February 11, 2005
A pastor of a small southern Illinois church has been subjected to a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe after delivering a pro-life Memorial Day sermon comparing aborted babies to casualties of war.
Randy Steele, pastor of Southwest Christian Church in Mount Vernon, Illinois, says he was interviewed by federal agents after a parishioner accused him of advocating violence during a sermon six months earlier. According to Associated Press reports, the Office of the FBI in Springfield will neither confirm nor deny that an investigation took place.
In the sermon in question, Steel drew a comparison between the number of American soldiers who have died in battle with the number of abortions performed since the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in the United States. Apparently, his reported statements alarmed the FBI.
"Someone had called in and told them that I was this radical pastor preaching that we are to go war physically against abortion clinics, which was by no means the case," the minister tells AP. In particular, he adds, the agents wanted to know about a reference he had made in the sermon to a specific abortion clinic outside St. Louis.
After comparing the number of people who have died in wars with the vast multitudes that have died through "legal" abortions since 1973, Steele had stated that pro-life America is now engaged in "a different type of war that is being fought under the presupposition of freedom." Then he had proceeded to mention a certain abortion clinic in Granite City, Illinois, where the staff performs as many as 45 abortions a week.
According to a Baptist Press (BP) report, the Illinois minister believes someone in the church the day of that sermon may have misunderstood his "different type of war" remark, misconstruing it to mean that he was actually calling his congregation to physical war against abortion clinics. As a result, that person apparently placed an anonymous call to the FBI.
However, Steele says when the federal agents looked at his sermon notes, they saw that no threats had been issued. "We looked at a manuscript of my sermon on abortion," he told an AP interviewer, "and within just a matter of minutes, [the federal agents] basically were saying, 'Well, there's nothing here.'"
BP talked with Marshall Stone, supervisory special agent and media coordinator for the Springfield division of the FBI. While he would not speak specifically about the FBI's call on the pastor of Southwest Christian Church, he did comment generally about the investigative agency's handling of such cases.
Stone noted that the FBI gets frequent complaint calls and allegations and looks into them in order to determine whether there is any need to be concerned -- that is, whether they have reason and jurisdiction to take the matter further, or whether it should be dropped. However, he told BP, if the Bureau's agents looks into a matter without ever opening a formal investigation, then, "technically, there's nothing to drop."
Pastor Steele told BP he was initially somewhat irritated that the FBI would ask to examine his sermons. However, the minister says he does not plan to stop preaching culturally relevant messages and will continue speaking the truth in love and sharing the message of Jesus Christ.
Associated Press contributed to this story.
© 2005, Agape Press. Used by permission
