Evangelical Leaders are Ok with Contraception

NAE ^ | June 9, 2010

[NYer]

Evangelical leaders are overwhelmingly open to artificial methods of contraception, according to the April Evangelical Leaders Survey. Nearly 90 percent said they approved of artificial methods of contraception. In a separate poll conducted by the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) in partnership with Gallup, Inc., 90/91 percent of evangelicals find hormonal/barrier methods of contraception to be morally acceptable for adults.¹

“Most associate evangelicals with Catholics in their steady leadership in pro-life advocacy, and rightly so,” said Leith Anderson, president of the NAE. “But it may come as a surprise that unlike the Catholic church, we are open to contraception.”

Indicative of their commitment to honoring the sanctity of human life, several leaders included caveats in their affirmative answers saying while they approve of contraception, they would strongly object to drugs or procedures that terminate a pregnancy once conception has taken place. George Brushaber, president emeritus of Bethel University, said that contraception should be used “with proper biblical and medical guidance.”

“Personally, I don’t believe there are any Scriptural prohibitions to most common methods of contraception,” said Randy Bell of the Association for Biblical Higher Education. “I can say from personal experience that God can defeat such methods if he chooses to do so.”

Many noted that biblical sexuality is not limited to procreation, but that its purpose extends to the consummation and expression of love within marriage. “Our leaders indicate that contraception can be utilized if all biblical purposes of sex are upheld and that it may actually aid in keeping the balance,” Anderson said.

Greg Johnson, president of Standing Together, approves of artificial methods of contraception, but added, “I believe the church does have a responsibility to communicate and preach the importance of family and that couples should not carelessly allow themselves to use contraception as a way to avoid having children and a growing family altogether.”

Two leaders said they would not approve or disapprove, but would leave it to married couples to decide based on the ethical and biblical criteria of a given situation.

The NAE Generation Forum’s publication, “Theology of Sex,” is a resource to help ministers and church leaders create healthy dialogue about God’s intentions for sex. For more information on the Generation Forum or the “Theology of Sex” publication, visit www.naegeneration.com.

The Evangelical Leaders Survey is a monthly poll of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Evangelicals. They include the CEOs of denominations and representatives of a broad array of evangelical organizations including missions, universities, publishers and churches.

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¹Gallup conducted this national telephone survey of 1,000 evangelicals, ages 18-95, from July 7 – Aug 1, 2009. Evangelicals were identified by denominational affiliation, church attendance at least once a month, accepting Jesus Christ as Savior and affirming the Bible as the written word of God and a guide for life. This poll has an overall margin of error of ±3.1 percent.

[ThisLittleLightofMine]

I attend a protestant church, I don't agree. I am not a very fertile woman, we have two girls and maybe I would feel different if I was getting pregnant every two years but this is a discussion the “church” needs to have.

[Alex Murphy]

How do you reconcile these two contradictory statements, wagglebee?

Post 9: How should we "lump" them? If the "Five Sola" were valid principles they WOULD all be lumped together.
Post 20: How could I? It’s impossible, YOPIOS has allowed the Reformation to wander down whatever road any given sinner wants to take it down.

Either they're "lumped together" or they've wandered down "whatever road". Either they still adhere to the Five Solas (which you claimed is what lumps them together) or they've wandered away. What defines "Protestant" for you, wagglebee? The last time this question came up between us, you asked "Do you have a suggestion for a term to use for non-Catholic, non-Orthodox, non-Protestant Christians?" Let me remind you of how I answered your question back in 2007:

IMO it's bigotry to assume that all of us non-Catholic/Orthodox types are all alike, that we're all "Protestants", or that the sins of a few can be blamed on all who look like them. Such beliefs I would label as "Anti-Protestantism".

Are you an anti-Protestant, wagglebee?

[Salvation]

**Evangelical Leaders are Ok with Contraception**

Then they really aren’t pro-lifers, are they?

[Salvation]

More from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

                From the Catechism of the Catholic Church (click on the book for the link.)    

2399 The regulation of births represents one of the aspects of responsible fatherhood and motherhood. Legitimate intentions on the part of the spouses do not justify recourse to morally unacceptable means (for example, direct sterilization or contraception).

