Last month, Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale, an Episcopal priest, was named the new President and CEO of the National Abortion Federation. She has long been a champion of reproductive rights in the religious community.

That doesn’t sit well with right-wing author Michael Brown, who is now likening her to the biblical “Jezebel” — the ancient Pagan queen who attempted to make her religion the official religion of Israel. She is commonly associated with false prophets and, for reasons not found in the Bible, with “slutty” behavior.

How does Jesus feel when an Episcopalian priest, someone ordained to represent His name, is a well-known champion of abortion? How does He feel if that same priest is an outspoken lesbian, “married” to her partner? And how does He feel if she says, “Abortion providers are some of my personal heroes and modern-day saints”?

We don’t know how Jesus feels, since he mentioned all of those topics a grand total of zero times.

Brown goes on to say the “Jezebelic parallels are too striking to be ignored” before adding that he’s not saying she is Jezebel.

To be clear, I am not calling Rev. Ragsdale “Jezebel.” But I am saying that the same demonic forces that were also at work worked through Queen Jezebel 3,000 years ago are at work through this false priest today.

And I’m not calling Brown a delusional conspiracy theorist. But you can connect the dots yourself.

As Right Wing Watch points out, Brown loves using “Jezebel” as an insult. He wrote a whole book about it, calling Jezebel “the most wicked woman in the Bible” and “the first radical feminist.”

To my knowledge, Ragsdale hasn’t said anything that contradicts the doctrines of the Episcopal Church, which are outlined in the Nicene Creed. It may surprise Brown to know that Christians have hardly been unified on the topic of abortion. Christianity Today once published a feature with multiple Baptist pastors and seminary professors offering a variety of opinions on the topic. The most common response? That abortion should be a decision made between a woman, her family, and her doctor.

In other words, abortion is a nuanced, complex issue in Christianity that doesn’t have clear, moral guidance from Scripture. Brown, unbeknownst to him, is following his own culture’s leading — something that isn’t unique to progressives.

