From the beginning of Christian history until the 19th century, the teaching held that contraception was sinful, says Allan Carlson, the author of \u201cGodly Seed: American Evangelicals Confront Birth Control, 1873-1973.\u201d\u009d \u201c \u201d\u02dcBe fruitful and multiply and fill the earth\u2019 \u201d\u201d until the 1920s, all Protestants formally read that as being a ban on contraception,\u201d\u009d Dr. Carlson says, \u201cand all Protestants held to the Christian convention that birth control was sinful, for the same reason and in the same way abortion was.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
But that consensus \u201cstarted to break down in the 1920s,\u201d\u009d Dr. Carlson says. The Church of England accepted birth control in 1930, and American Protestant bodies soon followed. As recently as \u201c10 or 20 years ago,\u201d\u009d Mr. Santorum\u2019s rejection of birth control \u201cwould have been an immediate no\u201d\u009d for nearly all Protestants.<\/p>\n
Today, however, even those evangelical Protestants who use contraception \u201d\u201d the vast majority, it would seem \u201d\u201d have developed a cultural respect, in some cases a reverence, for those who do not.<\/p>\n