Where is the Outcry? Where is the Church?

If it were possible to go back October 1967 and oppose the legalisation of abortion, knowing what we do now, I think many conservative Christians would think they would.

If we could go back in time and give evidence that, as predicted, abortion would not just be restricted to extreme case, but result in 251,377 children killed a year (2022 data), I think many think they would.

However, whilst we might say we wish we could go back in time and prevent these laws being passed, I doubt many would.

How do I know this?

On Wednesday 16th October, MPs will begin discussing a potential ‘assisted dying’ bill the Labour government want to pass through parliament.

The pleasantly titled ‘assisted dying’ bill is a proposal to allow euthanasia to become legal in the UK for those suffering the painful effects of terminal illness.

So how do I know many Christians would not actually go back in time and oppose abortion? Because the same event is happening this week, and the British church has mostly been silent.

With abortion, the past 60 years has shown us how quickly the slippery slope can cause an issue to go from being ‘safe, legal and rare’ – as Bill Clinton once said – to, instead, becoming very frequent, accounting for a couple of hundred thousand deaths in 2022.

Cardinal Nichols, in a recent pastoral letter, has warned how quickly a rare procedure can become a more frequent one. How a last resort for those in terminal pain can become accessible to a wider population.

Nichols writes: “No doubt the bill put before Parliament will be carefully framed, providing clear and very limited circumstances in which it would become lawful to assist… in the ending of a person’s life. But please remember, the evidence from every single country in which such a law has been passed is clear: that the circumstances in which the taking of a life is permitted are widened and widened, making assisted suicide and medical killing, or euthanasia, more and more available and accepted. In this country, assurances will be given that the proposed safeguards are firm and reliable. Rarely has this been the case.”

For some recent examples of Cardinal Nichols concerns and this slippery slope in action, we need only to look to Canada, the Netherlands and Belgium.

In Canada, euthanasia was introduced in 2016 for use in extreme cases where death was ‘reasonably foreseeable’. Since then, in 2021, Bill C-7 has included those with severe illness, even if their death isn’t foreseeable. And a newly proposed bill aims to allow euthanasia for mental illnesses.

The laws in Canada have so far killed 44,958 people between 2016 and 2022. Bill C-7 saw the number of people euthanised increase by 31.2%, accounting for 4.1% of all deaths in Canada in 2022. I suspect the data for 2023/24 will show an even more worrying state of affairs.

In the Netherlands, euthanasia was legalised in 2001 and began in 2002. By 2016 it was accounting for 4% of all deaths with 6,091 people euthanised, rising to 8,720 in 2022.

Belgium has some of the most liberal euthanasia laws in Europe. For example, in 2022, a 23 year old girl opted, and was allowed, to be euthanised due to PTSD following an ISIS terror attack in Brussels airport in 2016. Does this sound like care for a terminally ill individual with a physical condition that is causing chronic pain?

Belgium also extended euthanasia to children in 2013, just 4 years after its legalisation, and in 2023, euthanasia accounted for 3,423 deaths.

So where is the British Church?

Unsurprisingly, Catholics have been quite vocal on this issue.

As mentioned, Cardinal Nichols published a pastoral letter to all British Catholics outlining clearly the political, biological and religious reasons why we should oppose the proposed law. It is an excellent letter and well worth reading and sharing with others.

Several Catholic charities have been vocal in getting people to write to their local MPs, as has the charity Right to Life – and I would encourage you to write to your own MP which can be done here.

However, other groups of Christians have been remarkably silent on the issue.

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s social media, filled with posts about racism, women vicars, and climate change, has yet to see a post opposing the proposed law.

It is a similar story with the Archbishop of York too, another of the senior member of the ‘Lords Spiritual’ has a lovely post about a beer festival, but nothing on the impending proposed law.

The Church of England website has a series of posts about peace in Gaza and black history month, but again, comments about the proposed euthanasia law are noticeably lacking.

I highlight the CofE because many of its bishops sit in the House of Lords as the spiritual advisors to parliament, and it is still the biggest church in England, as well as being the state religion.

But it is not just the CofE, the Methodist UK website again, has pieces on Gaza, social justice, and their acceptance of LGBTQ, but is absent of advice for Methodists condemning euthanasia.

The Baptist Union of Great Britain is following in a similar vein. Their social media has plenty condemning the far right, colonialism, and even ‘whiteness’, but is yet to raise its voice against the proposed Labour law.

Even the more conservative wings of British Christianity have been, so far, silent.

Groups which ardently hold sola scriptura, who know that the Bible is against euthanasia, continue to not speak.

Pentecostal denominations such as Assemblies of God and Elim have nothing on their websites or social media. The Salvation Army, URC, and even the Eastern Orthodox Church in the UK, the Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain, has yet to speak on the matter.

By contrast, the Catholic Church’s main website for England and Wales has a statement on the front page.

Why are the non-Catholic denominations silent?

Well having spent some time trawling through the websites and social media of Britain’s major denominations, the answer is clear.

They have become obsessed with social justice issues, but all the wrong ones.

They are focused on the trendy topics such as race, Gaza, sexuality, the environment, and feminism, but have forgotten the major social justice issue that really matter – abortion and euthanasia.

In ‘loving god and loving people’, as the front page of every trendy church website tells us it does, churches in Britain have focused on not upsetting them, or telling them that some things, like the murder of the vulnerable and innocent, whether before birth or near death, is wrong.

Maybe Churches will comment, perhaps they are waiting until Wednesday and the subsequent parliamentary conversations. Perhaps we will see the British church unite to oppose any proposed euthanasia laws.

I remain doubtful.

What perhaps adds to the perverse nature of the proposed law is that, like with abortion, our taxes will fund it. The downside of a national health system is that we do not get a choice in how our taxes are spent on healthcare – even is that procedure isn’t healthy or caring.

Will concerned citizens be able to receive tax cuts if they do not want their money to be used to kill the vulnerable and the elderly? Judging by the fact that this is not the case for abortion, I am extremely doubtful.

I do not want to be complicit in funding the murder of the vulnerable. Christians, regardless of denomination, should not wish for their taxes to be used in this way.

However, as always, on issues of life and death Catholics are, and need to be evermore so, at the forefront of the opposition to our country’s culture of death.

Whether the proposed law will get through parliament and pass remains to be seen. The latest data shows that less than half of Labour MPs support it. However, even if it doesn’t pass, it has been disappointingly telling how quiet Christians have been in the run up to the first conversation.

Maybe Christians are waiting to speak, but I fear it will be too little too late.

Hopefully the law does not pass. But if it doesn’t this will not be last time in many of our lifetimes that it will be proposed, and, like much of the rest of Western Europe, we will eventually see euthanasia being legalised in Britain.

Will Christians stand against it next time? Will there be a next time? Will British churches suddenly start speaking up in the next few months?

This all remains to be seen. But given current response of Christians, I, for one, will continue to be doubtful and concerned, but vocal.

Catholic Herald version posted - https://thecatholicherald.com/christian-churches-are-shamelessly-leaving-catholics-to-fight-alone-against-uks-assisted-suicide-bill/