2370 Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality. These methods respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them, and favor the education of an authentic freedom. In contrast, "every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible" is intrinsically evil:

Thus the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality. . . . The difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle . . . involves in the final analysis two irreconcilable concepts of the human person and of human sexuality.

[wagglebee]

Either they still adhere to the Five Solas (which you claimed is what lumps them together) or they've wandered away.

Actually, I claimed nothing of the sort. I said that IF the "five solas" were valid they WOULD be lumped together.

However, when these 16th century heresies were introduced, it caused Protestants to embrace them and follow them down whatever road their sin took them.

What defines "Protestant" for you, wagglebee?

Christians that trace their theology to the Reformation.

Are you an anti-Protestant, wagglebee?

Not at all.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

I say let Rome preach against contraception all it wants. Loony restrictions like that fill the RCC and eventually drive its members to a more Scripturally-faithful church.

I know of dozens of husbands and wives who were raised RC and who left, initially, because Rome's various prohibitions were capricious. In time, those same couples came to understand the truth found in their Protestant church and they became solid, Biblically-literate Christians.

Contraception is not equitable to the murder of abortion. Rome just wants more bodies in the pews so it (theoretically) outlaws contraception, and RCs are catching on.

[wagglebee]

I say let Rome preach against contraception all it wants. Loony restrictions like that fill the RCC and eventually drive its members to a more Scripturally-faithful church.

Odd that you would say that:

From the Orthodox Presbyterian Church's website:

Before You Use Birth Control, Consider ...

God has been teaching his church down through the ages. He has endued generation after generation of his people with wisdom. We should therefore respect the long-standing wisdom of our Christian heritage. We should depart from it only if Scripture truly forces us to do so.

It is therefore highly significant that the church down through the centuries—Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant alike—held one view on contraception with remarkable unanimity until just recently. It was condemned in strong terms, and contraception was often made a criminal act.

~snip~

This historical context alone does not prove that contraception is wrong. However, should we expect an immoral and hedonistic society to come up with genuine moral insight, contrary to nearly two millennia of consistent Christian teaching?

You May Use Birth Control, If ...

In the end, God doesn't give a pat answer about contraception. But he does provide a framework within which believers are responsible and free to make godly decisions. In fact, this framework does condemn most of the world's approach to contraception—but not because it's contraception. Rather, it condemns its fundamental self-centeredness (Ps. 10:4). Believing couples should soberly examine themselves as to whether they conform to this worldly selfishness and, if so, repent. Still, the biblical principles which we've considered seem to imply that—given right motives—God does permit contraception.

So is contraception just some sort of "holdover" of Catholicism? Did Protestants ALWAY think that teachings against contraception were just "loony restrictions"? If this is the case, why did they wait so long to clarify things?

[Dr. Eckleburg]

I think the OPC's understanding it terrific! Thank you for posting it.

There are many methods of birth control and some are, indeed, offensive to God. Some are even detrimental to women's health.

Many of the usual ones are neither, however.

As I said, keep pushing this restriction. Protestant churches are growing while the RCC is contracting.

[wagglebee]

As I said, keep pushing this restriction.

What restrictions? You mean the ones that the OPC website AGREES with?

Protestant churches are growing while the RCC is contracting.

Which ones? Do you mean the ones that have dropped other "loony restrictions"? Like the "loony restrictions" against female clergy, homosexuality and abortion?

[Brian Kopp DPM]

You can spin apostasy any way you like, but its still apostasy.

John Calvin (1509 to 1564) - Deliberately avoiding the intercourse, so that the seed drops on the ground, is double horrible. For this means that one quenches the hope of his family, and kills the son, which could be expected, before he is born. This wickedness is now as severely as is possible condemned by the Spirit, through Moses, that Onan, as it were, through a violent and untimely birth, tore away the seed of his brother out the womb, and as cruel as shamefully has thrown on the earth. Moreover he thus has, as much as was in his power, tried to destroy a part of the human race.

[aumrl]

i really have to chuckle at your quoting john calvin.
as far as i know he didn’t claim to be infallible.

