WINDERMERE (FBW) – Evangelical Christian. Pro-life. And Democrat.

These words naturally go together for Adam Parish – a member of Lake Buena Vista Baptist Church in Windermere and a leader of a campaign to cultivate a pro-life caucus in the Florida Democratic Party advancing a “consistent ethic of life.”

Florida Democrats for Life (FDFL), established in February 2004, is part of a growing national movement of pro-life Democrats who are attempting “to take the Democratic Party back … one voting precinct at a time,” Parish told Florida Baptist Witness June 3. The Florida chapter is one of 40 in the national Democrats for Life, organized in 1999 by Democrats “who believe that the Democratic Party has, in recent history, mistakenly strayed from its roots of being the party which fights for the rights of ALL Americans,” according to the FDFL Web site (www.floridadfla.org).

(For more on the national organization and its legislative agenda, see, “Democrats for Life may be gaining traction in party,” page 9.)

With the Democratic Party officially in favor of unlimited access to abortion and opposed to any efforts to regulate the practice, Parish is not naďve about the difficulties of the effort to find acceptance for the pro-life position in the national and state party. Nevertheless, he believes many Democrats are on his side.

“The situation would be hopeless if we didn’t have so many grassroots Democrats on our side,” Parish told the Witness, noting 43 percent of Democrats are pro-life. “I think that we have a good base of pro-life Democratic support in North Florida, the rural areas of our state, the African American community and the Hispanic community. We need to get more pro-family people and traditional values supporters active in the Democratic Party.”

President of the Florida chapter since December, Parish said his group “stands for a consistent ethic of life.

“We are working to protect and enhance human life at all levels. One of our priorities is to ensure that the needs of children are met after birth as well as before. We recognize the need for a safety net to help families and children that are in need of food, medical coverage and housing,” he said.

Parish, 29, a computer programmer for a major entertainment company in the Orlando area, has been a “Southern Baptist since I can remember” who professed faith in Christ at age six and “to this day” can “recite the Royal Ambassadors pledge I learned at First Baptist Church of Kingston, Tenn.”

Parish and his wife, Tory, a registered Republican, whom he met at the Baptist Student Union of the University of Tennessee, teach Kindergarten and first grade Sunday School at his church, which is one of three campuses of First Baptist Church of Windermere.

On his organization’s Web site, Parish questions the sincerity of Republican advocacy for the sanctity of human life: “The Republican marketing machine does a great job of waving the pro-life banner to win elections. However, the Republican concern for life stops after the ballots have been counted.”

For this reason, Parish said he prefers the term “for-life” to the “pro-life” which is sometimes only associated with the abortion issue.

“My hope is that for-life better represents our passion as Democrats to respect life through all phases and states. For example, we are for the yet-to-be-born, the seniors, the economically depressed, those of different religions, those that are disabled, etc. All life is valuable and has a purpose.”

Although skeptical of Republicans’ genuineness of pro-life concern, Parish admitted in comments to the Witness that his organization did not make any effort this spring to support parental notice and abortion clinic regulations legislation adopted by the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature and recently signed by Republican Governor Jeb Bush.

“With a parental notification mandate from the ’04 general election and a Republican majority in both the State House and State Senate, these initiatives had every chance to pass,” he noted.

Parish believes there is reason for hope for Florida pro-life Democrats. In March, he was invited to a meeting of the “Mainstream Democrats,” a group supporting patriotism, fiscal responsibility and faith and moral values. Although the group includes both pro-life and pro-abortion Democrats, Parish said he “got a warm reception from party leaders and elected officials” at the meeting.

(For an editorial about this organization, see the March 10 editorial, “Testing the sincerity of the ‘Mainstream Democrats,’” Florida Baptist Witness.)

There’s room for evangelical voters in the Democratic Party, according to Parish.

“I think that there is a growing social conscience among evangelical Christians which recognizes that materialism and economic markets without the restraint of regulation or collective bargaining, don’t necessarily build a society that is pro-life or pro-family at all,” he told the Witness.

Parish argues for involvement of Christians in both political parties so that “pro-life voters and evangelical Christians” are not “taken for granted.”

He added: “Except for a few of the burning social issues, like abortion and gay marriage, I think that you would find a wide range of opinions among evangelical Christians on most political issues. It doesn’t make sense for us all to be in one political party; Christians are just too diverse for that. We can enhance and be a positive Christian witness within both parties.”

Parish insisted: “Christians who are Democrats should not be ashamed of their party; instead, they should be actively working to reclaim it.”