beneath the surface of the abortion debate to get at the very real—and often overlooked—needs of both women and children. Their research led them to a “pro-grace” position that appeals to—and feels like safe ground to—both camps in the debate and all people who have become dissatisfied with the limitations of debate. They now offer training to congregations that want to learn how to follow the same path. We sat down with Caris President Angie Weszely to find out more about the Pro-Grace™ Movement they’ve just launched, what inspired this journey, and where she sees it leading from here. What prompted you to look for a different approach to the women you were seeing? Angie Weszely: In 2008, we hired a research firm called Brandtrust, which uses the social sciences to understand how people really feel, think, and behave. We wanted to better understand the felt needs, hopes, and fears of the women facing unplanned pregnancy. Based on what we found out, we changed what we were doing with women. We started focusing on emotional support and professional counseling. One of our passions at that time was to see women connected with a church, because that’s really where transformation’s going to happen. The church people wanted to reach out and help the women, but church was one of the last places these young women wanted to go! So we were praying what to do about that. During that time, one of our clients was from Willow Creek Community Church in the northwest suburbs. We run groups for women until their baby is 6 months old. When she was done with her group here she went back to Willow but found there was nothing for her there. “Can I start a group like this at Willow?” she asked us. Well, we came alongside her to start a group there, and it grew really quickly and looked like God’s hand was in it. At the same time, a church in Uganda contacted us about running the same kind of program. We sent them the draft of what we were using at Willow. Currently there are a thousand women dealing with unplanned pregnancies at this church in Uganda who are being transformed in amazing ways. So we knew God was in the church reaching out to women. In trying to start groups at other churches, we experienced some road-
So what’s the elevator speech? How do you articulate why it’s so important for the church to have a pro-grace response? Weszely: We start with two theological pillars. First, God could have created life any way he wanted, but he chose pregnancy. He decided to have a child grow inside a woman for nine months in such a way that they are intertwined for that time. You can’t try to help one while bypassing the other. God has made that impossible. So we are always going to work for the dignity and welfare of both the woman and the child because that reflects God’s design of pregnancy. Now, we’d talked about helping both the woman and the child for six years, but it wasn’t until we started using this design-of-pregnancy theology that Christians started having the “ah ha!” moment. It suddenly allowed them to say, “Of course. We want to help both the mother and the child.” Second, when a single woman is faced with an unplanned pregnancy she experiences intense feelings of panic, isolation, and shame. It’s crippling. This is what causes her to think that she either needs to Advocate Creative
At current rates, more than one in four women in the United States will have an abortion by age 40, and the rates aren’t that different between those who call themselves Christians and those who don’t. That means there are thousands of women in our churches who have faced, or will face, an unplanned pregnancy. This may sound unbelievable, because you’ve rarely heard from these women at your church. But isn’t this proof that there’s a problem? Because for women with faith or without, the church is one of the last places they would turn to for help.
blocks. So we thought, maybe before Christians start doing outreach, we need to do some in-reach, do some transformational work ourselves, because there’s a reason these women aren’t coming to us, right? How can we make churches a safe place for women? We ourselves were transformed through the journey of the research, of talking to pro-choice activists, talking to pro-life activists, talking to women. In the process we developed a new way of thinking about this issue. We wrote down our whole experience and piloted our two-hour workshops with church groups. Moody and Willow Creek were among the first. And we found great resonance from Christians who said, “I want another way to think about this. I want another way to talk about it that is biblically sound but different from what I’ve seen happen in the typical pro-life or pro-choice side of things.” Finding the right language for this conversation is so hard. I would say one thing, and people would get triggered. I’d see their eyes glaze over. I’d see them thinking, “Oh, she’s pro-choice” or “Oh, she’s pro-life.” They wanted to put me in one of those categories. Being forced to articulate our new thinking for the workshop helped us come up with ways of framing the issue that would navigate the theological and political landmines sanely. Now we have a really concise way of saying who and what we are: We say that we are pro-grace and we can help other Christians understand what it means to be pro-grace. Finally what is in our hearts, what has been bubbling up for four years, is getting out. That feels good.
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