I gotta have my orange juice.

Earlier I claimed that James Jordan had not drawn a straight-line connection between the church’s abandonment of paedobaptism and our culture’s practice of abortion. At the time I was focused primarily on Jordan’s lectures, but I’ve searched again through his written materials. Jordan’s 1989 essay, “The Holy War in America Today: Some Observations on Abortion Rescues,” does in fact address this connection directly. This is an outstanding essay that I commend to you in its entirety. But here are some quotes from this essay on this particular point. These particular quotes originate from Jordan’s earlier 1985 essay, “Abortion: A Cause and a Cure”—

Abortion is clearly murder, so there is absolutely no question about the will of God in this matter. All the Church needs to do is bind and loose properly, and society will conform. There is no doubt about it, because the Bible says it. In Christ, the Church has been restored to the place of Adam as guardian of the Garden; the cherubim have gone back home to heaven. We now have the keys. If the dragon is loose in the garden, killing children, the fault for this lies solely with the Church. What does Scripture say? All power has been given to Christ and is administered through the Church. All power. All. Not part. Not some. Not “enough.” All. The enemy, then, has NO power. We have to say, then, that the reason children are murdered in our society is because the Church has failed to guard at this point.

At those points where the Church fails to guard society, sin breaks out. If the Church fails to maintain its governing function, and fails to use the sword of excommunication properly and consistently, then the state will also fail to wield the sword of iron, and there will be a rise of lawlessness and crime. If the Church fails to protect the weak, then the weak will become the prey of the violent. . . .

In this way, the Church in the West ceased offering the protection of Christ to the children of the West. The results have been slow in coming, but are now devastating. Ancient Israel faced the same choice. They were supposed to circumcise their children and bring them to Passover. When they ignored the festivals (as they almost always did), they fell into child sacrifice, giving their children to Molech. So it was then, and so it is today. We now face rampant child pornography, child molestation, incest, and abortion. This will not cease until the Church once again welcomes the little children to Jesus’ lap. . . .

Working to pass civil laws will help, but is in the category of “little help” (Dan. 11:34, a reference to political relief); indeed, in my opinion the state will not change its stand on abortion until the Church reforms herself. Let the Church reform herself, and confess that by denying the seal of God’s covenant to the children of this society, she has left them open to attack. When the Church is reformed, then the promise of the gospel is that the rest of society will get in line soon enough, and sooner than we think.