” A new Pew Research Center analysis finds that just 4% of sermons shared on U.S. church websites in the spring of 2019 discussed abortion even once – and when they did, it was rarely mentioned repeatedly. “
To arrive at their conclusions, the center analyzed nearly 50,000 sermons either shared online or live-streamed by over 6,000 U.S Churches, all preached between April 7 and June 1, 2019. While the timeframe given only covers a two month period, and includes Easter, it’s likely safe to extrapolate that across the rest of the year with a few percentage points either way.
The study has a few notable things that we would come to expect. The first is that Roman Catholics mentioned abortion that other groups, followed by Evangelical Protestants. The least likely to mention abortion would be Mainline Protestants, which makes sense as they are also the least likely to go to heaven. The study found that:
“Sermons that mention abortion rarely focus entirely on the topic. When sermons are broken into smaller segments of 250 words (the median sermon runs 5,502 words), three-quarters of all sermons that mention abortion do so in just one segment. As a result, only 1% of all sermons across the whole database discuss abortion in more than one segment. “
This is not a good thing, as it suggests that abortion is only briefly mentioned in passing, such as in this snippet from a sermon that was provided which shows the typical interaction that congregations are being exposed to: “why go to church? They don’t really condemn anything. … Should we take a strong stand against sin, against abortion, against the gay agenda, against divorce, against the love of money, against pornography, against drugs, against hate?”
As a result of the shying away from the topic of abortion, 3500 babies are being killed each day from abortion, with the church barely making an impact. While abortion is rarely discussed in most churches as the monstrous, abiding evil that it is, we would like to believe conservative, biblically faithful churches who would affirm certain theological propositions like “the scripture are infallible and inerrant” would have a far more conservative taste. Yet according to research, even the most conservative Christian denominations have huge swaths of members who believe abortion should be legal.
When it comes to a denomination like the Southern Baptist Convention who are widely regarded as conservative, a recent Pew Research poll found that nearly 1 in 3 believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
We can only hope that Churches repent of their inaction and commit to battling this great evil of our age.
