Evangelical Leaders are Ok with Contraception

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.

That was the Puritan opinion ["sex sinful unless it is intended to lead to pregnancy"]. It was not and is not the Catholic position.

Incorrect.

“With respect to sex and marriage, the normal Puritan view was a robust and healthy one. The Rev. William Gouge, in Of domesticall duties (London, 1634), used Proverbs 5:18, 19, to express the joy and beauty of marital sex: “Let thy fountain be blessed, and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times, and be thou ravished always with her love.” The Puritans often spoke of marital sex as one of the great delights and joys among earthly blessings. Frye tells us that a ‘favorite Biblical passage cited by Puritan churchmen is Genesis XXVI. 8 where it is recorded that “Isaac was sporting with Rebekah his wife.”” (p. 36) The Hebrew word for ‘sporting’ there does not mean, I assure you, ‘playing checkers’!
-- from the essay Rushdoony, Neoplatonism, and a Biblical View of Sex
Did those early Protestants hate sex? Hardly. When a New England Puritan wife complained, first to her pastor then to her whole congregation that her husband was neglecting their sex life, the church excommunicated him!
A leading Puritan preacher, William Gouge, said married couples should engage in sex "with good will and delight, willingly, readily and cheerfully." An anonymous Puritan expressed the common view that in marriage a couple "may joyfully give due benevolence (a Puritan term for sex) one to the other."
Throughout the writings of the Puritans, marriage and the sex act within it are affirmed as gifts from God. This was a progressive view, for it contradicted the prevalent medieval teaching that religious celibacy was more virtuous than marriage and family life. This affirmation of marriage in turn raised the status of women.
-- from the opinion column Puritans' positive legacy for America
Primary among the Puritan understanding of family was their belief that the Scriptures firmly establish both marriage and sex as gifts ordained by God. The Puritans saw sex within marriage as existing both for procreation and pleasure.
"Leland Ryken has well said the Puritan doctrine of sex was a watershed in the cultural history of the West," Hulse said. "The Puritans devalued celibacy, glorified marriage, affirmed married sex as both necessary and pure, established the ideal of wedded romantic love, and exalted the role of the wife."
-- from the [Google archived] article Puritan beliefs about family life can prove helpful today, he says

"a right to make decisions about what you value"

OK, but that doesn't get us anywhere because it's a tautology: "what you value" means what you've decided to value.

(I just deleted a whole lot of what I had just written, in order to making things more concise. Cheers all around!)

Getting at the underlying questions: Are there things which are, in themselves, inherent valuable even if you, yourself, decided not to value them? Is it morally offensive to value and disvalue things in a disordered way? Do you have a right to ruin or redesign anything about yourself that you decided not to value?

Here, the answers here are "yes," "yes," and "no", on general principle.

There is a "hierarchy of values" (a true objective ordering of higher and lower values), and disordered values are morally objectionable.

Catholic ethical thought convinces us that the human body, healthy and complete, and sex as a created aspect of the body, are of very high value, literally next in value to life itself. Thus we would argue that you can't take it apart, switch it around, disorder or impair it as you see fit.

From Humanae Vitae "we are not masters of the sources of life, but ministers of the design established by the Creator." I love that. Not masters, but ministers. That whole document reqards careful reading: Humanae Vitae.

In particular we say that sexual intercourse is sacred (not just "something I value"), objectively a good of a very high order which pertains intrinsically to human dignity. Therefore, sacred because of what we are in God's eyes.

Sexual intercourse by its very structure takes its meaning from procreation, even if functionally it's not fertile every single time. It naturally has periods of fertility and infertility. We say that's good. e say human being are good. We say the design is good.

Like any other sacred thing, it is right only with the right person (your spouse), under the right conditions (mutual love, choice, satisfaction), within right reason (e.g. there's no good reason to be squirting 100 million live spermatozoa up somebody's rectum) (escuse me, but it's a plain example of reason vs unreason) and at the right time (e.g. when your spouse is fertile if a pregnancy is acceptable, when your spouse is infertile if pregnancy is not acceptable.)

The penalty if you violate these norms? Very severe. You become degraded. If the behavior becomes widespread, your whole culture becomes degraded.

Here's a good catch from Humanae Vitae, written in 1968 and sounding pretty prophetic from the perspective of the last 42 years:

"...Reflect on the consequences of methods and plans for artificial birth control. .. and consider how they could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards. Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings—and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation—need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law.

"...A man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.

"...Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone. It could well happen, therefore, that when people, either individually or in family or social life, experience the inherent difficulties of the divine law and are determined to avoid them, they may give into the hands of public authorities the power to intervene in the most personal and intimate responsibility of husband and wife."

Loss of moral standards. Loss of reverence for women. Prevention of births as an exercise of state control.

Proof: look around you.

On the other hand, the reward if you honor the moral norms? Peace-love-joy happiness, dude. Or at least, amidst difficulties, the self-respect that comes with keeping human things human. Sacred things sacred.

Now that's good.

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