Resistance is Mandatory

A Conversation with Seth Gruber

Seth Gruber likes to say he’s been in the pro-life movement since before he was born. The son of a pregnancy-care center worker, Seth made a name for himself both in high school and at Westmont University, where he refused to cower in the face of resistance to his public defense of the pro-life view. Nothing has changed since then. The stakes have just gotten higher. His documentary, The 1916 Project, and the book on which it is based are eye-opening exposés of the roots and goals of Margaret Sanger’s diabolical worldview and the consequences it has spawned in our day.

Anyone who thought that the battle was going to be over when Roe got overturned doesn’t know much about abortion or our constitutional republic. Roe v. Wade was a federal decision that hamstrung the states and obliterated any semblance of federalism through judicial fiat. Since then, we’ve seen exactly how bloodthirsty Americans have become. In the first year following the overturning of Roe, one million babies were aborted. It was the highest number reported in over 10 years. Of course, it was actually much higher than that because states are not required to report their abortion data.

Add to that that the abortion pill accounted for 63 percent of the babies killed in 2023. It means that about 630,000 babies were flushed down the toilets of the American sewage system. Many of these abortion pills are being shipped in from India and overseas. So it becomes impossible to get accurate numbers on how many abortions actually take place. If the Guttmacher Institute admitted that over a million babies were killed in 2023, you know it’s a heck of a lot more than that.

We have a culture of death. This fight has only gotten a lot hotter and bloodier because we’re dealing with first principles. As I contend in The 1916 Project, we’re dealing with the very issues that began the cultural rot in America. If you don’t get the right to life right, you won’t get any other rights. There’s a reason our Founders created an order of rights. We’ve taken these rights and liberties for granted for far too long in America.

I refer to abortion as “the sacrament of Satan.” And I say that because the language of the “my body, my choice” crowd mocks the words our Savior used at the Last Supper. “This is my body,” he said, “I break it for you. Take it in remembrance of me.” Abortion advocates say, “This is my body. I break the baby for me.” Abortion is fundamentally demonic. Satan has always been behind the killing of babies. If he can’t kill God, he’ll kill babies because he knows it wounds the heart of the Father and causes chaos on the Earth.   The reaction of our cultural and political betters to the overturning of Roe tells you everything you need to know about our current cultural moment. They burned down over 100 pro-life ministries and pregnancy resource centers in the two months following the ruling. Those who speak at school board meetings are labeled domestic terrorists while the actual pro-abortion domestic terrorists threatening actual physical violence against pro-life Americans do so with impunity.

The church has been silent on this. What do you think it’s going to take to change that? Or do you think we’re going to start shrinking what the church actually is?

The problem in the American church is we have a lot of pastors who want to avoid overt criticism from their flock. They speak just enough truth to fly under the radar of being labeled a coward, but never enough to be a threat to the culture of death. We have a lot of Christian music artists, influencers, authors, pastors, and podcasters like this. They’re not about the legacy of historic Christian resistance in antiquity. They’re about the spirit of Lot—keeping their place of influence in Sodom so that they can be invited to all the nice parties. There’s a reason why Russell Moore is on MSNBC’s phone-a-Christian speed-dial and Voddie Baucham is not. There’s a reason why David French has a weekly op-ed in The New York Times and Eric Metaxas does not. There’s a reason why Rick Warren is invited to Davos at the World Economic Forum every year and Pastor Jack Hibbs is not. The latter can’t be bought.

What we’re doing with The 1916 Project is exposing the deeds of darkness and rebuilding Christian resistance in America before it’s too late. The longer we tolerate the killing of babies, the quicker we’ll come to learn that these people will do a lot more than just kill babies. Those who murder the unborn cannot be trusted to govern the born; those who murder the unborn will one day murder us too. Planned Parenthood is not just the largest abortion provider in the world; they’re also the second-largest provider of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for America’s gender-confused youth. Do you think that’s a coincidence? No, it’s not. They are animated by an ideology. And ideology is a hell of a drug as it turns out. It will take you farther than you wanted to go and make you pay more than you wanted to pay. They won’t define marriage; therefore, they won’t protect it. They won’t define the unborn; therefore, they won’t protect them. They won’t define a woman; therefore, they won’t protect her. Pay attention.

