In the weeks following the convention, I preached plenty of anti-Clinton sermons, referring to his unequivocal embrace of abortion and suggesting he needed it to be legal so he could get out of the trouble his lascivious lifestyle brought to him. In private conversations and at clergy gatherings, I also did my best to convince pastors they should steer their people toward the Republican and therefore pro-life ticket.
We had all hoped the election of 1992 would be about values, but those concerns were hijacked by “the economy, stupid,” which was what most worried Americans, as Clinton’s brilliant campaign strategist James Carville put it. That segment of the electorate included plenty of blue-collar people in the congregations I routinely visited. Of course, the economy was important, but millions were equally worried about America’s collapse of moral values and its marginalization of religious faith. I worked hard to coax them over to the Republican side. The Clinton administration was determined to undo any progress we made under Reagan and Bush, but we were equally determined to keep that from happening. We planned to show Congress and the American people that Clinton’s victory did not guarantee enacting a corrupt and dangerous agenda.
For my part, I wanted to continue to fight for the causes that were consistent with our Christian values: stopping abortion, putting a halt to the advancement of the homosexual agenda, and bringing back prayer in schools and public life. So I accepted an invitation from ministers in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, to address a pro-life rally on January 16, 1993—four days before Bill Clinton was inaugurated as the forty-second president of the United States. I encouraged the rally participants to continue the great work they were doing and the significant contributions they were making to the most important cause of our lifetimes. I spoke about the sanctity and inherent value of every human life, including the most fragile and vulnerable of God’s creatures in the womb. I compared our times to biblical days when Molech was the false idol to which humans were sacrificed. “We, too, worship false gods,” I said, “the false gods of selfishness, of financial security, of a better life, and we are offering our children as human sacrifices on that idol’s altar. That is an abomination in the eyes of God.”
As I bowed my head in a closing prayer, I heard “Amen!” and a smattering of applause. I loved preaching to these communities across the country. The energy of believers in small-town America provided emotional and spiritual nourishment and the reassurance that, however dire the political culture seemed, there was resilience and deep goodness that would sustain us—not to mention the adulation from the crowds.
But I was tired. Preaching is a demanding experience. As a minister, it was often difficult to truly enjoy worship unless I was on vacation with my family. To be a guest preacher is tantamount to being a minor celebrity. There is a constant stream of people who want to talk before and after the service—and sometimes even during it. As energized as I was by the rally and the warmth of the reception and the weather, on this Saturday night I looked forward to some solitude in my hotel room. I had a lot to think about.
The months preceding my visit south were filled with enormous stress for both Paul’s family and mine. The lawsuits against us had become a constant burden, weighing us down with the possibility of financial ruin and even long-term incarceration. By now our risky and consuming work fighting the scourge of abortion had expanded far beyond Buffalo. Paul had built an important church over the last dozen years, with nearly two thousand attendees and influence beyond our locale. I had established three external organizations that were active around the world. But our increasing notoriety and the looming Democratic administration, which we dreaded, indicated we needed to redirect our energies away from demonstrations, blockades, and civil disobedience and toward advocacy that would lead to systemic change. We just weren’t entirely sure how, especially since our resources were concentrated on our pending court cases. An evening alone to reflect in peace and quiet felt necessary.
My hosts had other ideas. They wanted to share worship with me, and when the last of the participants had left our big rally, they took me to the Abundant Life Church. I had heard about the pastor, Dr. L. M. Thorne, from Tommy Reid. Thorne had been a global missionary in Belgium, China, South Africa, and Korea before arriving in Fort Walton Beach in 1976 to create his independent charismatic congregation.
With a few thousand members, Abundant Life was an “apostolic prophetic church,” where preachers and attendees speak in tongues, offer prayers for healing, and engage in demonstrative worship. I was escorted to a seat in one of the middle rows. An organ played quietly in the background, its music confirming we had entered a sacred space. This kind of southern Pentecostal culture is in many ways informed by black church tradition. Southern preachers work with their organist as if playing a duet; the organ propels the service emotionally and spiritually while the pastor provides its theological content. Abundant Life was a predominantly white congregation, but—as often happens in the South—the minister employed a more dynamic and engaged black preaching style, including a technique known as call and response, in which congregants verbally react to the message of the preacher, calling out “Amen, Brother!” “Come on!” “Keep preachin’ it!” “That’s right!” Dr. Thorne entered the sanctuary platform accompanied by a rumbling bass.
