has been answered primarily by secular organizations.

There are exceptions.

“There is also something morally repugnant about forcing the unwanted on the unwilling,” declares the Rev. George Regas of Pasadena, an Episcopal priest who is unusually vocal on abortion rights. The Rev. Fred Register, regional executive for the United Church of Christ, has taken public issue with Los Angeles Archbishop Roger Mahony’s call for Catholic legislators to overturn what he considers permissive abortion laws. And the nationwide Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights has only recently begun organizing pro-choice clergy into a support-and-advocacy network in Southern California.

But interviews with church leaders and pastors throughout Southern California indicate that few congregations have provided pro-choice leadership in the abortion rights struggle renewed by a U.S. Supreme Court case from Missouri that opens the door for states to limit abortion. Register has lamented the “silence” of his congregations during the pre-Easter attempts by Operation Rescue protesters to block clinic doorways.

United Methodist publications editor Peg Parker said that she could not recall reading about any forum on abortion this year in more than 300 church newsletters that she sees in the Southern California office. “Now, what they have been saying in the pulpit, I don’t know,” she added. “We don’t get reports on that.”

Likewise, the Rev. Roger Rogahn, who directs urban ministries in the Los Angeles region for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, said he has detected no “groundswell” of interest in discussing abortion in the 158 churches of the Southern California West Synod.

If abortion has become an almost untouchable subject for United Methodist, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Lutheran and other mainline churches, it is for several reasons.

For one thing, abortion is unusually divisive in churches whose memberships often have a full spectrum of liberal and conservative members.

“Most people don’t want to fight out issues in church. It’s faith that brings you together,” said Bunnie Reidel of La Puente, a Methodist who is coordinating a clergy organizing effort in Southern California by the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights.

“Most (mainline) churches are operating in a survival mode. Nobody wants to do anything that might rock the boat,” said Chuck Jones, a Methodist layman who is executive director of the Southern California Ecumenical Council.

“The leadership is running scared,” said the Rev. Peggy Owen Clark, president of the Ecumenical Council and regional minister for the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), a denomination with a pro-choice stance.

Divisions on abortion also affect interdenominational relations. The Southern California Ecumenical Council, like the National Council of Churches, has not taken sides on the abortion debate because some members--principally the Eastern Orthodox churches--are unalterably opposed to abortion.

Touchy Situation

The last meeting of the regional council was “very touchy,” Clark said, because a Northern California spokeswoman for the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights was allowed to address the session. Father Alexander Lisenko of the Orthodox Church of America said the action was “somewhat anti-ecumenical” because of the potential embarrassment to Orthodox clergy.

Thus, a lack of consensus has hampered mainline leadership which otherwise tackles sensitive social issues in church settings. For instance, many mainline congregations have sermons and programs this month urging compassion and civil rights for AIDS sufferers. The mainline churches likewise are bolder in defending Central American refugees, victims of racism, the homeless and other segments of society perceived as unfairly treated.

But in the abortion battle for the highest moral ground it is not so clear which beleaguered group needs defending most--the unborn children or the women with problem pregnancies.

Several Presbyterian clergy interviewed cited that denomination’s tradition of respecting individual consciences when Christians can honestly differ on an issue.

On the other hand, the Roman Catholic hierarchy and evangelical Protestant pastors, whose teaching authority on matters of morals is less open to debate, have been more assertive in making the fight against abortion a righteous cause.

On Oct. 1, Catholic parishes nationwide observed “Respect Life Sunday.”

“The womb--which should be the sacredest sanctuary for all human life on this Earth--has sadly and tragically become a death chamber for many,” Archbishop Roger M. Mahony preached that Sunday at St. Vibiana Cathedral in downtown Los Angeles.

Catholic Lawmakers

Mahony stirred controversy last June when he said that Catholics who are elected or appointed government officials are under a “moral imperative” to eradicate laws allowing abortion. Several Catholic legislators took issue, including State Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles), who said legislators are expected to “act free of personal religious bias” and that imposing “the values of one denomination upon those of another would be constitutionally flawed.”

A number of Southland synagogues have broached the subject recently in sermons or special panel discussions. Disputing the anti-abortion forces’ claim to “hold the banner of God,” Reform Rabbi John L. Rosove of Hollywood’s Temple Israel said, “Our tradition is clear that life begins at birth” and “the fetus is not an independent life.”

