Description: "Many people assume that Christians have steadfastly condemned abortion throughout the United States's history. Daniel K. Williams overthrows all assumptions about the unity, consistency, or simplicity of American Christian thought and belief in this ... book. He demonstrates that churches in the United States have fought among themselves and with the wider culture as they developed and enforced their stance on abortion, revealing major struggles to define their often-changing positions. Far from a cynical exercise of political interest, changes and disagreements arose from serious theological considerations informed by each tradition's approach to the faith. These theological shifts--and corresponding shifts in interreligious political alliances--led to the changing fortunes of Roe v. Wade"--
Brief description:
Daniel K. Williams is a senior fellow at the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, where he teaches American history. He is the author of several books on modern American religion and politics, including The Politics of the Cross: A Christian Alternative to Partisanship and Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-Life Movement before Roe v. Wade. His work has been published in the New York Times, The Atlantic, and Christianity Today.
Review Quotes:
"Written in a thoroughly evenhanded manner, Williams's academic account of the religious contours of the abortion debate explains more than it advocates. . . . More significantly, Abortion and America's Churches reminds pastors and scholars that ending elective abortion requires not only changing laws but changing hearts as well." --The Gospel Coalition