As assisted suicide continues to grow in Canada and expands in the US, a major Reformed body has moved to “deplore” its legalization in the strongest terms and offer the most detailed denominational guidelines to date on practical and pastoral care around the practice.
Last month, at an annual synod marked by difficult disagreements over sexual ethics, delegates from the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRC) came together to speak out against medically assisted suicide.
“It is very rare that synod speaks this strongly about any issue,” Stephen Terpstra, synod president, said after the unanimous vote.
“We have said that we ‘deplore’ something, and we have spoken in the strongest possible language about the care and the value of human life and about the pastoral ways that we can live with each other even in very difficult circumstances.”
A task force including members from Canada, which contains nearly a quarter of CRC churches, and the US spent two years developing a report and recommendations about how churches should care for people who are dying or have terminal illnesses or disabilities.
As of 2024, around 650 Christian Reformed pastors and chaplains minister in places where medically assisted suicide is legal.
The task force offered a list of suggestions for pastoral visits to aging and terminally ill parishioners, including examples of helpful Scriptures and hymns. It also discussed how pastors can help parishioners work through their own feelings on assisted suicide and endorsed conscientious objection for health care workers in their congregations.
The report additionally addressed grieving or holding funerals for people who died by assisted suicide, saying, “We believe that all the promises of God are still true,” and “We hold on to the promise that nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God (Rom. 8:38–39); that God is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy (Ps. 103:8); and that salvation is by grace alone, through faith, and comes to us as a gift from God (Eph. 2:8–9).”
The nearly 175 delegates approved the report and recommendations unanimously, agreeing assisted suicide “is not congruent with a biblical, Christian understanding of life and death.”
But a subcommittee that reviewed the report before the synod wanted a stronger condemnation. It wrote an additional recommendation that the CRC “deplore” medically assisted suicide.
The church needs to be “prophetic” and “speak to the evil” of medically assisted suicide, said Richard Grift, a Canadian pastor who presented the recommendation at synod.
Action is needed now, he said.
“There is urgency for being clear and prophetic on this issue because of the speed at which society is accepting and expanding the availability of medically assisted suicide,” the recommendation reads.
Grift told Christianity Today after the synod that he was “very pleased” with the vote.
“I hope that the church in Canada speaks clearly to our politicians about putting the brakes on extending access to medically assisted suicide,” he said.
He hopes other denominations make similar statements.
“We need as a church across Canada to send a message that life is valuable, all life. We need to find other ways to help people with their suffering rather than encouraging them to take their lives.”
Medically assisted suicide continues to grow more acceptable and accessible. In May, Delaware joined 10 other states and Washington, DC, in legalizing assisted suicide.
On June 10, days before the CRC synod, senators in New York voted in favor of assisted suicide. The bill needs the governor’s approval to become law.
In Canada, assisted suicide—which the law calls “medical assistance in dying” (MAID)—has been legal in all provinces and territories since 2016. Since then, 60,301 Canadians have died by assisted suicide. In 2023, it accounted for nearly 5 percent of all deaths in the country.
In 2027, Canada is set to legalize assisted suicide for people whose only medical condition is a mental illness. Unlike US state laws, which say a person must have six months or less to live, Canada does not require such a prognosis.
In certain US states, doctors write prescriptions for lethal drugs that patients must take themselves. In Canada, self-administration rarely occurs. In most cases, a doctor or nurse administers the drugs intravenously. Many say this is better described as euthanasia.
Canada’s assisted suicide laws have raised international concern.
In Canada, assisted suicide was originally restricted to adults with what the law calls “grievous and irremediable” illnesses, diseases or disabilities with a “reasonably foreseeable natural death.”
In 2021, the requirement that someone’s death be “reasonably foreseeable” was removed. This made it possible for adults who have disabilities to die by assisted suicide even if they are not dying.
In March, a United Nations committee said it was “extremely concerned” about how Canada’s MAID laws place the lives of people with disabilities at risk. The committee recommended Canada stop allowing MAID for people whose deaths are not “reasonably foreseeable” and not expand eligibility further.
The CRC task force also voiced concerns about how medically assisted suicide impacts people with disabilities.
Medically assisted suicide for people with disabilities “involves an alarming devaluation of people who are every bit as valuable as nondisabled people.” The report calls for churches to make sure their buildings are accessible to people with disabilities and for church members to work to remove barriers people with disabilities face.
“To be pro-life is to be pro-disabled people,” the report says.
The report encourages churches to care both for people who are suffering from terminal illnesses and for their caregivers. It describes the differences between palliative care, which is intended to ease pain for dying people, and medically assisted suicide, which is intended to end life. And it does say Christians should not feel like they must pursue “medically futile interventions.”
The report also emphasizes the need for Christians to lament suffering.
“Lament shows us that God and God’s people can hold space for deep feelings; suffering is not to be repressed or hidden,” the report says. Lament, it notes, can encourage suffering Christians that God hears all their prayers and will not abandon them.
“We can’t be glib about suffering,” said Dr. Stephen Vander Klippe, a family doctor in Ontario who chaired the task force. “Suffering is horrible.”
Lament allows churches and individuals to acknowledge the reality of suffering, he says. When Christians help people who are suffering, they acknowledge that God is present in suffering.
“Jesus himself suffered,” Vander Klippe said in an interview before the report was presented at synod. “He did not sit from his throne and give directions. He himself suffered, and so as he walks with us, we are called to do the same.”
Zachary King, CRC general secretary, said churches should expect that public support for medically assisted suicide will grow.
“This particular genie is not going back in the bottle,” he said in an interview before synod.
He called the report “a wonderful gift to the church” and praised its practical suggestions for how churches and individuals can help people who are suffering.
“If we’re going to talk about life, we need to care about life in all of its diversity and not just … what we might say is the idealized, healthy life,” he said.
Being pro-life includes more than just condemning unbiblical practices, he said.
“The call for Christ’s body to love and care and nurture life is not just a ‘do not.’ It’s also a ‘do,” he explained. “And the ‘do’ piece here is [to] show love and care and support for people in all seasons of life, but especially those in the final season of life.”
