Refuting Toby Sumpter’s “Eight Tenets of Smashmouth Incrementalism”

By James Silberman and Sam Riley

The five tenets of abolitionism are the foundations of our movement’s practice and public theology. On Monday, Toby Sumpter of Christ Church and Cross Politic provided a brief, informal exposition of what he considers the eight tenets of “smashmouth incrementalism.”

We are thankful for his most recent input into the debate, and believe putting his eight tenets up against our five is a great way for someone unfamiliar with the abolitionism-incrementalism disagreement to enter the discussion.

The apparent refusal on Sumpter’s part to engage seriously with the subject matter is frustrating, however. Our friend Jon Speed, who has written and spoken much in response to “smashmouth incrementalism,”  explained that he will not be responding to Sumpter’s article: “Until [Sumpter] starts to answer the objections to smashmouthism that have exposed the unbiblical nature of the argument, I don’t believe repeating the same arguments will accomplish anything substantive as long as he ignores them. These ideas have been thoroughly addressed, for years, within abolitionism.  If he’s not willing to interact with the answers to his claims I don’t see the point in having the discussion at all.”

There is certainly something to Jon’s point. Hopefully Sumpter receives Jon’s rebuke and decides to actually engage with the various refutations of smashmouth incrementalism which he has thus far refused to engage with. This article will provide one more such opportunity for Sumpter to do so. (See also “Refuting Doug Wilson’s Smashmouth Incrementalism“, “No Quarter November: How Is Doug Wilson Not an Abolitionist?,” “R.L Dabney: Wrong on Slavery, Right on Abolitionism,” “Smashing Doug Wilson’s Smashmouth Incrementalism,” “Dang it, Doug,” and “King Josiah’s Smashmouth Abolitionism.”

This article will review Sumpter’s tenets, with his writing in italics, and our ensuing commentary in normal font.

TENET 1. “We call for the immediate end of all murder by abortion from conception on and biblical justice for the unborn, and we support all efforts to establish this moral, judicial duty in the world. We condemn all efforts to stymy, stonewall, ignore, or bury such legislative measures or judicial decisions, especially by organizations that call themselves “prolife” and lack the courage or principles to take decisive steps to end abortion.”

First, we wish it were true that Sumpter and company consistently called for the immediate end of all murder by abortion. While they have occasionally promoted the abolition bills in Idaho and Texas, there are as many occasions of Doug Wilson scaremongering Christians out of supporting abolition bills by publicly talking about the federal consequences of a state abolishing abortion as there are of Christ Church elders publicly supporting them. For Sumpter to accurately make this point, the Moscow folks needs to demonstrate more demanding abolition, and less scaremongering and promoting incrementalism.

Second, to condemn “all efforts to stymy, stonewall, ignore, or bury such legislative measures” is to condemn incrementalism. Inherent to incrementalism is the promotion of legislation that is used as a substitute for an abolition bill. The politicians that stonewall abolition bills would not be able to get away with it were it not for incrementalist schemes. Incremental legislation is the lifeblood of the pro-life politicians and lobbyists who are keeping abortion legal. When we cut off the stream of incremental bills by popularizing the repudiation of them, these politicians will have no choice but to abolish abortion or lose their seats. This is why what Sumpter, Wilson, Cross Politic, and incrementalists everywhere are doing is so damaging to the cause of rescuing our preborn neighbors.

That to say, if Sumpter is serious about repudiating efforts to stymie the end of abortion, then the debate is over.

Tenet 2. “We believe that all who hate wisdom love death, and the natural man is enslaved to bloodshed and violence as his idolatrous sacrament and he will refuse to repent until God destroys him, either through physical death and Hell or through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We believe that it is the mission of the Church to proclaim the gospel to every creature in every nation calling them to complete repentance and submission to Christ and obedience to His laws in Scripture. No legislation or judicial ruling will end abortion, but Christ will end abortion through the gospel and it will be reflected in the laws of the land over time.”

Abolitionists agree with almost every word of Sumpter’s second tenet. One of the reasons it is so critically important to never compromise with abortion is because the gospel is the only hope for man’s salvation and the only thing powerful enough to push back the monstrous forces of wickedness we face. Accordingly, we must only ever act in accordance with the teachings of Christ, and be consistent with what he says all the way through our actions and messaging. Heartbeat bills, 20-week bans, 15-week bans, etc. are inconsistent with the truth of God’s Word.

