Sanctity of Life 3: Faith Produces Clarity

What This Chart Quietly Reveals About the Church and the Sanctity of Life

At first glance, this Lifeway Research chart looks like just another breakdown of abortion views by religious category. But if you slow down and really look at it, the data tells a much more sobering story that the church needs to hear.

Here’s the simple takeaway: Religious identity alone does not meaningfully distinguish people from the culture when it comes to views on abortion. And that should concern us.

In other words, broad religious affiliation, by itself, produces only modest differences from the general population. In some cases, the numbers are nearly identical. That doesn’t mean religious people don’t care about life. It means something else: many people who identify as religious are being shaped more by the surrounding culture than by clear biblical conviction on this issue.

Now notice where the chart changes dramatically: Evangelicals by belief: 64% pro-life | 15% pro-abortion rights. Weekly church attenders: 53% pro-life | 19% pro-abortion rights.

This is the hinge point of the entire chart. The strongest pro-life convictions do not correlate most closely with religious labels, but with theological clarity and consistent participation in the life of the church.

Put simply: Nominal faith produces blurry convictions. Practiced, taught, and believed faith produces clarity.

It’s a discipleship problem. If regular exposure to Scripture, preaching, and church community leads to clearer convictions about the sanctity of life, then the inverse is also true: where teaching is absent, unclear, or avoided, confusion fills the gap. When churches consistently avoid speaking about life, especially out of fear, discomfort, or a desire to stay “non-political,” we should not be surprised when those inside our pews think almost indistinguishably from those outside them.

This is why Sanctity of Life Sunday matters. Because Sanctity of Life Sunday isn’t about forcing a culture war into the pulpit, it’s about correcting a discipleship drift.

It is one of the few moments in the church calendar that intentionally connects:

• the image of God,

• the value of human life,

• the reality of sin and brokenness, and

• the hope of grace and redemption in Christ.

This chart leaves us with a question the church cannot ignore: If people who attend church regularly and hold clear biblical beliefs show dramatically different convictions about life, what happens when churches stop teaching clearly, stop speaking courageously, and stop applying Scripture to hard issues?

The data suggests the answer: the church slowly blends into the cultural background noise. And that is precisely why churches should speak; not harshly, not politically, but biblically, pastorally, and faithfully.

Because conviction grows where truth is taught.