“We have a guest minister with us tonight,” he announced. “Reverend Rob Schenck, please stand.” I slowly rose to my feet, expecting a brief introduction to the congregation and a few words about Operation Rescue. But I was wrong. In my archives, I still have a cassette recording of what transpired that night.
“I have a word from the Lord for you,” he said.
I instantly felt awkward and embarrassed. As a charismatic Christian, I accepted the reality of what is called in some circles “personal prophecy”—a specific divine revelation to an individual delivered through a third party. Still, even from the very beginning of my Christian life, I maintained a quiet skepticism about the public airing of what was purportedly a direct message from heaven. Most of the time it had nothing to do with me and seemed harmless enough, but here I was in the spotlight. I kept my face impassive, my mind racing as I tried to imagine Dr. Thorne’s possible motivations for singling me out. I was regularly in the news, making headlines. Maybe he wanted to showcase a visiting notable, or even put me in my place. Notoriety is a blessing and a curse in Charismatic-Pentecostal culture, a source of both celebration and criticism. Our worshippers like it when their preachers get attention from the outside world but worry that too much attention can swell a minister’s head. “Pride goeth before destruction,” the King James Version of the Bible warns in Proverbs, “and an haughty spirit before a fall.” The atmosphere in the church became more charged and the music more intense as Dr. Thorne continued.
“I believe that God said to me to say to you that He’s been setting you up. All this notoriety you’ve been getting—He’s been setting you up because He knows He can trust you to do what He said ‘Do.’”
Maybe this was the point: an elder saying to his junior, I know you’re a famous guy, but I’m going to tell you what God is really doing in your life. You may think that you’ve arrived but you haven’t. Maybe God was using Reverend Thorne, in his three-piece suit and aviator glasses, to rein me in a little bit and hold me accountable. I probably needed a dose of humility. Was this southern preacher channeling God’s plan for me? In my heart of hearts, I doubted it.
“God’s gonna use you, my brother,” Dr. Thorne continued, his voice and the organ both swelling with emotion. “But God’s raised you up and He’s set you up. I saw you like on a launching pad, getting ready to be launched. You will be used like a mighty threshing instrument to the glory of God.”
The pronouncement simultaneously appealed to my ego and embarrassed me. Standing there uncomfortably, I hoped he would soon end.
“You will see the hand of God working, and God is going to use you, Brother, in a mighty way in this country. Brother, you are going to stand before the leaders of our nation and you’re going to declare the Word. It will be for His honor and praise but also for His church. It will also be in more ways than the abortion issue.” The organ grew louder, as did his words. “Brother, you will be launched now. Praise God! Amen!”
The organ burst forth and the congregation joined him in the amen chorus. “I welcome you! Praise God!” Reverend Thorne finally paused as the music retreated into meditative strains. He then emerged, as if from a trance, saying, “I think that the Lord deserves a clap of the hand.” And I stood nodding, sweating, and smiling uneasily as the congregation applauded.
After it was over, my hosts introduced me to the pastor. In his mid-fifties but youthful, he was warm, slightly formal, but friendly, like a boss who had just informed an employee about a big promotion that would also involve a total disruption of his and his family’s serene life. “Brother, you are going to stand before the leaders of our nation and you’re going to declare the Word.” What could that possibly mean? It excited me to think I might stand like one of the prophets of old in the chambers of America’s potentates—in the halls of Congress, in the Oval Office, maybe even in the Supreme Court—reading authoritatively from my Bible, preaching to them about repentance from sin and obedience to God. That night in my hotel room I imagined myself as another Billy Graham speaking into the ears of presidents, taking their hands in prayer, and giving them guidance on how to serve a holy God as the chief executive of the United States.
