As religious conservatives cheer the erosion of abortion rights across the country, Amelia Fulbright is part of a much less visible circle of progressive Christian pastors who speak openly in favor of women’s reproductive rights. ameliaschonbek reports
Photo: Mary Kang Reverend Amelia Fulbright has helped her congregants navigate all sorts of questions in the 13 years she has been an ordained minister. She has talked with them about whether they should move cities or change jobs or go on birth control or divorce their spouse. She has helped them figure out how to talk to their conservative families about being trans. They’ve asked her what to do if you think you no longer believe in God.
For years, Fulbright has met regularly with about ten fellow clergy members at the offices of Just Texas, an organization that trains members of the state’s religious left to step into public discussions of progressive issues, especially LGBTQ rights and abortion access. Since early September, four times as many clergy have been joining Just Texas’s meetings. They want to know how they can support clinic workers whose hours are being cut and what those seeking abortion care need.
In college, she took courses in philosophy, encountered feminism for the first time, and had a crisis of faith. Her questions propelled her into seminary, which seemed like the best place to work things out. There, she learned that Jewish teaching held that until a baby’s first breath, the life of its mother took precedence. For Fulbright, this was revelatory. She realized that her religious upbringing had always implicitly taught the opposite.
Fulbright is not a fiery speaker — she talks slowly, as if carefully considering each word — but her love of scripture is palpable, as is her anger when its message is misused for the sake of political debate. When she preaches about reproductive rights, as she does a few times a year, she sometimes points out that the Bible doesn’t really deal with abortion.
If the religious right’s strategy for the past 40 years has been to loudly proclaim the moral superiority of its positions and push for policies that are in line with its teachings, the Christian left has often done the exact opposite. “One of the tactics we used against the Christian Right was to say they needed to sit down and shut up because religion didn’t have a place in the public square,” says Reverend Jennifer Butler, who leads a progressive organization called Faith in Public Life.
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