It’s hard to do a critique of an elite-media feature about someone who is a real online friend.

But, in this case, there’s an issue that — at least to me — cannot be avoided in the glowing Washington Post religion-desk feature that ran the other day with this headline: “Karen Prior has worked for Roe's overturn for decades. This isn't what she'd hoped to feel.”

Most fans of the “Notorious KSP,” I would imagine, loved this piece.

At the same time, I’m sure her worst critics loved it as well — for reasons linked to the journalism issue that I would like to spotlight in this post. It helps to understand that Prior has critics (and friends) who disagree with some things that she says and does and then she has critics that basically don’t want her to exist.

Meanwhile, anyone — worthy critics and supporters — who has followed KSP’s work through the years with any kind of an open mind knows the strength of her logic and (dare I say it) art when defending centuries of Christian doctrines about life issues, as well as marriage and sexuality. But to grasp that side of her life, and how it fits into the total package of her apologetics, people need to actually read or hear her address those topics.

This Post piece focuses, for the most part, on her actions and beliefs that have fueled controversy about her among some evangelicals (like me, she was #NeverTrump #Never Hillary in 2016). A more balanced profile of her would have included quoted material that would have — with good cause — offended, well, most Post readers and editors. Hold that thought, because I will come back to it.

The piece starts with Prior’s feelings of elation at the news that the U.S. Supreme Court appears to be poised to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Prior was shocked and thrilled. But within minutes the deep divisions and differences in priorities among antiabortion advocates came into view. After being put aside for decades as they worked together to overturn Roe, they had become impossible to ignore. While Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. took pains to say the leaked opinion may not be the final one, experts on abortion in America say even the potential of Roe’s demise is a turning point for the movement. If Roe falls, what does it mean to be for life now?
For Prior, it means much more than overturning Roe. It means more support for child care and pregnant women as well as supporting sex abuse victims, vaccinating as many people as possible against the coronavirus, and helping start and run an inner-city high school in Buffalo. But not all antiabortion activists agree and lately have begun splintering over next steps, such as whether to classify abortion as homicide and restrict contraception, as well as whether issues outside of reproduction even qualify as part of the “pro-life” cause.

Once again, this is an old, old story that is presented as something essentially new and, thus, linked to COVID-19, the Trump era and all kinds of “now” things. In reality, debates among evangelicals, and especially Catholics, about what it means to be “consistently pro-life” go back to the 1980s or earlier.

History is a complex subject and often not for the faint of heart.

With that in mind, allow me to ask a history question to evangelicals who want to know more about their own past. I would also like to ask this question to religion-beat professionals under the age of 60, or thereabouts.

In 1971, a major American religious group passed a resolution on a topic that was becoming more controversial — abortion. Of course, the Roe v. Wade decision issued on January 22 in 1973 would create a political, cultural and moral earthquake that continues to this day.

So here is my question: What religious body passed the 1971 resolution that urged its members to “work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.”

What was the name this giant religious group? This resolution was passed during the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention. The same body reaffirmed that resolution in 1974 and in 1976 — after Roe.

Were these actions shocking, at the time? As historian Randall Balmer noted in a paper entitled “The Historian’s Pickaxe” (.pdf here):

Although a few evangelical voices, including Christianity Today magazine, mildly criticized the ruling, the overwhelming response was silence, even approval. Baptists, in particular, applauded the decision as an appropriate articulation of the division between church and state, between personal morality and state regulation of individual behavior. “Religious liberty, human equality and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision,” wrote W. Barry Garrett of Baptist Press.

This was the era in which I came of age as a Southern Baptist preacher’s son in Texas — finishing high school and then heading to Baylor to study journalism and the history of religion in America. I bring this subject up because this slice of SBC history plays a crucial role in this weekend’s think piece, which is written by David French of The Dispatch, a cultural conservative who is an experienced legal mind on religious liberty issues. The title of his essay: “Fact and Fiction About Racism and the Rise of the Religious Right.”

The big issue for French is whether the X factor in the birth of the Religious Right was abortion or, as some now claim, racism.