Printer-friendly versionMr. Richey suggests that forgiveness and healing for abortion be addressed from the pulpit. He believes that the silence can be just as alienating for someone in the pews as outright condemnation.     Published on www.LifeWatch.org 3/1/00 To a degree, we are all determined by our culture and time. For example, the Civil Rights Movement shaped most Americans in the 1950s and 1960s. Then, from the mid-1960s through the 1970s, the Sexual Revolution and, for a time, protest against American military in Vietnam set the cultural agenda. The 1980s, according to some, brought on a culturally corrupting materialism. In the 1990s, a political correctness developed and became so powerful that it denied mention of subjects it deemed outside the boundaries of polite conversation.  Though ideologically charged movements, events, and fashions are societally powerful, we are not prisoners of our culture. That is, I believe that today Christians can make conscious decisions, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to break through cultural constraints and speak on issues that are deemed politically incorrect. Indeed, we should speak on such issues because God speaks on such issues and because they can involve true compassion for others, for the least of these.  I believe that silence from the pulpit on the subject of abortion (and the suffering of women and men from post-abortion syndrome) denies people the healing power of our Lord Jesus Christ. There could be no more devastating denial.  It could well be that this silence from the pulpit is understood, by some post-abortive women, as proof that they are unworthy of forgiveness, that they and their deeds are so dirty and evil that even their pastors dare not address them. Or worse, many of these women might believe that their nagging feelings of guilt are false, that there is nothing for which they need to ask forgiveness. If true guilt were in play, they reason, their pastors would be speaking to their need.  As pastors remain silent, so as not to upset anyone in the pew, parishioners touched by abortion feel an increasing alienation, a growing separation from their own congregations, because no one risks discussion of this supposedly out-of-bounds subject.  When clergy and congregations breach the often forbidden subject and offer Christ’s forgiveness and healing to the victims of abortion, word that they are truly of Christ and truly inviting all to His healing certainly spreads. New life in Christ is given and received. The congregations are strengthened. And the Gospel advances, due to that amazing grace.  Mr. Richey suggests that his article might be copied and made into a brochure fit for distribution throughout a congregation.