By Jeffrey Walton
JUICY ECUMENISM
January 24, 2025
Jesus’ humanness confirms and restores the dignity of all persons, according to an Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) bishop preaching at a prayer service preceding the annual National March for Life.
Missionary Diocese of All Saints Bishop Darryl Fitzwater spoke at the event sponsored by Anglicans for Life and the ACNA Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic held at The Falls Church Anglican outside of Washington, D.C.
Participants at the January 24 prayer service heard testimony from Deacon Georgette Forney as part of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign.
“Abortion aftercare programs helped me to grieve for the child that I had aborted,” Forney shared, highlighting the importance of local church ministry among post-abortive women and their families.
“All I did was make myself available and give my sin back to God,” Forney recounted, describing God as taking human brokenness, healing it, and using it to build his Kingdom.
Pro-Life ministry, Forney explained, has expanded to address euthanasia and assisted suicide.
“Everything in God’s Word upholds the sanctity of life,” Forney insisted. “Once life is regarded as a burden or inconvenience, that life begins being treated differently.”
Forney shared her own story of admitting her elderly father to a hospital, with a doctor strongly and repeatedly pressuring him to sign a “Do Not Resuscitate” order in the early hours of the morning. Her father declined to sign the order, but Forney saw it as a sign of how the medical community is changing and that churches need to prepare their congregants for such external pressures.
“If we are going to be change agents for our culture and communities, it will require us to say ‘yes’ to God,” the Anglicans for Life Director charged.
In his sermon, Fitzwater sought to emphasize the unchanging nature of God and his Word.
“If it was ever a sin, it still is. If it was ever his character, it still is,” Fitzwater preached. The West Virginia bishop shared about the spiritual nature of Christ and about his humanity.
“Spiritual does not mean to be ghostly: to be a spiritual people does not mean we are fixed on disembodied things,” Fitzwater noted. “Jesus is so spiritual, he goes around healing physical bodies. Spiritual means the Word became flesh and dwelled among us.”
The Anglican bishop insisted that “Christ is sanctifying the entire family structure.”
“In the cases of life, there are times when the circumstances and scenarios by which a woman becomes pregnant are not ideal, but that life is always sacred. It is always blessed. It is always given dignity,” Fitzwater stated. “The response of the Church must always be: how do we step in to not snuff out a smoldering wick? To not break a bruised reed, but to rightly and truly set bones so that they heal and grow into the fullness of the grace that God has already amply poured out through Jesus Christ.”
Following the service, participants loaded onto buses that took them to the National March for Life beginning at the National Mall in Washington and concluding on Capitol Hill.
“When we go out into this march today, we aren’t just walking with the people next to us, we are enveloped, immersed by a cloud of witnesses whose lives and legacies are pleading to God,” Fitzwater exhorted. “Let us not forget that the chief responsibility, the chief end in those moments, is to join with the prayers of all of God’s people.”
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