When I returned to Buffalo, though, the thrill was already wearing off and the pastor’s message receded in my memory. There were so many pressing demands, I had little time to ponder whatever future greatness God had in mind for me. President Clinton wasted little time in enacting policies that aligned with his party’s views on gay rights and abortion. He immediately lobbied Congress for the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” legislation prohibiting discrimination against homosexuals in the military. It was a policy that, for our movement, signaled an unleashing of sodomy and perversion in the unlikeliest of places, the armed services. For me, the gay issue was more complex. I knew a gay classmate in high school and had contact with gay people throughout my Christian life. I held to a quiet, internal conviction that God loved all people—all sinners—and I was one as much as anyone else. How could one category of sinner be any worse than another? But that notion wouldn’t fly in the climate in which I now ministered, so I capitulated to the zeitgeist and railed against Clinton for both his horrifying attack on the unborn and pro-lifers and his infatuation with all things homosexual.
Clinton also dismantled a series of Reagan and Bush administration abortion restrictions, ending a ban on fetal tissue research, a move that, to us, signaled treatment of the remains of babies like little more than specimens in petri dishes. He limited restrictions on abortion counseling at federally funded family planning clinics, and permitted importing the French “morning after” pill, RU-486—what we saw as making abortion just another form of birth control. He permitted abortions in U.S. military hospitals overseas, and he overturned one of our earliest victories under Reagan, the prohibiting of foreign aid to organizations that provided abortions.
Long before I was involved in the anti-abortion movement—but every year since January 22, 1974, which was the second anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision—people opposed to abortion would gather in Washington, D.C., usually in punishing weather, to demonstrate in what became known as the March for Life. It was the largest pro-life manifestation in the United States, founded by a nun. Paul and I always participated, but with Randall and others in Operation Rescue we were considered the more radical wing of the pro-life movement, so we did not command a place on the dais or as speakers. Nonetheless, we were enthusiastic participants, and the march that year was the largest ever, with over seventy-five thousand people showing the new president our force and fury. Morale in our movement was high. One of our fund-raisers quipped, “Who would think Bill Clinton would be our best friend?”
Meanwhile, Paul and I were still simultaneously fighting several lawsuits. We were in court for displaying the fetus, for “provocative” demonstrations, and for defying an explicit court order. At the end of January, I returned to Judge Bestry’s courtroom for my arrest eight months earlier at our Spring of Life protest. The trial lasted two weeks. The jury convicted me of resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. There was a grim expression of satisfaction on Bestry’s face when he heard the verdict and scheduled sentencing for April 19. Hundreds of people wrote letters to him vouching for my integrity, character, and sincerity. I was hopeful they would make a difference when it came to my sentence, but I was still apprehensive about ending up in jail for months and months. I tried to remain optimistic, especially for Cheryl and the kids, but my bravado might not have camouflaged my deep worry over what lay ahead.
Then, on Wednesday, March 10, 1993, an abortion doctor was murdered.
Paul and I had repeatedly reassured ourselves the movement was entirely nonviolent. We trained our people to endure abuse without fighting back. By then I had seen many of our numbers, of all ages and in all states of physical condition, prayerful and motionless as cops wrenched, dragged, and hurled them from the front of clinics. We were the model of peaceful social change—or so I thought.
Then came the news from Pensacola. Dr. David Gunn had been shot in the back three times. We had staged numerous demonstrations at his Pensacola Women’s Medical Services. Randall had once created a wanted poster for Gunn that he distributed at a rally in Montgomery, Alabama, where the OB-GYN also provided his services. The doctor’s face, phone number, and other identifying information were clearly displayed. We all instructed our people to restrain their language and actions when confronting abortion providers, and rescuers were required to sign a statement that read, in part, “I commit to be peaceful, prayerful, and nonviolent in word and deed.”
I didn’t appreciate, or allow myself to see, the contradiction between the pledge and our increasingly inflammatory rhetoric. We would use stark language—“baby killers,” “mass murderers,” “pro-aborts”—and outline battle plans in which we referred to abortion providers as “the enemy,” and asserted that sometimes people may break lesser laws to avoid committing the greater evil of murdering innocent children. This was in keeping with long-held Christian moral theology. But none of us considered the vulnerability of those who, for one reason or another, could not discriminate between literal and figurative concepts. There were also people bent on doing harm, and all they needed was religious permission to do so. And one such person had just committed murder in the name of our movement.
