(LifeSiteNews) — On this week’s episode of The Van Maren Show, Jonathon speaks with Seth Drayer, vice president of the pro-life organization Created Equal, about the impact of their “Justice Rides,” the parallels between the pro-life and civil rights movements, effective pro-life apologetics, and more.
Jonathon begins the episode by asking Drayer to explain the group’s Justice Rides, which travel to college campuses to promote and offer pro-life apologetics. Drayer explained that they’re similar to the concept of Freedom Rides during the American civil rights movement.
“You had these young people coming together, black and white, sitting together on buses, directly violating these state rules, even if they were in alignment with federal law, and getting in trouble for it. They knew racism had to be seen … and so when they sat on the buses, black and white students together, they knew they were going to bring to the surface the bubbling racism of the nation,” Drayer said.
Drayer then highlighted that these students weren’t just trying to create a dialogue on the buses, but to get people throughout the United States to talk about the injustice of racism. He said Created Equal aims to create a similar dialogue across the country about the issue of abortion.
Jonathon jumped in to note how pro-life activists have been inspired by the work of civil rights leaders. It’s always struck him that those who claim to hold that mantle of the civil rights movement, such as Black Lives Matter (BLM), are anti-Christian.
“Regardless of what you think of various specific figures in the civil rights movement, some of them who later became very pro-abortion, it was an explicitly Christian movement that was launched on explicitly Christian grounds. Their battle songs were all hymns, and all of their speeches were shot through with Scripture, so it was actually one of the last Christian social reform movement[s] besides the pro-life movement,” the host said.
A bit later in the episode, Drayer dove into how the riders aim to create this dialogue by going beyond typical pro-life apologetics on college campuses. Speaking about typical apologetics, Drayer emphasized that while intellectual discussions are valuable, they can often become an end in themselves, i.e., when they’re discussed among fellow pro-lifers. Apologetics, however, is meant to be shared with people who are pro-abortion.
“So the Justice Ride is also ordered around trying to bring together these students who want to learn about how to defend the preborn baby but also want to make themselves frankly uncomfortable,” he said. “For most people, the first time you walk onto campus, it’s enormously uncomfortable to talk to someone, ask[ing], ‘What do you think about abortion?’ But when you’re in the community of the justice riders, you’re together with them, and you’re standing alongside a veteran person who has done this for a long time, it makes it so much easier.”
“By the end of the week, you become very comfortable having very difficult conversations. And so, that’s really our heart, too, to not only end with apologetics but to put apologetics to its purpose, which is to engage with people in dialogue … whether it be [a] full change of mind, [or] of slow increments moving them to the truth [and bringing] them to our side.”
To hear more from Seth Drayer, tune in to this week’s episode of The Van Maren Show.
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