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Request for a published interview
By Jay Rogers. Posted Mar 18, 2010.
I got this request for an interview a while ago and I thought I should post it here.
My name is Bobby Bentz. I’m the author of the Christian Controversy book series. I am currently putting the second book together which is on the subject: Abortion. The book is for educational purposes. I would like to be able to email you a short list of questions. You would have a full un-edited email interview, where your answers would not be altered in any way. They would be published as you approve.
With kind regards,
Bobby Bentz
Charleston, SC
Are you the founder of www.forerunner.com ?
Yes. The website began as a collection of Christian worldview articles on an intranet server at Dartmouth College in 1991. During the next few years, we produced a section on a host website with a listing of articles by category. The current website, www.forerunner.com, made its debut in March of 1996.
What does forerunner.com, the organization, do for the public?
The Forerunner was a campus newspaper founded by Maranatha Ministries in the 1980s. I came to work with The Forerunner in the summer of 1989. After the international headquarters of this church closed in 1990, I continued the publication with the founders, Bob and Rose Weiner, until 1994.
After that I produced several other publications for youth in the former Soviet Union, Latin America and for Chinese students in America. To do this, I founded an organization called Media House International in order to raise support for newspaper staff and production costs in Russia, Ukraine and other places.
The website www.forerunner.com is an outgrowth of the need to place articles from many of these publications on the Internet. I later got involved in video production as well.
Pro-life ministry has always been a central focus of The Forerunner. However, it’s not the only focus. You could describe the big picture as teaching a biblical worldview that applies to every area of life.
How long have you been actively fighting the war on abortion?
My involvement in pro-life ministry began the same week that I began writing for The Forerunner. I participated in a peaceful sit-in at an abortion clinic in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1989. I was arrested and spent three days in jail with about 100 other protesters. To make a long story short, God used this time in jail to give me a vision for a full-time ministry. A few days later, I was invited to join the staff of The Forerunner. My first feature article was titled, Why I Went to Jail for Life.
Since that time, the abortion issue has been central for me. A few years later, I purchased a house across the street from an abortion clinic in Melbourne, Florida. It was used as a home base for sidewalk counseling ministry when a well-known no-free-speech buffer-zone injunction went into effect. Cases related to arrests of pro-lifers who assembled peacefully on a public sidewalk went all the way to the US Supreme Court. We made our voices heard for the unborn despite the unconstitutional arrests. Although we lost the SupReme Court case, we continued to resist. A few years later, we prevailed in convincing the local courts and police that the injunction should be rendered unenforceable.
Where do you see the war on abortion going? Do you believe that abortion will one day be outlawed by the United States government?
I believe the next step is to declare by law and by love that a human being is a “Person” from the beginning of biological development through natural death. A paradigm shift is occurring in the pro-life movement and it is centered around the strategy of Personhood on all levels — legislative initiatives, voter initiatives and educational efforts.
At the same time, there are many new volunteer “foot soldiers” coming into the movement. In 2007, I attempted to call together a “Florida Pro-life Network” with the idea that a new wave of pro-life activism was coming. Now it is here. Many new activists have come into the pro-life movement since 2007. Simply what we need to do is network with other pro-life activists throughout our region and state and harness the energy of this burgeoning move of God. It is revival that we are after, not simply man-made strategies. Our goal is to see a change of heart on the mass cultural scale through another Great Awakening.
What we need to do now is to set a big net to catch all the new fish. We will soon have a situation in which there are more volunteers than opportunities for training, so we need to make a shift in emphasis with our own ministries to avoid losing the “catch.” We simply need to expand the size of the net and repairing the existing holes in the net.
But first, the church still needs to be evangelized on the abortion issue. That was the number one mistake of the pro-life movement in the 1970s and ’80s. We asked people to get involved, but we didn’t take the time to make sure that everyone agreed that abortion is legalized murder and therefore the church must act like it is murder. That should be our number one priority now.
What are your feelings on President Barack Obama and his pro-choice views?
On one hand, Obama has been good for the pro-life movement because many were apathetic when the supposedly pro-life Republicans controlled the White House and the Congress for six years. Don Kazimir, coordinator of the diocesan Respect Life Office, who has been in the pro–life movement since 1976, recently said, “I have never seen so much stuff going on all over the nation. The Obama election has energized the pro–life movement.”
I don’t consider Obama a cause of abortion, but rather a symptom of what is wrong. Each one of us, due to our inaction, is the cause for legal abortion and specifically the apathetic Christian church is the cause. Abortion is sometimes portrayed as a partisan issue, but that is just a smokescreen. The vast majority of African Americans we talk to about Personhood are overwhelmingly pro-life and would support a pro-life voter initiative. However, most support abortion rights candidates simply because the Democratic Party is seen as the minority-rights party. Very few see the damage that liberal abortion laws do to the black family. There is literally a cultural genocide occuring through abortion.
