What Roe and King Share in Common

This is Sanctity of Life Sunday. Monday is Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.

The two days have a lot in common, yet those who are passionate about life rarely come in contact with those passionate about civil rights. Rev. David Stokes at Townhall says that needs to change:

So, here we are again, in another January – decades after a killing and a ruling - still marching about Roe v. Wade and honoring Dr. King - but seldom in the same room. The two constituencies, both fierce about the importance of faith, seldom find, much less look for, ways to reach out to the other choir.

As churches get ready for this Sunday some will highlight “SANCTITY OF HUMAN LIFE SUNDAY.” Others will talk a lot about Dr. King and his dream. Usually it will be one or the other.

Some of us WILL try to do both – because there ought to be an affinity between the two.

When Martin Luther King talked about a dream he had for his four little children and how he longed for them to grow up in a nation “where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” – beyond the “amens” and applause of the crowd around the Lincoln Memorial far too many Americans ignored what he had to say. Or worse – they mobilized to polarize and oppose.

Those opponents were wrong. No matter how much they went to church, read their Bibles, or professed the religion of Jesus. It was wrong for good, God-fearing, Americans NOT to see how important it was, from a faith-based point of view, that a nation truly walk the walk it had long talked about.

And, it is wrong for some people of faith today not to see the “pro-life” cause as very much a civil and human rights issue.

We should have a dream that welcomes all to the table.

We should have a dream that welcomes all to life itself.

May the two visions become one and win the hearts and minds of our country.