Religion, Protestant

Social Ethics

The social ethics of Protestant churches cover everything from dancing, card playing, drinking alcohol, and smoking tobacco or other vices to nuclear war. In addition to the sins of the flesh, there are those that deal with issues such as divorce, racism, economic beliefs, homosexuality, and abortion. The latter issue has been a polarizing issue dividing denominations since the U.S. Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade (1973).

Protestant churches have adopted positions on the morality of abortion as a matter of personal Christian ethics as well as a social ethic. The social ethics of churches are their witness to the state and to the world of the will and justice of God. In the case of liberal churches, abortions have been allowed as a biblically responsible Christian ethic. The conservative denominations, including most evangelicals and fundamentalists, have vigorously opposed abortion as unbiblical. Rather, it is seen as murder in the form of infanticide.

The advent of in vitro fertilization led to general acceptance of this new reproductive technology by Protestants. The reasoning was generally that it was an advance over artificial insemination, which had been the method used by some childless couples since earlier in the 20th century. Many saw this as an improvement because if the father and the mother were both fertile, then the child would be their biological child. The great gains in reproductive technology that gave childless couples hope and often greatly improved results in child bearing also brought new ethical issues, however.

Embryonic stem cells can be taken from an aborted fetus. The use of aborted fetuses for embryonic stem cell research has been approved by liberal Protestants but condemned as unholy by the conservative churches. The reasoning has been that even though a benefit can be gained by the use of the stem cells, taking the life of a human being to benefit another is not justified. At issue has been of the moral status of an embryo or fetus. Controversy has centered over when a human being comes into being. For conservatives, human life has been defined as beginning at conception. For liberal churches, quickening occurs after the first trimester. The fact that the fetal material that is used for embryonic stem cell research and is in a sense saved from total loss is not a persuasive argument to conservative Protestants. In is argued in response that this way of looking at it could just encourage more abortions. Whether it is true in fact, this assertion is accepted as such.

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