Randall Balmer (2010, 2021) has helped dispel the myth that American evangelicals responded with reflexive outrange to Roe v Wade. A number of years indeed passed between the monumental SCOTUS decision and the adoption of (what would become known as) the pro-life position as a plank in the American evangelical platform. However, having cleared away the myth of immediate outrage, Balmer then proposes that evangelical opposition to abortion was born in 1979 as a calculated maneuver to further mobilize religious conservatives who had recently come out of the political shadows to defend racial discrimination at Christian schools and universities. The upshot of Balmer’s work has been to cast the origins of the evangelical pro-life movement as disingenuous and to convince many evangelicals that indifference to abortion is the historical norm from which American evangelicalism after 1979 dubiously departed.
This paper challenges Balmer’s new narrative with a focus on the life and work of evangelical theologian Harold O. J. Brown (1933-2007). Based on years of original research, including access to unpublished papers and interviews with key contemporaries, this paper argues that Brown, a Catholic convert to evangelical Christianity with four degrees from Harvard, was the tip of the spear that became the American evangelical pro-life movement. Critical to the refutation of Balmer’s thesis, it shows that after two years as a veritable “voice crying in the wilderness” from 1973-1975 (authoring major anti-abortion pieces for Christianity Today and then The Human Life Review), Brown formed, with Catholic funding, the first national Protestant anti-abortion organization in the country, the Christian Action Council. With public support from the likes of Ruth Bell Graham, Francis Schaeffer, C. Everett Koop, and even (initially) Jesse Jackson, the Christian Action Council – which would later found the evangelical crisis pregnancy care center movement and change its name to Care Net – was poised to gather and direct the evangelical concern for abortion that followed the release of Francis Schaeffer’s book and film series, How Shall We Then Live (1976)—a concern that further swelled with Schaeffer’s subsequent book and film, Whatever Happened to the Human Race (1979).
This paper demonstrates that, contrary to Balmer’s new narrative, an organized, impactful, and theologically driven evangelical resistance to abortion existed before, and was well established by, 1979. Among the more intriguing pieces of evidence is a formal resolution passed by the Boston City Council in 1979 that “hereby officially commends Harold O. J. Brown for his efforts on behalf of the unborn and extends its best wishes for the success of his work in defense of those who cannot speak for themselves” (original document provided to the author). This paper will also show how Brown articulated opposition to abortion as the historic position of the Christian tradition from which American evangelicals who were indifferent to abortion had, for various reasons, departed, and to which historic and global Christianity bade them return.