Tensions can run high at times, however.

Congregation Mogen David, an Orthodox synagogue in Los Angeles, deliberately referred to “unwanted pregnancies” instead of “abortions” in announcing its panel last month, and hired a security guard in case the event attracted protesters. Pro and con speakers and a University of Judaism professor spoke at the discussion.

“We felt that our members needed some direction, some advice,” said Charles Chazen, synagogue president. “The results were absolutely fantastic. There was no undue excitement.”

Terry Carrilio, president of the Pasadena Jewish Temple’s Thirty-Something Group, which sponsored a forum on abortion rights, said that some congregations want more than the usual reasons--worship, socializing and taking children to Hebrew school--to attend temple. “If we don’t have ethical studies here, where?” she asked.

The dilemma is a perennial one for Christian churches as well.

Task Force Formed

For example, Irvine Presbyterian in Orange County has formed a “difficult issues task force” with the goal of “learning how to talk to one another when people have varying opinions,” according to the Rev. Jane Holslag, associate pastor.

Abortion was chosen as the first subject for an in-house “family chat” that precludes bringing in outside speakers or advocates. “Dialogue is hard, but avoidance isn’t the answer,” she said.

But few ministers wish to preach a “pro-choice” sermon, knowing that a substantial number of people in the pews would disagree but have no chance to respond.

The Rev. Ann R. Palmerton, a member of the Presbyterian Church’s pro-choice Justice for Women Committee, said that as associate pastor of the 1,800-member Point Loma Community Presbyterian Church in San Diego she “considered preaching about the choice issue” when she was scheduled to deliver the sermons in August.

“But people come to the incredibly complex issue with completely different assumptions,” she said, adding that a forum setting would be more appropriate.

Signs are emerging that mainline clergy, not their churches, may be speaking out more.

Before this year, whenever the California Abortion Rights League or Planned Parenthood sought to show that a religious pro-choice stance was possible, they had been limited in the Los Angeles area to a few outspoken clergy such as Regas, Rabbi Allen Freehling of University Synagogue in Brentwood, the Rev. Ignacio Castuera of Hollywood First United Methodist Church and ministers from the liberal Unitarian Universalist churches.

“But we’ve had a significant increase in interest from (the clergy) in the last seven months,” said Robin Schneider, executive director of the California Abortion Rights League. “It’s not just the Unitarians anymore.”

Abortion Rights Literature

Permission will be sought late this month from the regional United Methodist Board of Church and Society to send the literature of the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights to the nearly 600 ministers in Southern California and Hawaii.

“In making choices about human life, the clergy ought to be in the front line and not allowing the conservative right to monopolize the (debate),” said the Rev. Louis Chase of Lynwood, who chairs the Methodists’ board. “My concern is not simply about the fetus, but about the wholeness of life, about children born in violence and poverty.”

Some clergy may be ready. When the United Church of Christ’s Register in late July wrote his letter to Mahony, he said he received the most favorable response he has had in 21 years as regional executive.

“Some pastors wanted permission to make copies for their congregants,” Register said.

Meanwhile’s at Pasadena’s All Saints Episcopal Church, where Regas is rector, the congregation is formulating a pro-choice policy statement. The effort is being watched by other church leaders seeking to articulate a religious rationale for defending abortion.

“I’ve gotten some incredible letters that said to me how grateful they are that there is now an environment that they can talk about the agonizing decisions of abortion and not feel so morally corrupted,” said Regas.

Claire Peterson, 34, was a lone anti-abortion voice among 400 parishioners who considered the fifth draft of the All Saints statement recently. She said she started attending the church because they grapple with sensitive subjects “and don’t just assume that everyone agrees.” Yet, she conceded, “at some point my conscience may not allow me to stay.”

BACKGROUND Religious defenders of legalized abortion claim that, contrary to the assertions of anti-abortion church leaders, the Bible is silent on the specific question of abortion. Citing Jewish tradition, pro-choice clergy also say that the mother’s life takes precedence over that of the unborn child. While decrying abortions performed for convenience, birth control or gender selection, pro-choice Christians say that laws should not limit abortion because religious opinion differs on when life begins.