From the beginning of Christian history until the 19th century, the teaching held that contraception was sinful, says Allan Carlson, the author of “Godly Seed: American Evangelicals Confront Birth Control, 1873-1973.” “ ”˜Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth’ ”” until the 1920s, all Protestants formally read that as being a ban on contraception,” Dr. Carlson says, “and all Protestants held to the Christian convention that birth control was sinful, for the same reason and in the same way abortion was.”
But that consensus “started to break down in the 1920s,” Dr. Carlson says. The Church of England accepted birth control in 1930, and American Protestant bodies soon followed. As recently as “10 or 20 years ago,” Mr. Santorum’s rejection of birth control “would have been an immediate no” for nearly all Protestants.
Today, however, even those evangelical Protestants who use contraception ”” the vast majority, it would seem ”” have developed a cultural respect, in some cases a reverence, for those who do not.
Read it all.
Mark Oppenheimer–Many Evangelicals See Something to Admire in Candidates’ Broods
From the beginning of Christian history until the 19th century, the teaching held that contraception was sinful, says Allan Carlson, the author of “Godly Seed: American Evangelicals Confront Birth Control, 1873-1973.” “ ”˜Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth’ ”” until the 1920s, all Protestants formally read that as being a ban on contraception,” Dr. Carlson says, “and all Protestants held to the Christian convention that birth control was sinful, for the same reason and in the same way abortion was.”
But that consensus “started to break down in the 1920s,” Dr. Carlson says. The Church of England accepted birth control in 1930, and American Protestant bodies soon followed. As recently as “10 or 20 years ago,” Mr. Santorum’s rejection of birth control “would have been an immediate no” for nearly all Protestants.
Today, however, even those evangelical Protestants who use contraception ”” the vast majority, it would seem ”” have developed a cultural respect, in some cases a reverence, for those who do not.
Read it all.