(RNS) — “What radicalized you?”

If you spend any time on the internet, you’re likely to encounter this viral question, usually offered or answered in the context of some political or social issue on either side of the ideological aisle.

I was radicalized by the religious right.

A young adult in the 1980s, I was raised in a Christian home and was — and am — a Christian myself. But even as a young adult, I didn’t understand the churches I attended to be fundamentalist or conservative or any such label. We were “Bible-believing” congregations that embraced the inspiration and authority of God’s word, a view I still hold. In those days I lived largely outside evangelical Christian culture and the rising moral majority movement.

Until, one day, I was radicalized after being introduced at my church to the pro-life position on abortion. The abortion issue — brought to me, not by the Catholic Church, which had long stood against it, nor by the pacifist or radical feminists who also opposed abortion for generations, but by the religious right — changed me. 

I hadn’t thought much about abortion before then. A co-worker of mine had undergone one, as had a close friend who had been pressured by her boyfriend to have one. I didn’t like what had happened to her, or the idea in general, but before I even knew the term “pro-choice,” I was “pro-choice” on the matter.

Then, presented one day at church with the sheer humanity of the tiny unborn child in the womb and with the violence required to willingly snuff out that life, I immediately became “pro-life.” Not only for the vulnerable life of the child, but for the mother, too. There is, after all, an inherent vulnerability for any woman who believes that interfering with her body’s pregnancy, ending the life within it, is her best option. 

Wrestling with the abortion question made me consider for the first time all those years ago the moral weight and social significance of the imago Dei in every person. Every single one.

Thus, I became pro-life for every person — even, or especially, the unwanted, unloved, unliked, unlikable, seemingly insignificant ones. My radicalization over abortion led me to be radicalized enough to stand up for all of the vulnerable among us. 

Some of us live entire lives in vulnerable situations: the Christian living under a Communist regime, the impoverished eking out food for their family day to day, the chronically ill or disabled, the minorities under authoritarian majority rule. All of us have or will find ourselves in vulnerable places in life — first the womb, last the deathbed and many other possible places in between. 

Once I recognized the layers of dehumanization that shroud the unborn child until we no longer recognize her humanity — layers of language, relationships, practices and laws — I came to see these layers of dehumanization being lacquered over other groups today, again through language, relationships, practices and laws.

Historically, the vulnerable have included the enslaved, prisoners, women and Christians or those of other faiths who worship outside the state church. Today such people still remain vulnerable, given continuing human trafficking, the rise of Christian nationalism and appeals to overturn the 19th amendment. The vulnerable also include immigrants, detainees and those of other faiths. These are all people who are being dehumanized in a variety of ways.

Paradoxically, some of us will find ourselves vulnerable in standing up for other vulnerable people against the powers that seek to dehumanize them. I am slowly coming to see that many of the parties and persons behind this movement that radicalized me don’t really believe what they taught me. I understand now that abortion and many other issues were used for the purposes of political power and material gain. 

I’m sorry I didn’t see it sooner. (The depths and forms of that sorrow are still working their way through me, and I am yet unable to express them in adequate words.)

Even so, I did then and do now think for myself and try to think deeply and widely about complicated issues. The arguments made by those who convinced me of the right to life of every human being were compelling, if not genuine, convincing if not complete. 

I no longer believe many of the people who made those arguments. But I believe the arguments. I believe in the sanctity of every human life, and I believe in our duty to protect every human life. I believe that this duty begins, as the religious right taught me so well so long ago, with resisting all attempts to dehumanize — through image, word or deed — anyone made in the image of God.

I remain radicalized.