I was particularly interested in what John West would say in his new book Stockholm Syndrome Christianity about the complex case of Francis Collins He’s the famously evangelical Christian doctor who helped map the human genome and reached the heights of the U.S health bureaucracy, National Institutes of Health.

A role model for aspiring young Christians, right?

West says, not so fast. Collins is, in many ways, a classic figure of the sort that his book critiques: people in high places who fail to witness to or defend a Christian view on critical issues. Collins, in particular, simply accommodated secular policies and their underlying philosophies.

West offers some examples, the most significant of which is Collins’ support for the use of unborn children, many of them highly developed, in destructive medical research:

As NIH Director, Collins championed the unrestricted funding of embryonic stem-cell research, which involves the destruction of human embryos for medical research.

And in 2021, Collins implemented the repeal of Trump-administration restrictions on the use of aborted fetal tissue in NIH-funded research.13 These actions were only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. We now know that the NIH under Collins funded macabre experiments utilizing body parts collected from aborted human fetuses to create “humanized mouse and rodent models with full-thickness human skin.” For the experiments, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh cut into tiny pieces “human fetal spleen, thymus, and liver organs” and “then transplanted the tissues and hematopoietic stem cells into irradiated… mice.” Researchers also sliced off skin from the scalp of the aborted babies and then grafted the fetal skin onto the mice. …

The body parts used for these experiments were harvested from aborted human fetuses with a gestational age of 18–20 weeks. By that age, an unborn baby has brain waves16 and a beating heart. He can hear sounds and move his limbs and eyes, and his digestive system has started to work. In other words, the human fetuses whose organs were harvested for this NIH-funded research were well-developed tiny humans, not blobs of undifferentiated cells. Thanks to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, we also know about the NIH’s role in facilitating the use of baby parts in research on a nationwide level. The lawsuit was filed by Judicial Watch and the Center for Medical Progress after Collins’s NIH dragged its feet in responding. According to Judicial Watch, the documents show that the NIH has provided nearly three million in tax dollars to support a fetal organ harvesting operation by the University of Pittsburgh in its “quest to become a ‘Tissue Hub’ for human fetal tissue ranging from 6 to 42 [!] weeks gestation.”

David Daleiden, president of The Center for Medical Progress, commented: “The NIH grant application for just one of Pitt’s numerous experiments with aborted infants reads like an episode of American Horror Story. Infants in the womb, some old enough to be viable, are being aborted alive and killed for organ harvesting, in order to bring in millions of dollars in taxpayer funding.”20 Daleiden further alleged that NIH funding was used to underwrite “labor induction abortions, where the baby is pushed out of the mother whole” and then killed to obtain the desired tissues. In other words, the NIH was facilitating a process where “babies, some of the age of viability, [are] to be delivered alive, and then killing them by cutting their kidneys out.” pp 52–54

We might have expected a Christian to spare a thought for the fact that unborn children are the only category of human beings who, in a secular society, are not protected by law in these matters.

But no.

Christianity and those waiting to be born…

This gap is all the more surprising for someone who professes Christianity. The Creed (statement of beliefs) is routinely said at regular services in orthodox Christian churches. There are two well-known forms of the Creed, the short one (Apostles’ Creed) and the longer one (Nicene Creed). About Jesus, they state respectively:

“was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,”

and

“For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.”

It is evident that Jesus is regarded in the central statements of Christian belief as, well, Jesus from the moment of conception. In fact, in traditional Catholic churches, it is a common practice to kneel (genuflect) during services at any mention of the Incarnation, as Jesus’ conception is called, when the angel Gabriel announced his coming to his astonished mother who promptly replied “I am the Lord’s servant.”(the Annunciation).

Later, at the Visitation, we are told that the unborn John the Baptist leapt in his mother’s womb at the presence of the unborn Jesus.

If I had to pick a religion…

… in which to promote the idea that preborn children are not really people, Christianity would be far down the list. Yet surprising numbers of people who claim to be Christians nonetheless think that it is a matter of debate. So Collins can certainly count on supporters among people affiliated with a church — which is precisely what West is concerned about.

In recent years, COVID diminished Collins as a hero for many, on account of his help with behind-the-scenes manipulations to downplay significant research findings. Specifically, he contrived with Anthony Fauci to discredit the epidemiologists who warned against the prolonged mass lockdowns — who turned out to be largely right.

Why Stockholm?

In his book’s title, West alludes to Stockholm Syndrome. According to Britannica, the syndrome is a “psychological response wherein a captive begins to identify closely with his or her captors, as well as with their agenda and demands.” It was named after a hostage-taking during a bank robbery in Sweden where some hostages began to identify with their captors more than their rescuers.

Despite the sensitivity of the many current topics he tackles, West has received comparatively modest pushback for his book. A large Christian publisher spiked the book, despite initial interest, when it came out that he would criticize a popular megachurch pastor. Some reviewers wouldn’t endorse it for similar reasons. Christianity Today, which is one of the targets of criticism, nixed ads which it had initially accepted.

Perhaps many evangelical Christians are hoping that the cost of their fragile, heavily compromised peace with the status quo will just not be widely noticed.