Concordia Seminary, St. Louis has just announced the lineup for its “Multiethnic Symposium” to be held May 2-3, 2023 under the theme “Hope for the Church, Hope for the Future”. The announcement begins: “Generation is an important word in Scripture. Since the beginning, God has been creating and gathering for Himself a people whom He loves. From generation to generation, His faithfulness and love endures forever (Ps. 100:5 ESV). From one generation to another, God calls parents to share His story of salvation with their children.” [https://www.csl.edu/resources/continuing-education/multiethnic-symposium/]
Yet, Concordia Seminary has chosen, as one of the officiating clergy for the main Chapel Service at the Symposium, one who publicly supports the destruction of the next generation through the scourge of abortion: Rev. ST Williams, who is on the ordained roster of the LCMS. He’s listed as President of the LCMS “Black Clergy Caucus”. He is also a vice president of the LCMS PSW District.
He specifically identifies himself as a Lutheran minister in supporting a “right” to abortion:
“In L.A.’s West Adams neighborhood, the Rev. ST Williams Jr., pastor of the 97-year-old St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church, a historically African American church, said that the [Dobbs] ruling [that overturned Roe v. Wade] ‘set us back as a nation, a people and a culture.’
Williams, who shepherds a congregation of 375 families of Black Americans, as well as Caribbean, African and Latino parishioners, many of them immigrants, said the nation already was on edge because of COVID-19, mass shootings and inflation.
Telling people ‘they no longer have a right to choose’ will not allow for proper family planning and will affect those who can least afford to have children.
‘It’s a sad day as a Lutheran church minister because it will cause a lot of chaos and calamity,’ he said of the ruling. ‘You’re not allowing people to be who they want to be.'”
The quotes are followed by — and are used to justify — a poll claiming that “Most religious Americans oppose overturning Roe vs. Wade.” The quotes come from a story titled, “Joy, fear, anger at Sunday church services shows widening divide over abortion”, Heidi Perez-Moreno, Emily Alpert Reyes, Colleen Shalby, Deborah Netburn, Andrew J. Campa, Los Angeles Times, June 26, 2022.
CSL says “God calls parents to share His story of salvation with their children,” but what of those children never allowed to be born?
It is particularly disturbing to see the President of the “Black Clergy Caucus” advocate in this way. Even Planned Parenthood’s Guttmacher Institute admits that “the abortion rate for black women is almost five times that for white women.” [https://www.guttmacher.org/gpr/2008/08/abortion-and-women-color-bigger-picture] As quoted in Time magazine, “What Margaret Sanger Really Said About Eugenics and Race,” Jennifer Latson, October 14, 2016 [https://time.com/4081760/margaret-sanger-history-eugenics/], the Planned Parenthood founder said “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”
What message are Concordia Seminary and its President Thomas Egger sending when they choose an abortion advocate to conduct services for a symposium that is supposedly seeking outreach to the same communities who are disproportionately affected by abortion?
LCMS President Matthew Harrison recently stated, “The Synodical explanation of Luther’s Small Catechism teaches that the Fifth Commandment, “You shall not murder,” includes the prohibition of “hating, despising, or slandering other groups of people (prejudice, racism, and so forth).” The Scriptures agree: “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (1 John 3:15). Every human being is precious to God and as valuable as the very blood of Jesus Christ shed for all, “for God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16).” [https://reporter.lcms.org/2023/president-harrison-denounces-disturbing-ideologies/] Harrison also said, “LCMS congregations agree to uphold our biblical standards. We are not a top-down institution. That said, I will work together with our pastors and district presidents to address this matter wherever it arises among us and reject it. We issue the cry of Jesus: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2). We are confident that the same Law and Gospel that broke the hard heart of St. Paul, himself a murderer and blasphemer, can and will do the same today. We are all called to repentance daily. “The blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). Where that call to repentance is not heeded, there must be excommunication.”
Has Rev. Williams publicly repented of his quoted support for the “right to choose” to kill the unborn? How are LCMS President Matthew Harrison and PSW District President Michael Gibson working to address the need for repentance?
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