In a conversation with Jeff Durbin and Luke Pierson of End Abortion Now, Sumpter argued in favor of a heartbeat bill by saying that we should take it if it’s the best we can get, but that the type of legislation we pass is a scorecard for our state. He explained that if we only pass a heartbeat bill instead of abolishing abortion, then our State remains in a state of idolatrous rebellion against God. The following exchange ensued.

Jeff: “Ok, hold on real fast. Just to make sure it’s clear: you’re saying a heartbeat bill is idolatry and compromise?”

Toby: “For the one who knows better and who has the option [to abolish abortion].”

This is another debate-ending admission from Sumpter. The minute he concedes that it’s idolatry, it’s off the table. It is treason against our King. It is sin, the hammer that drove the nails through our Savior’s hands and feet.

God can use who and whatever He pleases to accomplish His will, but we should not expect God to move in power to draw our nation to Himself through our idolatry. We should expect him to judge us for it.

Because it is Christ who will have the victory over child sacrifice through the proclamation of His gospel by His Church, we must reject incremental legislation.

Tenet 3. “We believe that the gospel works through the world like leaven in a loaf, like a mustard seed slowly growing. Likewise, while every regenerate person is fully justified at conversion, sanctification is the process by which Christ conforms people to His glorious image, an incremental process only completed at the resurrection in glorification. While all known sin must be put to death as quickly as possible, God does not convict everyone of every sin equally or immediately. This is especially true of widespread cultural sins (for example, polygamy, divorce, and slavery). While God hates the shedding of innocent blood, especially of children, and His prophets certainly condemned it, the center of their message was a gospel message of repentance that would have resulted in gradual reformation in the land.”

This is just plain poor theology and exegesis. Yes, gradual reformation sometimes results from a prophetic call to repentance. But the call to repentance is ALWAYS for immediate repentance. The prophets never called for or celebrated unjust, idolatrous reforms as Sumpter, Wilson, and Cross Politic do. The prophets lifted high the uncompromising standard that God had them raise and no other.

Tenet 4. “While God’s justice is unchanging, the implementation of His justice will always be imperfect in this world, and our goal must be gradual conformity to God’s eternal standards. We find examples of this gradual conformity in the fact that God did not immediately put Cain to death after he murdered his brother, He did not immediately prohibit blood-avengers for manslaughter, He did not immediately prohibit polygamy, He did not immediately or fully prohibit slavery, nor did He completely prohibit sinful divorce, and Scripture praises kings who used methods of suppression for sodomy (e.g. exile) instead of the death penalty prescribed in the law.”

There is a lot to respond to here, most of it being — again — bad theology. God choosing to show Cain mercy has absolutely nothing to do with supporting legislation that discriminates against some children. God not striking Cain dead was not an example of God incrementally conforming to His own standard.

For Sumpter’s points about God’s treatment of issues such as divorce, Abortion Is Murder Kansas Mill Ministry Director Valley Scharping (who is generally a big supporter of Sumpter and Cross Politic) gave this excellent response:

Did God give Israel a concession on divorce due to hardness of heart, thus showing a place for incrementalism?

 

1. GOD MAKES THE LAWS. God is the law maker, he can write laws according to His reasons; we don’t get to.

 

2. DIVORCE IS NOT ANALOGOUS TO MURDER. The issue of divorce seems a lower order issue than murder, and entirely other. GOD ALREADY GAVE US LAWS FOR MURDER. And there are no examples for “incrementalism” with regard to murder. So even if it were so for divorce, we don’t need to analogize from God’s treatment of divorce when we are literally given laws about preborn murder that are never incrementally changed or made more strict or abrogated. The law on murder is steadfast from Genesis 9, Leviticus 20, and Exodus 21 all the way to 1 John and Matthew 5:21.

 

3. IT PROVES TOO MUCH. Every “abrogation” from the Old Testament to the New could be seen as incrementalism in this view, when that is clearly not the case. It could also be used to justify any and every “increment” toward any good end. But every Christian agrees that not all increments are morally acceptable.

 

4. IT PROVES TOO LITTLE. Because our problem isn’t with all “increments,” per se, but increments that require moral compromise. God never morally compromises, so even if this is an example of God conceding increments, it does not by any means prove that God was willing to morally compromise incrementally in order to achieve an end.