What do you consider to be the most eye-opening aspect of the film?

The biggest gasp moment that I’ve heard is when people learn about Hugh Hefner’s connection to Planned Parenthood and the sexual revolution. The role of the sexual revolutionaries in the broader culture of death and in the abortion industry was quite shocking for people to learn. This is [the Old Testament book of] Judges, chapter six, all over again. But you can’t understand Baal without understanding the Asherah poles. Child sacrifice is always the conclusion of sexual liberation. Those two sins have been linked since time immemorial.

It’s not a coincidence that in Judges 6, God tells Gideon to stop being a coward—to walk out of his little mountain cave or wine press in the foothills back down into the valley and tear down the Baal statues, chop up the Asherah poles, put them in a pile, and light it on fire. Notice, he doesn’t tell them to fix their political issues. When his people have been given over to be ruled by pagan hordes and are having orgies with the temple prostitutes and passing the children through the fire, the Lord tells them to stop the weird sex cults and tear down the baby sacrifice stuff. Deal with that, then we’ll talk. That’s because judgment begins in the House of the Lord. You can’t fix it out there until you fix what’s inside the walls of the church.

In the film, we teach people the role of Hugh Hefner and Alfred Kinsey and that this child sacrifice and hypersexualized culture was birthed by the sexual revolution seekers. Planned Parenthood is not merely the largest abortion provider in the world. They’re also the largest provider of the pornographic comprehensive sexuality education in America’s public schools. It was all based on Alfred Kinsey’s “science,” while Kinsey’s “science” was based on interviewing pedophiles and rapists serving lifetime prison sentences. He made their sexual data sound like the normal sexual behavior of the normal American married male. It was all fraudulent, but it was used to put the sexual revolution on steroids. Today, we can’t understand child sacrifice without understanding these Asherah poles—the places where the gender cult and the sexualization of our children began.

The White Rose Resistance did over 800 screenings of The 1916 Project in American churches beginning in June 2024. We want to create bold intellectual thought leadership in the post-Roe v. Wade world. We are also organizing with “The Last Stand” conference (TheLastStand.com), June 21, in southern California. The focus of that conference will be to worship, pray, repent, and mobilize the church to take back June for life. It will feature Pastor Jack Hibbs, Danny Gokey, Nicole C. Mullen, Skillet, Pastor Gary Hamrick, Pastor Allen Jackson, Charlie Kirk, Steve Deace, Riley Gaines, Allie Beth Stuckey, and Eric Metaxas.

You’ve recreated the White Rose Resistance based on the model of Hans and Sophie Scholl in Nazi Germany. What is the mission of the White Rose Resistance, and what do you see as its end game?

The mission is to educate, equip, and mobilize the church to end abortion. We educate the public, discredit the opposition, and inspire a movement. We’re the fastest-growing pro-life organization in America. There’s an awakening happening. There’s an itching—a stirring in the American church. We’re not where we need to be, but I’ve never seen this level of excitement, engagement, and awakening happening in the church.

Like the sons of Issachar, men who understood the times, people are starting to know what time it is. They knew what Israel ought to do and took their responsibility and duty to act. The legacy of the church is the legacy of Christian resistance, and one of those stories of Christian resistance is a bunch of kids in their twenties in Munich, Germany, in 1942–43. They were distributing anti-Nazi leaflets all around Germany, trying to awaken Christians and people of normal common sense to what was happening. They called themselves the White Rose Resistance. All those kids were beheaded. Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie were killed on February 22, 1943.

The endgame is to put ourselves out of a job. We have too many 501(c)3 organizations doing good work. But they’re doing the good work the local church used to do. I know it sounds weird to say we have too many non-profits in America while I’m the CEO of one. But that’s because we’re dealing with issues that the local church used to deal with.

I am effective to the point that the White Rose Resistance is no longer needed to awaken people to end abortion because believers in their local churches are simply being Christians—when Christians are being Christians at the local level and they see this evil pushed out into the light and say, “I don’t think so”; when they get involved and pass laws to protect children; when they show up and push back to establish righteousness; when they push back against evil, and they force the darkness to go away. Every generation of Christians is going to have to do that with the evils of their day. Ending child killing in our day is actually Christianity 101.