American prolife speaker Bryan Kemper has urged Christians in New Zealand to stand up against abortion as it is “a fight that we are going to win”.
Mr Kemper was a speaker at the 2018 Social Justice Tour facilitated by Voice for Life, which ran from May 3 to May 9. He is the youth outreach director of Priests for Life in America and author of the book Social Justice Begins in the Womb.
“We need to look at this not as a fight that we are going to continue but as a fight that we are going to win. And that we are going to see an end to this,” he said at Silverdale on May 4.
Mr Kemper said his own life began inauspiciously when his father took his mother to an abortion facility after they found out she was pregnant. Fortunately for him, his mother was turned away by the facility.
“I don’t call them abortion clinics. A clinic heals, it doesn’t kill,” he said.
Mr Kemper said he was baptised as a Catholic only because his great-grandmother forced his father to do so.
He grew up bouncing between divorced parents, eventually ending up with his father who introduced him to drugs.
It was after he experienced an overdose and a Christian pastor told him that he was loved by God that he eventually found Christ. After some time, he found his calling as a prolife speaker.
“For many people, abortion is just an issue. It’s not real. We don’t get it. To this day, many Christians don’t understand the humanity of the unborn,” he said.
Mr Kemper said so many people act defeated. “How big is your God?,” he asked. “Because my God is bigger than everything.”
He said God gave us a simple call, “Love God above all. Love your neighbours as yourself”.
He added that loving one’s neighbour extends to loving the unborn. “It is not something that only a few people are called to do,” he said.
The prolife movement, Mr Kemper pointed out, also unifies all the Christian churches.
“You are seeing here in this tour, a mixture of so many different Christians, from Catholics to Protestants, Pentecostals, Baptists . . . While there are differences, we are all one in Christ and we need to come together to fight this battle,” he said.
Mr Kemper believed the fight for the rights of the unborn is increasingly being taken up by young people who see that abortion is an attack on their generation.
“Several years back, one of the heads of NARAL, one of the largest pro-abortion organisations in the States, got off of a train in Washington, DC, the day of the March for Life and actually freaked out when she realised she was surrounded by so many young pro-lifers,” he recounted.
“She realised that this was something that was a problem for them and it is. So many young people are standing up for life. I believe this is the prolife generation.”
This is a battle which is waged with attention to basics too long neglected, too long ignored.
It requires a turning back to use of listening skills, and to fasting.
Once Catholics fasted before mass from midnight the night before, both from liquids and solids. This was relaxed.
But now from far away, that has drawn 40,000,000 pilgrims is a call instead to return to fasting from Medjugorje.
Equally, there is a return to a deeper commitment in prayer, enlivened by Catholic charismatic renewal that has
spread like wildfire throughout the church and faithful are more attentive.
For abortion, euthanasia, drugs, porn, all stem from an anti-God religion that is only replied to with mysticism.
This immediately presents an opportunity for asceticism and mysticism. Both are the province of clergy and laity alike.