The march itself was barely over before snow began accumulating quickly on every surface in the Washington, DC area. All of the "happy warriors" for Life this year went above and beyond the usual sacrifices they make to come and march because of Snowstorm Jonas, a blizzard of historic proportions.

Among the warriors were dozens of Anglican church members led by the Anglicans for Life ministry along with the Archbishop and a number of other bishops of the Anglican Church in North America.

As the electric green posters they carry in The March for Life proclaim, Anglicans celebrate, protect, and honor life. In the past three years, some dozen Anglican bishops and many of their wives have come to Washington, DC to join the tens of thousands of marchers who celebrate life, from conception to natural death, as a gift from God.

This year the bishops arrived early. Along with dozens of clergy and lay people, on Thursday, January 21, they attended "Summit 2016: Mobilizing the Church for Life," a conference sponsored by Anglicans for Life and the Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic. The summit was hosted by The Falls Church Anglican.

The welcome message in the summit program from the Rt. Rev. John Guernsey, the Bishop of the Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic, and Deacon Georgette Forney, the President of Anglicans for Life, said that it was their "hope and prayer" that the participants would be "inspired to take action in protecting life" in their churches and communities. Participants would be equipped to prepare and assist their home church "with new ways of approaching life threatening problems" such as abortion, euthanasia, and assisted suicide. Teachings also emphasized ways to honor life at all stages, from conception to natural death, and even to honor the precious lives that have been lost through abortion and miscarriage.

Speakers included activists who work to protect the lives of both the unborn and the elderly. John Stonestreet (Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview), Carol Clews (Center for Pregnancy Concerns), Dr. Kirsten Ball (Best Choice Mobile Ultrasound and Pregnancy Resource Center RV), Rev. Peggy Means (Rachel's Vineyard Abortion Recovery Ministry), David Bereit (40 Days for Life), Zina Hackworth (This Race Will Self-Destruct), Julie Kresal (Elizabeth Ministry), William Saunders (Americans United for Life), and Dr. Allen Roberts (Georgetown University Hospital) addressed the summit in person.

Other speakers, who appeared by video, included the renowned theologian Rev. Dr. J. I. Packer, attorney Morse Tan, J. J. Hanson (President, Patients' Rights Action Fund), Christen Krebs (founder and director, Catholic Hospice of Pittsburgh), and Jo Tolck (Human Life Alliance). Jeff Walton has written about the teachings at Summit 2016 here.

The Anglicans also honored life with a Morning Prayer service on Friday in preparation for The March for Life. In his sermon, Anglican Church in North America Archbishop, the Most Reverend Foley Beach, declared, "This is the greatest moral issue of our time, and we must not keep silent. We must not muzzle our voices influence. We must continue to knock on the door of the unrighteous judge and demand change." He was referring to the Scripture reading from Luke in which Jesus tells the parable of the widow and the unjust judge.

Beach quoted Psalm 139, affirming that "God is involved with each new creation that occurs in the womb. "Human life is precious! Human life is valuable! Human life is sacred!" Archbishop Beach said. The Anglican Church in North America "stands for sanctity of life," he said, "because we stand on the authority of the Word of God, the Bible."

The Archbishop read from the Province's Constitutions and Canons:

God, and not man, is the Creator of human life. The unjustified taking of life is sinful. Therefore all members and clergy are called to promote and respect the sanctity of every human life from conception to natural death.

"Each life has been created by God for a Kingdom purpose and a divine destiny," Beach said. His message was echoed by the hymns and songs selected for the service that:

Praised the Lord, the King of creation
Blessed the Lord in both abundance and suffering
Asked God to give His guidance, as He has in the past
Offered our lives to be consecrated to God's service
Prayed for God to be our vision
Urged the Church to rise up and wage spiritual warfare
Although, as Archbishop Foley preached, the tens of thousands of advocates for Life, the Anglicans and other marchers, must continue to knock on the door of an unrighteous judge, their consolation is that the true judge is God, the Righteous Judge. And in the parable in Luke 18, Jesus assures the vulnerable and disenfranchised that God will "bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night."