When Paul summoned me to his office and told me Gunn had been shot, we called our contacts in Florida. Before Michael Griffin unloaded three rounds from his .38 caliber revolver into Gunn’s back, the killer had been a sometimes marginal rescue activist with fundamentalist church ties. As he gunned down the doctor, he yelled to his victim, “Don’t kill any more babies.” Rescue America, another pro-life organization that competed with us for funds and followers, was picketing Gunn’s clinic that day. We considered the group’s swaggering leader, Don Treshman, an embarrassment to the pro-life movement. A Texan who wore a ten-gallon Stetson and oversized metal belt buckles, Treshman fancied himself a pro-life purist compared to the Northeast-establishment Randall Terry. Treshman was bombastic, indiscreet, and unpredictable—especially when it came to peaceful, nonviolent action. His Pensacola operative, a lay preacher and former Marine named John Burt, was worse. It was Burt who oversaw the protest the day of the shooting. To outsiders, there may have seemed little difference between us, but we saw the difference as fundamental. “Abortion Kills Children” and “Stop Abortion” typified signs at our events. “Execute Baby Killers” typified theirs. On the day of Gunn’s murder, Treshman told the New York Times, “While Gunn’s death is unfortunate, it’s also true that quite a number of babies’ lives will be saved.”
We issued a news release: “Our commitment to the dignity of life stands for the born as well as the unborn.” Reverend Joe Foreman, who had worked with Randall since the beginning of Operation Rescue, told the press that we had “been saying for years that if the government insists on suppressing normal and time-honored dissent through injunctions, it turns the field over to the rock-throwers, the bombers and the assassins.” At the time, we all believed that the more the government attempted to control what we considered to be peaceful acts of civil disobedience, the more room they gave to extremists who felt they had no other recourse than to bomb, burn, and shoot in order to be heard.
The story of Gunn’s murder was still in the news when I returned to Judge Bestry’s courtroom for my sentencing hearing in April. I knew that didn’t bode well for me. I had written to my supporters about my impending sentencing date, and they crowded the courtroom.
Judge Bestry called the court to order.
He ignored the thick file of letters pleading mercy on my behalf. I had asked for permission to make a statement before he pronounced his sentence, and he granted it. I was as careful about composing it as I had been for any sermon I had ever preached. I asserted that I was a pastor of souls, resolved to right whatever wrongs God enabled me to rectify, and explained my action as simply an expression of the principles by which I lived. I tried to impress on the judge that I was a good and generous man, and described my work in the Mexican dumps and how I created the Hearts for the Homeless shelter program in Buffalo. I closed with a prayer that the judge would grant mercy for me, my codefendants, and for his own soul “from the God who is Himself merciful.” I was intoxicated by my eloquence and considered that speech the most important one I had ever delivered: I was Moses before Pharaoh, the prophet Elijah before King Ahab, Saint Paul before the procurator.
Our family and hundreds of my supporters waited, tense and prayerful. After I finished, Judge Bestry sat pensively for a few seconds. Then he let me have it. He told me how reckless my actions had been a year before, during the Spring of Life demonstrations, when I could have incited a riot. He called me “a publicity hound” and said my punishment had nothing to do with abortion but with my lawless actions. He sentenced me to nine months at Alden, a medium-security state penitentiary. I could hear gasps of shock behind me.
The bailiff handcuffed me and whisked me away without even a chance to kiss Cheryl or hug the kids. I’ll never forget their faces, frozen in horror. I was cuffed to a line of several prisoners who had been sentenced for other crimes that same night. We were pushed into a transport van. As we drove, I felt as if I had joined the long list of Christian martyrs who had sacrificed their lives for their own true faith. I wondered what kind of torture by hardened criminals I might expect in jail, and if I would have the courage and the faith to withstand whatever was in my future. And yet, shamefully, none of these lofty thoughts included how all this would affect Cheryl. She had to return home with Anna and Matthew, comfort them, and try to explain what they had just seen. Only years later did I learn just how traumatic this was for them, particularly for Matthew, who was then twelve years old. I had been my boy’s hero, and now he heard the parents of other kids ridicule me and got into a fight on the school bus defending my honor.
Meanwhile, I was thinking only of myself and how I was going to survive the indignities of jail. After trading my clothes for a jumpsuit, I was escorted into my cell, a tiny, austere cement cube with a bench on one wall covered by a thin foam mattress for a bed. The first night I tried to rest, but it was nearly impossible; above my door was a brilliant lamp that was never turned off, and every few hours throughout the night, guards would noisily make the rounds.
