So, many of you know and are familiar with my past involvement with a movement known as Abolish Human Abortion (whom I will refer to as AHA from here on out). If you don't, let me give a brief little recap.
A few years back, I want to say about 2012ish, I became acquainted with AHA through Abby Johnson's facebook page. She was very adamant about vilifying this movement and would trash talk them any chance she could. As were and are many other career pro-lifers, but I digress. I don't just like to write off people groups by someone else's opinion of them so I went and checked out AHA for myself. I ended up siding with them over Abby and she ended banning me from her page for simple posting scripture on a comment thread. That's when I knew that I had done the right thing. Fast forward a few months and my husband gets interested and we began to explore the idea of starting an abolitionist society in our hometown. So, we do. My husband goes to our church session and they give us the thumbs up. We start The Abolitionist Society of Riverside. During this time there is heavy debate and division between the Babies Are Murdered Here guys and AHA. We decide not to pick sides and go about our business. I did defend AHA at some points with those who sided with BAMH. My husband was even mistreated by one of the BAMH guys by attempting to bring unity, and that was disheartening, but we pressed on. We went to Planned Parenthood several times, none of which we regret. Sean ministered outside of other clinics, too. We went to expose the evil of abortion at the high school we attended. Did the same at the University. None of which we regret. Fast forward again to when Sean gets back from Afghanistan. Everything is good, we talk about going out to schools and clinics again, but something was definitely different. It's not that Sean didn't want to be an abolitionist, it's just he started to notice things that I wasn't. Little by little, he began to persuade me to distance myself from AHA. As it turns out, he had been speaking with Jeff Durbin from Apologia Church and John Barros from St. Andrew's (Sproul's church) about the importance of being under our church and sent out by our church. Now, we had the approval of our church but were not operating on behalf of our church. We knew that this was at odds with AHA because whether they admit it or not, they are very anti-Church in the sense that they don't believe in a structured church form of government/eldership, and we knew that this would ultimately be what would separate us from AHA. So, that was that.
Now that you know a little bit of the backstory, I'll continue with the purpose of this blog update. In the last year and a half or so, Sean completely disassociated himself with AHA. He is still an abolitionist of human abortion, as am I. He never made it public, neither is he obligated to. I, on the other hand remained on the fense. I know that many in the movement mean well, they can be overly zealous at times, and many times way off in their approaches but I saw passed a lot of that. Their cause is a great cause and one I firmly believe in. However, I did draw a line, that I stand firmly behind, that when/if they crossed it, would be cause for me to completely dissociate myself and not look back. That line was crossed this weekend when they decided to conduct a "church repent exhortation" in front of a biblically sound and active church against abortion, KNOWING that their intentions were not welcome. This is what I was afraid of and do not wish to be linked with. This IS a direct attack on the church in way of complete disrespect and disregard of a bible believing churches leadership. I have an incredibly high view of the church despite her shortcomings and despite her imperfection. I affirm that Elders of a church were put in those position BY GOD, and will be accountable to God for how they lead. AHA spits on that notion, and I cannot and WILL NOT be a part of that. I do not condemn any and every AHA adherent, quite the contrary, I love and pray for them, and I pray that God would show those that are in error, the error of their ways. So there you have it. My last and final word about the Abolish Human Abortion movement.
P.S I have deleted and unfollwed (or hid) many of my AHA friends from Facebook, some of which I deleted with a heavy heart, but I just can't stand the division that many were very adamant about communicating and condoning.
With all this said... Please pray for me. Pray that God would always be the center of why I do and say what I say. Love you all and God Bless! - Yours truly, Brenda
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