The closing prayer prepared the Anglicans to march:

Almighty Father, you created us in your image and love us with a perfect love: Grant us grace and strength in all our words and deeds, both today and throughout the year, to manifest your love for the most vulnerable and fragile in our midst, and for all who do not know you. As we March for Life, be present with us and work through us to extend your kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen

*****

Anglicans Mobilize for Life

By JEFF WALTON
https://juicyecumenism.com/2016/01/23/anglicans-mobilize-for-life/
January 23, 2016

For the first time, Anglican Christians have presented a conference timed with the national March for Life aimed at mobilizing U.S. and Canadian churches to address sanctity of life issues.

Warning of a "tsunami" of state legislation and court rulings legalizing physician-assisted suicide "just over the horizon," conference speakers sought to equip local churches to address problems like abortion or euthanasia in, or coming to, their communities. Unlike the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion nationwide in 1973, the Church is more aware of the perils of euthanasia and is better positioned to push back against laws allowing people to take their own lives, speakers argued.

"People care about abortion, euthanasia, and assisted suicide, but many do not know what to do about them or where to get started," explained organizers Bishop John Guernsey of the Anglican Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic and Deacon Georgette Forney of Anglicans for Life.

Guernsey and Forney have organized groups of Anglicans and Episcopalians to participate in the annual March for Life for several years, but the conference, "Summit 2016: Mobilizing the Church for Life" broke new ground for Anglicans on January 21 with over a dozen teachings aimed at equipping local congregations. Registrants from more than 15 dioceses participated in the suburban Washington, D.C. event.

Guernsey and Forney cited the biblical mandate found in Isaiah 1:17 as central to the event: "Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow."

Beginning of Life

Conference speakers were encouraged by the direction of the Pro-Life movement and the increasing traction that they were witnessing in the public square.

"I don't think there is a better example of Christian cultural engagement," declared Summit speaker John Stonestreet of the Colson Center. Stonestreet pointed to statistics showing the Pro-Life movement getting younger and younger and to the development of ministries to assist post-abortive women. "The idea that no one will care for these children, or that Pro-Life people only care about life before birth, has been proven wrong."

Stonestreet, a member of St. George's Anglican Church in Colorado Springs, proposed that Christians do not operate issue-by-issue but present the Gospel story of life, "which is better than the secular story chapter-by-chapter." Human equality, he argued, is based on something inside rather than exterior things -- an understanding that is rooted in Christian teaching.

Summit participants heard from Carol Clews, the director of a pregnancy center near Baltimore, and Dr. Kirsten Ball, a physician who operates a Pro-Life mobile medical clinic offering free ultrasounds to women in unplanned pregnancies near abortion facilities and college campuses.

Ministries to women who have experienced miscarriage and abortion were also highlighted.

"I'm a miracle -- that the Lord could take the person I was and make me the person I am," shared Rev. Peggy Means about God's "transforming grace" working in her life to heal her following an abortion she sought as a young woman. Means, clergy at St. James Anglican Church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, framed abortion aftercare not as a cultural or political issue, but more as a spiritual one.

"You're a sinner with that big scarlet letter on your chest, and it doesn't matter; we're going to love you anyway," Means said of her work with Rachel's Vineyard and the Silent No More Awareness Campaign.

Participants were encouraged to begin their efforts with prayer. David Bereit, with 40 Days for Life, told of building relationships with workers at abortion facilities.

"When they are ready, they come to you and that begins their journey out of the abortion industry," explained Bereit. Since the mid-2000s, Bereit's campaign has chronicled more than 11,000 unborn children scheduled to be aborted and ultimately spared from that fate.

Zina Hackworth, founder of a Pro-Life abstinence workshop for black adolescent girls, told of her conversion from an abortion proponent to Pro-Life educator, while Julie Kresal spoke about pregnancy loss through miscarriage and stillbirth.

"Nobody knows better what someone is going through than someone who has walked through it," shared Kresal, who experienced infertility and miscarriage.

End of Life

Summit participants addressed physician-assisted suicide, euthanasia, hospice and palliative care.

"Assisted suicide denies the dignity of the person who is killed," declared Summit speaker William L. Saunders, Jr., Senior Vice President for Legal Affairs at Americans United for Life (AUL). Saunders noted that autonomy and compassion are cited to justify physician-assisted suicide, but there are unintended consequences.