The next day a prisoner threw a copy of the Buffalo News at me. It was opened to a headline that read “Minister Gets Jail in Protest Case.” The editorial page opined “A Just Sentence for Schenck: He’ll Pay for What He Did, Not His Beliefs.”
I spent that first day coming to terms with what would be the parameters of my life for the next nine months. There were two televisions on my cellblock and plenty of board games to pass the time. Cheryl had left a Bible at a designated drop-off window in the visitor center. There were a couple of angry inmates who seemed bothered by my presence, and I did my best to befriend them. To many of the other inmates, I personified the enemy: white, middle class, educated. I had never felt so paranoid, constantly looking over my shoulder, afraid to use the shower because it made me feel too vulnerable, and wondering when someone was going to challenge me to a fight. I was enormously relieved when they moved me to a different cell in a mostly empty gallery. Grateful for the solitude and quiet, I looked around and figured this would be my home for close to a year. I imagined where I would place my books, and other personal items, perhaps a computer, if I was allowed to have one.
When Cheryl visited, we were separated by a thick glass pane and talked through a telephone handset. She looked drawn and brokenhearted, and rightly so. She was nervous about my safety, anxious about the kids, and worried about the reaction to all this at her school, where she was taking final exams. I was still getting a paycheck from our ministry organization, but I couldn’t be sure how long that would last, given I had to go out and raise the money that paid me. She put her hand on the window and cried. I wanted to as well, but all I could manage were some empty pastoral words of reassurance. The fact was, deep inside, I thought the mission of changing the culture even eclipsed the needs of my family. I was losing sight of the message I had once preached from the New Testament, warning that a man who didn’t care for his family was worse than an infidel.
When I returned to my cell, a guard met me and abruptly ordered me to collect my things, as I was being moved to yet another cellblock, without further explanation. The day passed slowly, but that evening after dinner the heavy cell door buzzed and opened. No guard was present. I hesitated, thinking something might have malfunctioned or maybe some prison ambush awaited me. I sat up with all my senses highly attenuated but relaxed instantly when I heard a familiar booming voice from below the second-tier walkway outside: “Revvv—vehr—runnnd Schenck!” This exaggerated diction could only be Judge O.’s.
There he stood, with his shock of white hair, neatly trimmed goatee, and pressed pocket handkerchief. He looked up, raised his arm, and told me to collect my things, because I was getting out of there.
I didn’t ask for details but grabbed my few belongings and met the guard, who escorted me out. Judge O. informed me he had filed an emergency appeal on my behalf. A county judge vacated my sentence and released me pending a full appeal. Judge Bestry had overplayed his hand, Judge O. said, by demonstrating bias against me. We were going to get his draconian sentence reversed.
Throughout the days leading up to this, I maintained strict control over my emotions. I couldn’t permit myself to recognize, much less feel, the enormity of what was happening to me and my family. I bottled up any honest feelings until I arrived back home and sat on our couch with my arms around Anna and Matthew. I wept with relief and regret for all I had put them through.
Bestry’s nine-month sentence for resisting arrest and inciting a riot was vacated, but my conviction for disorderly conduct remained. For that I was sentenced to fifteen days. I had already served that much time, but technically I needed to “process out,” so I returned to prison before being immediately transferred to a “halfway house,” which was really just an older wing of the facility. I had steeled myself to spend fifteen days in this unpleasant environment, but it ended up being only one day, because of the arcane formula they use to calculate time served. As the guards processed my paperwork on the way out, I looked around with relief but also guilt. I was starting to see a criminal justice system where someone with white skin, privilege, and an impressive legal team was released in record time. The other men were stuck, represented by overworked, underpaid, and unappreciated public defenders. Who knew how long they would remain there, much less what would happen when they finally went to trial? The problem nagged me, but I had to get back to my family, to the babies—and to the movement.
My return home was less dramatic this time, and we all settled back into our routines. But the aftershocks were evident on Cheryl’s countenance, Matthew’s constant anxiety about where I was, and Anna’s near-forensic questioning about my schedule. I tried to reassure everyone by diving back into work, acting as if not much had happened, and pretending everything was normal. It wasn’t.