Editorial: Mother’s Day, Methodists and Roe v. Wade

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Mother’s Day will be observed May 8 this year. May 1 was the formal launch of the Global Methodist Church, a conservative split from the United Methodist Church. May 2, Politico reported that, according to a leaked draft, the U.S. “Supreme Court has voted to strike down … Roe v. Wade.”

It’s an interesting confluence, to be sure. Is there a common thread?

Mother’s Day

Anna Jarvis’ mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, championed mothers and led Mothers’ Day Work Clubs in her Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, W.Va.

Historian Katharine Antolini quotes the elder Jarvis saying: “I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will found a memorial mothers’ day commemorating her for the matchless service she renders to humanity in every field of life. She is entitled to it.”

Ann was right. Her daughter, Anna, made her hope a reality after Ann’s death May 9, 1905.

The first Mother’s Day was celebrated three years later at Andrews Methodist Church in Grafton. Anna selected the second Sunday in May so “it would always be close to … the day her mother had died.”

Mother’s Day became a state holiday in West Virginia in 1910. President Woodrow Wilson made it a national holiday on May 9, 1914.

A lot of money can be made off a national holiday. Anna didn’t intend Mother’s Day to turn a profit. When it quickly became commercialized with greeting cards, special meals and flower bouquets, Anna spent her remaining 40 years working to undo what she started.

Disgusted with the commercialization of what she intended to be a simple honoring of mothers in the home, Anna lashed out at those trying to profit from it: “WHAT WILL YOU DO to rout charlatans, bandits, pirates, racketeers, kidnappers and other termites that would undermine with their greed one of the finest, noblest and truest movements and celebrations?”


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The BBC article in which I learned this was written in May 2020, when Mother’s Day celebrations were much simpler and mostly virtual due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Anna fought for simpler, but I doubt she envisioned that.

Methodists

The Methodist Episcopal Church—the denomination Ann Reeves Jarvis served faithfully—separated over slavery in 1844, one year before Southern Baptists finalized their split from northern Baptists over the same issue.

Unlike Baptists, the separate Methodist groups rejoined in 1939, becoming the Methodist Church. About 30 years later, the combined Methodist Church joined with the Evangelical United Brethren Church to form the United Methodist Church.

For decades, United Methodists have disagreed over sexuality, pushing some in the denomination beyond patience. No longer willing to wait for the United Methodist General Conference to work out a solution, the conservative Global Methodist Church made its separate launch May 1.

The Global Methodist launch happened with about the same amount of fanfare as Anna Jarvis intended for Mother’s Day, which is to say, not much. Breaking news the following day completely outshined it.

Roe v. Wade

While we prepare for Mother’s Day this year, we are digesting a 98-page first draft—obtained by Politico and released May 2—of the much-anticipated “opinion of the [U.S. Supreme] Court” on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

According to the draft opinion, the Supreme Court is prepared to overturn both its 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade and its 1992 affirmation of it in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The 1973 decision made abortion legal in the United States, a decision protested ever since by many pro-life Christians.

A statement released by the court May 3, while confirming the authenticity of the draft, cautioned the leaked opinion “does not represent a decision by the Court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case.”

The final decision is scheduled for the end of the court’s term in late June. The biggest question now seems to be what the leaker intended with this bombshell.

Common thread

What’s the common thread? It’s not Mother’s Day, Methodists or abortion court cases. It’s also not what we should celebrate, and how or why.

The common thread is life is more complicated than our intentions. Our decisions produce outcomes that grow beyond us, taking on lives of their own. We sometimes want to take back some of those decisions, to undo what we started.

The good news is the gospel can handle the complexity. The gospel is both a magnificent and sweeping singularity that will right all wrongs, and a humble and gentle individual encounter that meets us where we are, not where it wants us to be. The gospel then calls us on a journey that, if we go, doesn’t always undo the consequences of our decisions, but works to redeem them.

We are called to embody this gospel in the world.

This Sunday, the probability is high there will be people around us—in church and out—whose lives have not turned out as they intended. Some will be mothers; some won’t. Some will have had abortions; others will stridently oppose the act.

Whatever the story, will we get lost in the complexity, or will the gospel in us encounter the people around us in a way that draws them to good news and redemption?

Eric Black is the executive director, publisher and editor of the Baptist Standard. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter at @EricBlackBSP. The views expressed are those solely of the author.


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