#386 Were Christians Always Pro-Life? Examining the Historical Record
The Alisa Childers Podcast
Alisa Childers
4.8 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 25 June 2026
⏱️ 17 minutes
🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS
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Summary
Were Christians always pro-life, or is opposition to abortion a recent political invention? Did the Southern Baptist Convention prove that Christians were historically pro-choice?
In this episode, Alisa responds to claims made on The Joe Rogan Experience by Texas State Representative James Talarico, who argues that the Christian pro-life position has no historical foundation and that abortion and homosexuality only became central Christian concerns in recent decades.
Looking at Scripture, the earliest Christian writings, and the historical record, Alisa traces the consistent Christian witness from the first century onward. You'll discover how the early church confronted a culture where abortion, infanticide, and sexual immorality were widely accepted—and why Christians stood apart by affirming the dignity of every human being as made in the image of God.
Topics include:
Was the early church pro-life?
What did the Didache, Epistle of Barnabas, and early church fathers teach about abortion?
Was the Southern Baptist Convention historically pro-choice?
Why did early Christians challenge the sexual ethics of the Roman Empire?
Are Christians making abortion and sexuality the primary issues, or responding to the issues culture has made primary?
Whether you've heard these historical claims before or are encountering them for the first time, this episode examines what the earliest Christians actually believed—and why that history still matters today.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Is it historically untenable to say that Christians have been pro-life from the beginning? |
| 0:14.7 | Was the Southern Baptist Convention pro-choice until the 70s? Well, these are two claims |
| 0:19.3 | that were made by James Tala Rico recently on |
| 0:21.8 | the Joe Rogan podcast. And I wanted to take a few minutes to interact with those claims because |
| 0:26.0 | they're ones that come up quite often in the progressive Christianity and deconstruction |
| 0:30.5 | conversation. It's this idea that somehow we think that the Christian position is to be |
| 0:36.4 | against abortion, but really that's just a modern invention. |
| 0:39.2 | That's not something Christians always believed. But I hope to show you in today's episode that not only |
| 0:43.9 | have Christians been pro-life from the beginning, they were quite specific about it and quite adamant |
| 0:49.2 | about it. So let's go to this video with James Tolariko. |
| 0:52.2 | And I think if we're looking at the last 40, 50 years, |
| 0:55.7 | the religious right has made a concerted effort to make homosexuality and abortion the two |
| 1:01.8 | biggest issues for Christians. And, you know, the Southern Baptist Convention was pro-choice |
| 1:08.1 | until the late 1970s. So this idea that to be a Christian means you have to be |
| 1:13.8 | anti-gay and anti-abortion, there really is no historical, theological, biblical basis for that |
| 1:19.7 | opinion. Well, let's talk about this. First, this claim that the Southern Baptist Convention |
| 1:24.4 | was pro-choice until the 70s. Well, it's true that the Southern |
| 1:28.6 | Baptist Convention made certain caveats for abortion up until that time. But honestly, I think |
| 1:35.1 | that's a bit of a distraction because ultimately, I don't really care what the Southern Baptist |
| 1:38.8 | Convention did or didn't do before the 70s or after the 70s, what I'm interested in is the broader claim |
| 1:45.1 | that's being made here, and that is ultimately that the pro-life Christian position is not one |
| 1:50.4 | that can be defended historically. So I want to look through some history. But I also want to |
... |
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