August 8, 1992 was to be at once the high point in the Missionaries to the Preborn mass mobilization, and also the beginning of its decline. On July 24, 1992 Franky Schaeffer spoke for an hour before an admiring audience of anti-abortion activists. There was to be one further public meeting sponsored by the antis before the Big Day. That was the Solemn Assembly, which was held on August 7, 1992 at the Milwaukee Area, attended by between 8,000 and 10,000 supporters of the cause. At this meeting, the Missionaries extracted from their followers a "Solemn Covenant," a vow to do everything possible to eliminate abortion in Milwaukee and throughout the nation. As time went by, the Missionary leadership would refer with increasing bitterness to supporters who had failed to keep their promise.
Unfortunately there is no video record of that Solemn Assembly available on the World Wide Web. As a next best opportunity for insight into the theories, the mood, and the intentions of the antis at this juncture, I refer to a three part presentation of Franky Schaeffer's speech on July 24, 1992, in Brookfield, Wisconsin.
To see and hear this video, you will need at least a 100 Mhz Pentium Computer, a 28.8 Kbps modem, and the RealAudio/RealVideo player. If you have never watched RealVideo before, be prepared to see only a very small picture. Video action is not smooth, seeming almost to be a jerky series of stills. The voice tends to be speeded up and raised somewhat in pitch. From the play length labels, you might expect the three videos to play through in just over 61 minutes. But it may in fact take more than 70 minutes to play them, since there are often delays in playback, due to "network congestion." On the other hand, I find the player makes it easy to back up and replay an interesting section.
Click on the link below to go to my presentation of selected parts of Franky Schaeffer's speech and an essay which places these comments in the context of anti-abortion extremists' uneasy fascination with acts of armed defiance.
Comments on Franky Schaeffer's speech