"Patients may feel not the right to die, but the duty to die," predicted Dr. Allen H. Roberts II, Associate Medical Director at Georgetown University Hospital. "This is neither autonomy nor dignity."

Roberts, who testified before the Washington, D.C. City Council against a proposed physician-assisted suicide bill, portrayed cost and convenience as the actual motivation to enact such laws.

Christen Krebs of the Catholic Hospice of Pittsburgh also shared about growing concerns over the cutting of services by for-profit hospices.

Morning Prayer

"This is the greatest moral issue of our time, and we must not remain silent," insisted Archbishop Foley Beach of the Anglican Church in North America. Beach spoke at a pre-March prayer service held at The Falls Church Anglican in Falls Church, Virginia, on January 22, the day following the Summit. Beach decried the "sacrificing of children to idols of materialism, convenience and sex."

Beach also declared that "God is restoring a prophetic voice to Anglican Christianity" on life issues and spoke on Jesus' parable of the persistent widow in Luke Chapter 18. In the parable, a widow persists in seeking justice from an unrighteous judge who eventually grants her request after tiring of her appeals. Christ explains that if the judge will give justice, surely the Lord will give justice to his elect "who cry to him day and night."

"Let us not stop knocking on the unrighteous judge's door," Beach called on Anglicans.

Forney offered her testimony as a post-abortive woman.

"I could not stop the hurt, so I had to numb it," Forney explained of her coping strategy following her abortion as a 16 year old. The Anglicans for Life Executive Director is one of several women who speak annually at the March in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building about regretting their own abortion. "For 19 years, I had denied what abortion had done -- denied the life of my child."

"There are those here who have had abortions," said Beach. "God wants to heal and forgive you."

*****

Churches' Pro-Life Witness Grows in 2016

By CHELSEN VICARI
https://juicyecumenism.com/2016/01/21/35370/
Institute on Religion & Democracy Media Advisory
January 21, 2016

"Pro-Life Christians are witnessing an awakening among the American public on Sanctity of Life issues. These events are an encouraging start in advocacy and ministry to defend the most vulnerable at both ends of life."
-Chelsen Vicari, Director of IRD's Evangelical Action Program

Washington, DC--Tens of thousands will gather in Washington D.C. this Friday to commemorate more than 55 million unborn lives lost to abortion in the United States since 1973 as well as celebrate the sanctity of life. Before the official March for Life gets underway, several Church affiliates are hosting pro-life events in conjunction with the March.

Anglicans for Life

Anglican bishops are igniting pro-life work in local churches with this year's "Mobilizing the Church for Life 2016," an all-day summit on Thursday, January 21, at the Falls Church Anglican. On Friday Morning, participants will gather at Columbia Baptist Church for a time of prayer and worship led by Archbishop Foley Beach before marching together in the March for Life.

Learn more at: www.AnglicansforLife.org

Evangelicals for Life

The Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) is partnering with Focus on the Family to host an inaugural Evangelicals for Life event.

Evangelicals for Life will gather Thursday and Friday at the Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill. In addition to promoting the dignity and personhood of unborn babies, the conference will educate Evangelicals on issues including adoption and foster care, the effects of fatherlessness, holistic support for expecting mothers, and church-based ministry opportunities.

For more information: www.evangelicals.life

United Methodist Pro-Life Service

Faithful Methodists will gather in Washington for prayer hosted by the unofficial Pro-Life caucus in the United Methodist Church. Join Lifewatch for worship and prayer at 9:30 a.m. on Friday, January 22, at the Methodist Building located at 100 Maryland Avenue in Washington, DC.

For more information: www.lifewatch.org or contact Cindy Evans: cindy@lifewatch.org

Lutheran Church -- Missouri Synod Worship Service

The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS) Life Ministry is hosting a Divine Worship service at 9 a.m. at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Alexandria, Virginia before participating together as LCMS Lutherans in the March for Life.

For more information: www.lcms.org or email: tracy.quaethem@lcms.org.

The National Prayer Vigil for Life

Thousands will gather at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. for an all-night prayer vigil hosted by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Pro-Life Secretariat alongside Catholic University of America, and the National Shrine of Immaculate Conception.

To learn more, please visit www.usccb.org

END