 

5. EVEN IF IT WERE, IT IS DESCRIPTIVE NOT PRESCRIPTIVE. The mere fact of God one time doing something incrementally does not de facto justify all legal increments, if it is even conceded that God did so (and it’s not).

 

6. NOT AN INCREMENT OF TOLERANCE, BUT AN “INCREMENT” OF MERCY. Every moment God does not immediately punish all wickedness could be labelled incrementalism in the same vein, but God forebears in mercy and wisdom. Similarly, God through His Law temporarily forebearing for our sake through Moses is His merciful choice to not bear upon us the impossible weight of God’s infinite moral Law; it’s not a pragmatic step to full abolition of divorce. Are we to believe a 22-week ban written by man is given as a temporary mercy to not impose the infinite moral Law, and not as a pragmatic step to abolition? Is a heartbeat bill somehow a godly mercy patterned after God’s Law for the parent seeking to murder their child? The incrementalist mindset is nothing like God’s in this matter. Ours is bargaining with murderers by trading lives; His is mercifully, legally allowing a lower order sin for a time and for a people over which He has absolute control.

 

7. NOT AN INCREMENT OF PROGRESS, BUT AN “INCREMENT” OF REGRESSION. The beginning of Matthew 19 makes clear that Jesus was not accumulating the law on divorce to a final, more perfect state. He says, “it was not so in the beginning.” He argues against the later addition to tolerating an evil (due to hardness of heart) by pointing to the original law of marriage given: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” He repeals a former increment to honor the first and final and only acceptable law on divorce. The passage is fundamentally immediatist.

Regarding Sumpter’s claim that scripture supposedly praises incrementalist kings, see Jon Speed’s excellent article, “King Josiah’s Smashmouth Abolitionism.”

Tenet 5. “While obedience to God is immediate, complete, and joyful, Jesus teaches that the son who said ‘no’ but then later obeyed his father is better than the son who said ‘yes’ and then never actually obeyed. In other words, Jesus taught that obedience is sometimes slow, incomplete, and halting, but partial obedience is to be preferred to accomplishing nothing at all. The same is true of the necessity of ending abortion.”

Sumpter is correct that delayed obedience is better than a perpetual refusal to obey. A correct application of this principle would be inviting anti-abolitionist politicians like Greg Treat, Jeff Leach, and Brent Crane — who have fought to keep abortion legal — to join the Abolitionist Movement, and to celebrate them when they do. An incorrect application of this principle is supporting and celebrating the idolatrous, unjust laws passed by pro-life politicians who perpetually refuse to obey God’s law.

Tenet 6. “We reject the notion that any incremental bill that stops short of complete abolition means that its supporters are permitting any abortion before and within the limited parameters (e.g. ‘and then you can kill the baby’), any more than God’s law limiting polygamy was God granting permission to a man to take a second wife (Ex. 21:10).”

There isn’t a notion here to reject. Pro-life incremental bills, though they do not say “kill a baby” in that exact phraseology but are written in the preferred euphemisms of pro-aborts, do say when, where, and how you can kill a baby. Some of them explicitly list the instances where you CAN lawfully murder a child, and all of them implicitly allow abortions to take place by failing to outlaw the practice outright, such as laws that regulate the width of the hallways of abortion mills instead of criminalizing those who murder and those who hire assassins to murder.

There is a fine line between the laws that God gives, as THE lawgiver, and the laws that man makes. God protecting the wives of polygamous husbands was His divine right, for His purposes, and it should not be taken as license on the part of man to take liberties for himself to compromise with child sacrifice, for that would be to take the place of God. Further, what is described in Exodus 21 is not a pragmatic step towards the abolition of polygamy on God’s part. God is clear about those who bargain with murderers and compromise when it comes to tearing down the high places and turn a blind eye to the sacrifice of children. He does not grant any concessions to those who murder, but demands that they be punished to clear the people of their bloodguilt.

The analogy of divorce and polygamy fail for the same reason: God has a right to be merciful. Incrementalism is not about mercy even in the mind of Sumpter. He does not wish to allow a concession for people who murder children, he aims to save as many children as possible. There is simply NO ACCURATE ANALOGY between laws that are meant to protect second wives and laws that allow the murder of children.

