Question 1 would write a "fundamental right to reproductive freedom" into the Virginia constitution, language that opponents say would lock abortion into the state's founding charter. Question 2 would strike the constitutional definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman. The pastors' letter opposes both. Its first signers numbered about 150 in late September, and the list has since grown past 200. Supporters of the letter put the combined congregations at roughly 90 churches and 50,000 people.
The letter did not come out of nowhere. Virginia's Catholic bishop in Arlington had already launched a vote-no campaign among his own flock, and the pastors say they could not sit on the sidelines while that work went on. Democratic state Sen. Creigh Deeds of the 11th District has taken the other side. He wrote publicly that the proposed amendments are important and urged Virginians to vote yes.
Abortion measures are on ballots in several other states this fall, and faith groups across the country are weighing in. But Virginia is a close and plain test. A constitutional amendment is not an ordinary law. Once it is written in, a legislature cannot undo it, and a future generation of voters would have to climb a long hill to reverse it.
What a constitution says about a child
Strip away the campaign language and the question in Question 1 is a very old one. What is the child in the womb? Is that child a person, or a possession? The word "freedom" sounds fine until you ask whose freedom, and at whose cost. A freedom that ends with another human being dead is not freedom. It is power, and it has been dressed up in a gentle word.
The Bible does not leave us guessing about this. Long before any ultrasound, the Word of God spoke of the unborn as known, formed, and attended by the Almighty.
"For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb." (Psalm 139:13)
Notice who does the work. Not the mother alone, and not the doctor, but God. He covered that child. He knit that life together before it drew its first breath. The law of man may call it tissue, but the Lord calls it His handiwork.
The prophet heard the same thing about his own beginning: "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee" (Jeremiah 1:5). Before the first heartbeat, God knew him by name.
Marriage and the order God set
Question 2 touches the second ground the pastors are defending. Marriage was not invented by a legislature, and no ballot can improve on what God established in the garden: one man and one woman, joined for life. The church has said so for two thousand years. It says so now because the Creator's design does not change with the polls.
Pastors who speak up are sometimes told to keep to the pulpit. But a shepherd who sees the wolf and says nothing is no shepherd. These ministers are doing what citizens of any conviction do in a free country: they are telling their neighbors what they believe and why, and asking them to vote.
What a Christian owes his neighbor
Here is the part that matters most. The believer who votes no on Nov. 3 should do it with a gentle spirit. The woman facing a hard pregnancy is not an enemy. She is a person in trouble, and the church that tells her the child must live owes her a hand to help carry the load. Show up with meals, with a place to stay, with friendship that does not quit when the baby is born. That is how the gospel looks when it walks.
And remember what the gospel offers to the one who has already made the choice the law would protect. There is forgiveness with God. The blood of Christ was shed for just such sin, and no sinner is too far gone for it. The same grace that calls the nation to protect life calls every one of us to repent and believe.
Virginia will decide soon. Whatever the count says, the Word stands. Life is God's gift, marriage is God's design, and the truth does not need a majority to be true.