For several decades now, we have celebrated the month of February here in the United States as Black History Month. I am a big fan of Black History Month, primarily because I’m a big fan of history. Last year, I was speaking in Zambia to church leaders from about 15 different African countries. Before I left, I spent a great deal of time researching the great heroes of Africa in different parts of Africa in Zambia, in Nigeria, in Uganda, so on and so forth so that I could use examples in my teaching that were from people that were from Africa. I read a book called *The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano* about how he was captured with some friends when he was out playing. He was about 13 or 14 when he was captured as a slave by another African tribe that was constantly trying to kidnap children. He was eventually sold into slavery, brought to America, sold back, became free, got educated, and wrote his own biography. It’s important in missions to try to get as close to the cultural points of the people that you’re trying to reach. That’s one reason I have an interest in researching history and finding particularly the stories of men and women that need to be celebrated as we begin to teach the current generation. If you look back at my library, I would say that probably half the books in my library are history in nature and probably 3/4 of them are biographies. In the month of February, I try to read a book on something about black history in America. One of the first books I read was called *The Black 100*, a ranking of the most influential African-Americans, past and present. These are short three or four-page biographies of different people that are worth knowing. It was written in 1999 and so it doesn’t have people like Barack Obama in it, who I suspect we would now acknowledge is among the 100 most influential black Americans.

The other reason that I love to read about black history is because I’m really convinced that the current pro-life movement in the United States is somewhat stuck. It’s gaining ground here, but losing ground there. We have made some good progress over the last 50 years, but we’re not making serious measurable progress. I don’t think we’re going to see any seismic progress for some years to come now until we see the third wave. I want to encourage you to pray earnestly with me for the arrival of the third wave of our modern pro-life abolition movement. The first wave of our modern pro-life movement was the Catholic Church in America in the late 1960s as abortion rights were being presented and argued for. It was largely the Catholic church and her leaders that understood the immorality of abortion at the time. In fact, for many years, to be pro-life and to be Catholic was the same thing. Everybody who argued for the pro-life position was dismissed as just that’s what Catholics believe. Only the Catholic Church was perceived to be standing for life. To the degree that that is true, that is to the shame of evangelicals like myself.

In the late 70s and early 80s, there was a second wave of the pro-life movement, and that was the evangelical church. This was primarily because of people like C. Everett Koop and Francis Schaeffer. They wrote a book together called *Whatever Happened to the Human Race*. This book came out in the late 70s and had a tremendous impact among average evangelical churches. It was turned into a film series that was shown in these churches. In that series, it began to show that historically the Christian community has always stood for the sanctity of human life and opposed things like abortion, infanticide, abandonment, and exposure as it was done in the pagan world. Through the centuries Christianity has stood for the sanctity of human life and it awakened many of our leaders within the evangelical church. I’m thinking particularly of James Dobson and James D. Kennedy. These three individuals had big platforms through radio and television to reach many people besides the film series directly with Francis Schaeffer. The result was that many evangelical Christians flooded into the pro-life movement in the early 80s. We found our best spot in developing pregnancy help clinics. The growth of the pregnancy help movement in the United States really took off when evangelicals joined the pro-life movement in the second wave. We started hundreds and hundreds of pregnancy centers. In my city at the time, Boston, we ended up starting six pregnancy help clinics during this time as a combined effort of evangelicals and Catholics working together.

There are moments of theological tension, yes, but we agree on the sanctity of human life and that it is always morally wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being. Therefore, our response is not only that we should not do it, not close our eyes to it, but actively work to rescue mothers and babies who are being pressured into abortion. That is the heart and soul of the pregnancy help movement. It expanded by hundreds and hundreds of centers throughout the 80s and 90s. Over the last 20 years, it’s begun to trickle off in terms of how many are being started. That again raises the question of what is the third wave. I’m convinced that the third wave is necessary for us to really bring about a victory in the anti-abortion movement.

I put it this way: **The end of abortion is in sight when our movement is not only joined but led by African-American and Latino Christian leaders**. By and large, their leadership is still pretty strong within their communities, less so among white evangelical churches. We don’t have a lot of political influence, but they do still. When our black and Latino Christian brothers and sisters begin to expose the deep profound immorality of abortion and its latent racist effects, especially here in the United States, then I think abortion as a business will collapse. Approximately 63% of all abortions take place among 33% of the population or, close to 2/3 of abortions are targeted and occur within 1/3 of our population, which is our major minority populations, black and Hispanic. Most abortion businesses are located in minority neighborhoods or near college campuses. As we work to rescue women one at a time in the United States, and now more and more across the world, we need to keep praying for this third wave to come in. When we see millions of Christians in our neighborhoods flood into this movement from the black and Latino communities, abortion is just going to collapse financially. You can’t take away a third of any business and have it continue. It’ll just collapse.

No matter who’s in the White House, no matter who’s on the Supreme Court, no matter what the politics are from state to state, you can collapse the industry of abortion by simply stealing away their business. That’s what we’re trying to do through the pregnancy help movement, by rescuing one mother and couple at a time. When we’re led by more and more Christians from a broader spectrum of our community, not just predominantly white, Catholic, and evangelical, but much more reflective of what God’s doing in his church, then I think we’re going to see the end of abortion as an industry within our own confines.

Here’s the biggest reason to pray for the third wave: if that were to happen here in the United States, it would ripple out all across the world, which is where we’re working at Passion Life. If you want to see the end of abortion, you have to be thinking long term and you have to be thinking of an uphill climb. You have to be thinking as I’m going to be a crossbearer for a childbearer. You have to be thinking to talk to people outside your circle. Get in and talk to people in other groups. **Cross-cultural communication**.

This week, I’m going to meet with some leaders within the pro-life movement here in the States. I’m going to try to encourage them to think outside the border, but also to start thinking more and more in terms of cultivating meaningful partnerships with our urban neighborhoods where abortion is most concentrated. There are many reasons why it’s not happening. Everyone is aware of the political divide and how our African-American brothers and sisters see things through a lens that’s very different than the traditional evangelical perspective. This leads them to be more democratic in the way they vote and they think, even though we have many more shared values than our politics would reflect. That’s not going to change without a lot of earnest effort.

**Pray for the third wave**. Pray for our movement to experience a flood of new voices coming into it, and pray that they are lifted up into leadership roles. Positions of influence that our pro-life movement begins to really reflect Catholic, evangelical, and more urban perspectives as we go. Then we have hope as well as work. We work hard and we hope big for a change in our nation and around the world when it comes to the sacredness of human life.

This article is adapted from the episode transcript.