Extra Credit Reflection: Rev. Clinton Stancil’s Sermon on Abortion

I saw this recently, though, and thought I’d add an extra credit assignment using it.

Here’s what you need to do to earn the credit:

• Submit the assignment in eCampus by the final due date for extra credit shown in the course schedule.

Begin your submission with the following (truthfully, of course):
“I promise I have read all of the text here and have watched the entire video.”
video link:    Rev. Clinton Stancil sermon about abortion

• Write a reflection on what you read and heard.
• Do you agree or disagree with Rev. Stancil? In what ways do you agree and in what ways do you disagree? Why?
• Minimum 300 words
  Times New Roman font, 12 point
  Double-spaced
  MLA-style heading
  College-level formal register standard English grammar
  Citation of any outside sources used. You do not have to cite the video, as it’s the basis of the assignment and I know you will have used it, but any other sources you use must be cited. You are not required to use any other sources

October 26, 2022

By Kirk Semple

Reporter/Producer, Opinion Video

When I first heard the Rev. Clinton L. Stancil preach this year, I knew I wanted to work with him on a video for Times Opinion. He was engaging and kinetic, untethering himself from the pulpit of Wayman A.M.E. Church in St. Louis, where he is the pastor, and bounding around the chancel, his oratorical crescendos blowing out the church’s overmatched speakers.

I had read about Stancil in a 2019 news story in The Times regarding the conversation around abortion and abortion rights among African Americans. He had staked out a nuanced position at the intersection of liberal civil rights activism and religious conservatism: He was opposed to abortion on moral grounds but was also vehemently pro-choice. His opposition to sweeping restrictions to abortion access put him at odds with some of the leadership of the A.M.E. Church.

In conversations with him — first by phone and then in person in St. Louis — he explained to me how his views had evolved. He anchored his lifelong, anti-abortion stance in Scripture, but had come to his pro-choice views more recently, through ministering to disadvantaged Black communities around the country. [FYI: As you’ll see if you read the text and watch the video at the link below, he also bases his pro-choice position on scripture.] For him, discussions about abortion and abortion rights in the Black community shouldn’t be separated from discussions about police prejudice, high unemployment rates, the lack of access to health care, the poor state of urban schooling and what he called “the school-to-prison pipeline.”

These conditions, he said, have contributed to social dynamics that compel Black women to have abortions at high rates, and he worried deeply about how the new restrictions would make matters worse for Black communities.

In St. Louis, I also spoke with his wife, the Rev. Christine Stancil, a minister at the church, and met members of their congregation. (Clinton Stancil began his service the weekend I was there by saying a prayer for a young man who had just overdosed on the steps of the church.)

In a novel approach for Opinion Video, we decided to film Stancil presenting a guest essay in the form of a sermon. His custom is to improvise his sermons based on notes. He drew up an outline based on our discussions, and on Sunday, Oct. 9, a three-person film crew recorded the sermon, which Stancil delivered as a postscript to his regular morning service.

There was no bounding around the chancel this time; the “spirit of the Lord,” to use his phrase, didn’t move him in quite that way. But there was a lot of power in it all the same.

I attaching here a copy of the article that’s linked to where it says “news story” above (I really hope this works. If not, let me know): 

  

This is a link taking you to the video, which I REALLY want you to watch. I’m trying to figure out how to get a direct link to it, in case you’re paywalled and can’t see it. NY Times story about Rev. Stancil and his stance on abortion

If you still can’t see the video, try this:    Rev. Clinton Stancil sermon about abortion

Or just go to YouTube and search for “Rev. Stancil sermon on abortion”