Sunday, February 01, 2004
The Public Square: A Continuing Survey of Religion and Public Life (February 1992)
"With due respect to that estimable evangelical magazine, one issue of Christianity Today does not a revolution make. But it may be something more than a straw in the wind that CT devotes a good chunk of an issue to a symposium on the question, 'Is Birth Control Christian?' Everybody knows that this has been a big question among Roman Catholics, and much disputed since the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae. But some evangelical Protestants are now beginning to ask whether they (or their grandparents) didn't go along too readily with the lifting of Protestant inhibitions about contraception that began back in the 1930s. According to the magazine's survey, nine out of ten CT readers who are married have used some form of contraception, and in the case of 37 percent of couples at least one spouse is sterilized. Now, it seems, people are having second thoughts.
The editors note that all participants in the symposium are agreed 'that children are a blessing from the Lord. Unfortunately, it is easy to forget that truth when the technological nature of birth control makes fertility seem like a disease that needs to be cured. And when the prophets of overpopulation make children seem like parasites on a withering planet. And when the harpies of radical feminism make childbearing seem like a roadblock on the highway to economic justice.'"
I'm not sure why I chose this passage, but i was at the FT site and I was looking through the old issues . . . there are some real gems in there. This PS is def worth the read. But so are all of them. Cant's someone publish a book, maybe with the articles by topic or something?
The editors note that all participants in the symposium are agreed 'that children are a blessing from the Lord. Unfortunately, it is easy to forget that truth when the technological nature of birth control makes fertility seem like a disease that needs to be cured. And when the prophets of overpopulation make children seem like parasites on a withering planet. And when the harpies of radical feminism make childbearing seem like a roadblock on the highway to economic justice.'"
I'm not sure why I chose this passage, but i was at the FT site and I was looking through the old issues . . . there are some real gems in there. This PS is def worth the read. But so are all of them. Cant's someone publish a book, maybe with the articles by topic or something?