For updates, time, and location in each city, see www.LifeChain.net Chains in other nations are held at different times of the year
MEDIA ADVISORY, Sept. 30, 2011 /Christian Newswire/ -- National Life Chain Sunday 2011 confronts an injustice unsurpassed in world history. Year by year, the Abortion Holocaust in America and Canada extends a death toll that reaches far beyond the Nazi killings in Europe. Today, as in Germany, accountability rests heavily with a paralyzed church that has failed to discern and value the victims' humanity and lacks the resolve and passion necessary to end an unspeakable injustice. For many German Christians, bombs and destruction eventually quickened their awareness and compassion, which leads one to ask if most of us today will ever see the current horror and hear the Preborns' silent screams without promptings from a national calamity.
Author of The Christian Manifesto, theologian Francis Schaeffer advised us that "Every abortion mill should have this sign posted on it: 'This abortion mill is open by permission of the local church.'" On our watch, a child who falls into a well is swiftly and nobly rescued by Christian and pagan alike. Yet with an indifference we do not easily comprehend, we have allowed our preborn neighbors to suffer mutilations by the tens of millions. What could so blind the church in the U.S. and Canada? Are not millions of laity and a few hundred thousand pastors "pro-life"? But what does "pro-life" mean in our day? At what level is pro-life's integrity and sense of urgency? How confused is our mindset about Christian values? A remnant of clergy and laity labor devotedly, to be sure, but pro-life's collective save/loss record is tragic in the extreme. For each child saved from surgical abortion, many children die, and the numerous chemical abortions remain chiefly beyond the reach of current pro-life strategies. What is pro-life's greatest earthly need? In each community, both urban and rural, pro-life needs the pulpits--their skills, authority, and opportunity to instruct, inspire, and mobilize the church against the grievous mentality of legal abortion and its bonded spiritual forces. Ending the prevailing scourge is a local duty, everywhere. And to succeed, we must move past the "abortion issue" to the Preborns' humanity and provide the children uncompromising protection that can also end the killing. Each year, National Life Chain Sunday lines U.S. and Canadian sidewalks with a prayerful and peaceful public witness that is an extension of Sunday morning worship. Christians of all ages are urged to participate, for profound reasons. If instead we choose Sunday afternoon football or like pleasures, we betray desperate Preborns and help sustain the American and Canadian Holocausts. Pastors who prepare their people for earnest intercession and reflection are key to National Life Chain Sunday's success. These pastors proclaim the bloodguilt facing nations that legalize abortion. They proclaim God's eminent regard for helpless and rejected mankind. And they remind us that our nation's wellbeing and security are only as strong as our obedience to a just and sovereign God. Please, Pastors of America and Canada, lead your fellow worshippers to the nearest Life Chain, to stand humbly yet boldly for Life. Let us provide a witness God can anoint and use greatly.