[Brian Kopp DPM]

You’re missing the point. Probably deliberately.

[trisham]

From Humanae Vitae:

Faithfulness to God’s Design

13. Men rightly observe that a conjugal act imposed on one’s partner without regard to his or her condition or personal and reasonable wishes in the matter, is no true act of love, and therefore offends the moral order in its particular application to the intimate relationship of husband and wife. If they further reflect, they must also recognize that an act of mutual love which impairs the capacity to transmit life which God the Creator, through specific laws, has built into it, frustrates His design which constitutes the norm of marriage, and contradicts the will of the Author of life. Hence to use this divine gift while depriving it, even if only partially, of its meaning and purpose, is equally repugnant to the nature of man and of woman, and is consequently in opposition to the plan of God and His holy will. But to experience the gift of married love while respecting the laws of conception is to acknowledge that one is not the master of the sources of life but rather the minister of the design established by the Creator. Just as man does not have unlimited dominion over his body in general, so also, and with more particular reason, he has no such dominion over his specifically sexual faculties, for these are concerned by their very nature with the generation of life, of which God is the source. “Human life is sacred—all men must recognize that fact,” Our predecessor Pope John XXIII recalled. “From its very inception it reveals the creating hand of God.” (13)

Unlawful Birth Control Methods

14. Therefore We base Our words on the first principles of a human and Christian doctrine of marriage when We are obliged once more to declare that the direct interruption of the generative process already begun and, above all, all direct abortion, even for therapeutic reasons, are to be absolutely excluded as lawful means of regulating the number of children. (14) Equally to be condemned, as the magisterium of the Church has affirmed on many occasions, is direct sterilization, whether of the man or of the woman, whether permanent or temporary. (15)

Similarly excluded is any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation—whether as an end or as a means. (16)

Neither is it valid to argue, as a justification for sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive, that a lesser evil is to be preferred to a greater one, or that such intercourse would merge with procreative acts of past and future to form a single entity, and so be qualified by exactly the same moral goodness as these. Though it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in order to promote a greater good,” it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it (18)—in other words, to intend directly something which of its very nature contradicts the moral order, and which must therefore be judged unworthy of man, even though the intention is to protect or promote the welfare of an individual, of a family or of society in general. Consequently, it is a serious error to think that a whole married life of otherwise normal relations can justify sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive and so intrinsically wrong.

[wagglebee]

i really have to chuckle at your quoting john calvin. as far as i know he didn’t claim to be infallible.

Ah yes, the old "we never claimed to be infallible" defense.

Actually, this defense is nothing more than textbook moral relativism. Protestants have been employing this more and more frequently over the past few decades to condone female clergy and abortion and homosexuality, I shudder to imagine what they will embrace next.

[MayflowerMadam]

Of course Evangelicals aren’t opposed to contraception. Why would they be? Being anti-birth control is ridiculous.

[NYer]

Being anti-birth control is ridiculous.

Is it? Until the Lambeth conference in 1930, all Christian churches condemned birth control as sinful. Today, the Catholic Church is virtually alone in holding to this ancient belief, as one denomination after another has accepted artificial contraception. This should be a troubling fact for many who believe in Scripture.

We might wonder, why is contraception harmful to marriages? The reasons are many. When sex becomes solely an act for pleasure, with no chance of having children, often a user mentality of one's marriage partner evolves. One or both partners can become selfish, and that selfish behavior can lead to other problems in the relationship.

You may want to visit the link I posted above on what the Bible teaches about artificial birth control.

[tgdunbar]

"Birth Control" pills poison the womb, preventing implantation of the week old fetus:

[NYer]

"Birth Control" pills poison the womb, preventing implantation of the week old fetus:

Ping to the MayflowerMadam.

[TradicalRC]

Of course these “Christian” churches are simply trying to be relevant. Those churches of decades and centuries past were merely a product of their times. Today’s churches however are NOT merely a product of Their Times. (or are they?)

[Theo]

The *heart* behind contraception and NFP are identical: exerting control over fertility.

Don’t play this holier than thou game, thinking that you’re somehow better because your form of birth control is approved by Rome.