Tenet 7. “Since we cannot snap our fingers and end all abortion in every land immediately, all efforts to end abortion must be incremental in time and space. If you are waiting until the next legislative session to bring a bill of complete abolition, how is that not incremental? Are you saying that it’s OK to kill babies until then? Of course not. If you are only bringing a bill in Oklahoma, and not the whole world, are you saying that it is OK to kill babies in Massachusetts or India? Of course not. In the same way, small steps toward ending abortion like heartbeat bills and ultrasound bills or parental permissions need not be seen in any way as either permitting or regulating murder, but rather as limiting and suppressing murder, while discipling the nations. The corruption of some prolife groups who champion these sorts of bills as ‘major victories’ need not curb our enthusiasm for running the next play.”

This is the incrementalist’s favorite equivocation. Incrementalism does not mean getting incrementally closer to abolition over time. It does not mean abolishing abortion in Oklahoma and then Texas and then Idaho. The definition of incrementalism is “a policy or advocacy of a policy of political or social change by degrees.”

The man calling only for the immediate abolition of abortion in a given jurisdiction is an immediatist. The man calling for incremental steps toward the abolition of abortion is an incrementalist. It’s as simple as that.

Abolitionism is repentance and obedience. It is the obligation of every official at every level of government to obey Christ. Abolishing abortion (locally or nationally) is passing and enforcing a law in accordance with God’s Word. This is obedience to Christ. Regulating abortion (locally or nationally) is writing a law in rebellion to God’s Word. This is disobedience to Christ.

TENET 8. “The Body of Christ is diverse and not every good work is the duty of every member of the Body. While we affirm that the murder of the unborn is a heinous sin and crime that some Christians must give themselves to ending, the preaching of the gospel in local churches, missions and evangelism and mercy ministries, as well as the building of cultures of life through families, schools, and businesses are also essential parts of calling the world to repentance and obedience to Christ. Christians who give themselves to building faithful Christian communities where children are welcomed and cared for are as much part of ending abortion as those brothers preaching outside of abortion mills and those calling legislators to end abortion, and therefore, we must not despise one another for building and fighting on a different part of the wall of the Kingdom, for being different parts of the Body of Christ.”

The sentiment contained in this tenet of smashmouth incrementalism (not sure what this has to do with incrementalism) is replete throughout the American church, but is it a biblically justifiable tenet? There is certainly no attempt to justify it by scripture from Sumpter here.

The second greatest commandment that all of the law is based on is to love your neighbor as yourself. For most of our neighbors, we do not know the time, place, or manner in which they will die, but that is not the case for the preborn. Within driving distance of nearly every church and within a few hours distance of most people exist places that specialize in killing children. It is known by most that little babies are being murdered in our midst, next to our churches, in our neighborhoods. 

While it is certainly true that the body of Christ is made up of many members, the application here is off. It can be conceded that not everyone must go to an abortion facility or is particularly gifted in that area, but everyone can make phone calls. Everyone can attend rallies. Everyone can meet with their legislator. Everyone can advocate for their preborn neighbors to their friends and family.

Let us not be a people skilled at the lesser matters of the law and spurn the weightier matters; justice and mercy (Luke 11:42). Jesus was not kind to the Pharisees for their pietistic show of law-keeping who did not uphold the most important matters of the law, who cleaned the outside of the cup without cleaning the inside.

Isaiah 1 and Amos 5 address how God views the worship and prayer of His people when they neglect child sacrifice and the shedding of innocent blood.

“When you come to appear before me, who has required of you this trampling of my courts Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to me.New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations—I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.” – Isaiah 1:12-17

“I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” – Amos 5:21-24

Leviticus 20:4-5 clearly demonstrates God holding people responsible for not acting when they know child sacrifice is happening and do nothing. The command to rescue those being taken away to death applies to EVERYONE. If you feel inclined to make excuses and kick against this command, God anticipates your excuse in Proverbs 24:12,

“If you say, “Behold, we did not know this,” does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it, and will he not repay man according to his work?

We all know that abortion is happening among us. We cannot hide behind the excuse of ignorance. God holds men accountable for what they do and what they don’t do regarding the killing of our neighbors. This is not to say that everybody must fight abortion full-time or to put a legalistic amount of hours on how much abortion ministry one must do to be a serious Christian, but it is to say emphatically that the mass murder of preborn children is everyone’s problem and that the vast majority of American Christians need to repent of abortion apathy.

For the Biblical alternative to the eight tenets of smashmouth incrementalism, take some time to learn about the five tenets of abolitionism.