However, the key to winning the war on abortion is to harness the energy of this pro-life voting block toward voter inititatives. I believe that if black and Hispanic voters could vote directly on this issue, then we would protect the life of unborn children. I believe too that more pro-life African American candidates will rise out of this movement. But sadly, for right now, a pro-life black candidate doesn’t have much of a chance in the Democratic Party, while a pro-life black Republican won’t get enough support from blacks. That is one of the keys to changing the tide. African-American and Hispanic voters decided overwhelmingly in California and Florida to protect marriage as between one man and one woman. I believe they will do the same on the Personhood issue.
For any woman that is considering abortion, what would you like to share with them?
Having an abortion doesn’t make you no longer a mother. It makes you a mother of a dead baby. Numerous women have told me that if they had to do it all over again, they would have sacrificed the inconvenience for nine months, given birth to their baby and given her up for adoption. In fact, adoption is free, while abortion costs money and the bloodguiltiness that comes from the willful murder of an innocent human life.
Do you have any additional stories that you would like to share?
There are numerous stories concerning efforts I’ve been involved with over the last 20 years.
- Capturing an out-of-state mystery abortionist in his hotel lobby on video tape in order to expose his true identity.
- The creation of Jay’s Killer Web Site which features photos and personal information about child killers on-line.
- The creation of streaming internet videos of butchered women being taken away by ambulances from the Aware Woman abortion clinic to the hospital emergency room.
- Using federal property in the form of my mailbox to spell out the words THE KILLING PLACE in front of the abortion clinic.
- Publishing a newspaper and web site which linked wiccan and neo-pagan groups to the bizarre belief that abortion is a form of child sacrifice in honor of the goddess Artemis.
- Cooperating in videotaping positive portrayals of pro-life activities in my front yard which were shown on MTV’s Unfiltered.
We’ve also documented a number of cases of malpractive among abortion clinics on video. The most notable one is about “Baby Rowan”: who survived a botched abortion and was left to die.
The videos can be viewed at: http://forerunner.com/prolife/prolife.html
Please briefly list all of the websites your associated with?
My YouTube channel is:
Is there any other information that you would like me to publicize?
I am currently working on a video production called The Abortion Matrix — it’s a comprehensive look at the spiritual history of abortion and child sacrifice throughout the ages. I invite people to check out our website to see the tentative release date.
Dr. Francis Schaeffer - A Christian Manifesto (DVD)
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Dr. Schaeffer, who was one of the most influential Christian thinkers in the twentieth century, shows that secular humanism has displaced the Judeo-Christian consensus that once defined our nation’s moral boundaries. Law, education, and medicine have all been reshaped for the worse as a consequence. America’s dominant worldview changed, Schaeffer charges, when Christians weren’t looking.
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These shocking eyewitness accounts expose the dangers of abortion not only to unborn children, but to the health and lives women as well. An antidote to the smokescreens of the liberal media, these six short clips show what really happens in and around abortion clinics.
Although the content is emotionally gut-wrenching, these videos have been used in church seminars and small groups to educate Christians on the abortion issue and to lead people toward a pro-life position.
Watch these pro-life videos on-line.
“These videos helped change my mind from pro-choice to pro-life. Your videos are what did it for me. I will be walking in next year’s March For Life in San Francisco.” — A. Jackson, California
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This presentation looks at the spiritual roots of abortion and exposes the myths surrounding child killing. Little known historical facts about abortion and how they relate to modern feminism are presented logically and accurately. Has been effective in converting many to a pro-life position.
Massacre of Innocence goes where no pro-life presentation has gone before in “tearing the lid off abortion” to reveal the spiritual realities we must battle if we will bring an end to this crime. The presentation is absorbing, fast-paced, informative and incredibly devastating to any attempt to justify abortion.
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Running time: 85 minutes
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Martin Luther (DVD) 1953 Classic
Niall MacGinnis – Digitally Remastered
The dramatic classic film of Martin Luther’s life was released in theaters worldwide in the 1950s and was nominated for two Oscars. A magnificent depiction of Luther and the forces at work in the surrounding society that resulted in his historic reforming efforts, this film traces Luther’s life from a guilt-burdened monk to his eventual break with the Roman Catholic Church.
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Amazing Grace: The History and Theology of Calvinism (DVD)
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This is the first video documentary that answers these and other related questions. Hosted by Eric Holmberg, this fascinating three-part, four-hour presentation is detailed enough so as to not gloss over the controversy. At the same time, it is broken up into ten “Sunday-school-sized” sections to make the rich content manageable and accessible for the average viewer.
Running Time: 257 minutes
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