Religious leader talks about importance of faith in reproductive rights movement
The Religious Community for Reproductive Choice has been around since the 1970s. It’s rooted in the Clergy Consultation Service. Its CEO, Katey Zeh, speaks about what it hopes to do now.
In the immediate aftermath of the Dobbs decision, building religious support for abortion rights was considered the cutting-edge part of the movement. At the center of it was the Religious Community for Reproductive Choice.
It had previously been known as the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights, which dates back to the early 1970s as an outgrowth of the Clergy Consultation Service. For much of its history, the theological community had been marginalized by the larger feminist movement, as many saw religion as the driving force behind the opposition.
I spoke with Katey Zeh, an ordained Baptist minister and CEO of RCRC, the organization’s abbreviated name.
“We're always asking ourselves, ‘How do we respond to the current moment? How do we lean into our roots with the Clergy Consultation Service and the work that they did pre-Roe?’” Zeh said.
“We’re in a different time in some ways, even though there are a lot of parallels. So, for us, a lot of our work has been about educating people of faith about how we got here.”
Part of that has been extensive educational programming about Christian Nationalist organizations and groups like the New Apostolic Reformation, which has provided a theological justification for violence against liberal-minded people.
“We can't really talk about the anti-abortion movement without talking about white Christian nationalism and the way that they have used that as a central issue for organizing politically,” Zeh said.
“We also have to help people understand that this isn't where they're ending. Obviously, they have a much bigger agenda than just ending reproductive freedom in the country.”
When I walked in, I went to one information table. Behind it was a placard that read, “Tolerance is not one of the Ten Commandments.”
When I asked the woman at the table what it meant, she indicated that the left wing of America had treated tolerance of certain groups, particularly those in the LGBTQ community, as a holy matter. Speakers spoke about having enough firepower to clean communities of sin, which they equated to being liberal politically.
The right wing has hijacked mainstream religion for years. A great book to read is Steeplejacking: How the Christian Right is Hijacking Mainstream Religion, by Sheldon Culver and John Dorhauer, which shows how conservative renewal groups, backed by a right-wing organization called the Institute on Religion and Democracy, used social wedge issues like homosexuality to infiltrate mainline churches and stir up dissent among members of the congregation, to take over the leadership of the church, and ultimately, the denomination. They then used those positions to galvanize support for Republican politicians.
For those who haven’t been around that long, the 1980s saw the rise of organizations like the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition, each of which heavily focused on what they portrayed as the immorality of abortion.
Antiabortion violence also has had theological underpinnings. I’ve written about how that had its roots in the theology of Francis Schaeffer, an evangelical thinker who was well-respected even among liberals by the time he took on the antiabortion cause.
Much of my forthcoming book deals with how religion played a central role in the movements for and against choice.
It’s wise that movement leaders have recognized the significant part religion can play in advancing abortion rights. Worship and theology, with all its power to galvanize voters and the public, is not something that should be conceded to antiabortion groups.
“For so long, the narrative that Christian nationalists have put forward is that to be religious means you’re antiabortion,” Zeh said.
The reproductive rights movement has been secular in a lot of ways and correspondingly reticent to engage in theological conversations.
“It's understandable given the religiously charged attacks on reproductive rights,” Zeh said. “But I think it's really important that, when the frame that has been so successful in dismantling reproductive rights has steeped itself in religious language, we are talking in religious terms when we are critiquing it.”