A Tale of Two Penitents

I was reading John Bugay's discussion concerning Roman Catholic and Protestant disagreements over justification and sanctification, and this quote from Trent caught my eye and immediately caused me to think of a biblical passage. The Tridentine reasoning is below:

In the case of those who, having been justified, have sinned, the grace lost is restored, for the merits of Christ, through the sacrament of penance, which is provided as a second plank to rescue those who by sin have shipwrecked grace. the penance includes (a) sorrow for sin; (b) confession of all known sins – at least the desire to do so – to a priest having jurisdiction; (c) sacerdotal absolution; (d) satisfaction by alms, fasts, prayers, etc., and finally by purgatorial fires – which all avail for the avenging and punishing of past sins, as well as for the discipleship of the new life, and are meritorious satisfactions to divine justice, canceling the temporal punishments involved in the guilt of the sins for which they are undergone, the eternal punishment whereof having been freely and at once remitted, either by the sacrament itself, or by the honest desire for it. (Conc. Trent., Sess. 6, chaps. 14 and 16, and can. 30, Sess. 14, chaps 1-9.)

Contrast this with 1 John 1:7-10:

But if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we do not bear the guilt of sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous, forgiving us our sins and cleansing us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us.

Notice the simplicity of the scriptural means to be cleansed and the Roman Catholic means. If we say we are without sin, we are liars. So everyone sins. But if we confess our sins, Christ is faithful and righteous, forgiving us our sins and cleansing us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned . . .

In other words, this is about confessing with the mouth, not ritual deeds, and certainly not purgatorial fires. In other words, the Scripture indicates that one is cleansed at the point that (a) and (b) in the Tridentine path have been peformed; but Trent goes far beyond this in order to maintain its understanding of justification. The problem is that if this is all connected to the way you understand justification, and it's contrary to Scripture, then your understanding of justification is wrong. If that's the case then Rome is wrong, and the Roman Catholic Church is a false church, preaching a false gospel.

Repentance is an acknowledgement of sin that brings about confession, i.e., saying that we have sinned. And this is the biblical pattern of repentance. Remember the sinner and the publican? The publican lists off all of the types of things that make up Roman Catholic penance, but without the element of acknowledgment of sin and the confession thereof.  But the sinner lists nothing, only the confession of his sin. What does Christ say to that? The sinner went away forgiven rather than the other. The point being that penance is not jumping through a bunch of ritual hoops and deeds in order to regain favor with God, but in the sorrowful acknowledgment and confession of sin to the One who cleanses you (notice, Christ cleanses you, not the priest--although the Bible does say one can confess sins to other Christians and I have no beef with confessing sins to an elder so that he can affirm Christ's pleasure with you through your repentance).

Indeed, one might say that these things are done as a result of being forgiven, but that is clearly not what Trent is saying. Who burns in purgatory as a result of his forgiveness? The point is that these things bring forgiveness and satisfaction of God's justice to you. They are not things done in gratefulness as a response to forgiveness. Let's not muddy the waters that are clear here. Trent's position, which is the official Roman Catholic position on justification, teaches that all of this is necessary to cleanse us from certain kinds of unrighteousness (i.e., mortal sins), but the Scripture says that "all unrighteousness" is cleansed from us upon our confession of it. Ergo, Trent is in conflict with Scripture and Scripture therefore rejects the Roman Catholic view of justification.



I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are following a different gospel – not that there really is another gospel, but there are some who are disturbing you and wanting to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we (or an angel from heaven) should preach a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be condemned to hell! As we have said before, and now I say again, if any one is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let him be condemned to hell! (Gal 1:6-9)

The Brainwashing and Corruption of the Church, PART I

There is a great summary of the Bible’s warnings to not be conformed to the world in the song, “O Be Careful Little Eyes What You See.” The song is meant to bring out the idea that there are things in the world that are always at work against the truth. “O Be careful, Little Eyes, what you see. O Be careful, Little Eyes, what you see. For the Father up above is looking down in love. O Be Careful, Little Eyes what you see. O Be careful, Little Ears, what you hear. O Be careful, Little Ears, what you hear. For the Father up above is looking down in love. O Be Careful, Little Ears what you hear.”

Why does the Bible tell us we need to have our minds constantly renewed? Why does it command us to saturate our households with the word of God, to talk about it when we rise, when we walk on the road, when we go to sleep at night? Why do we need teachers to proclaim the Scripture by correcting, rebuking, exhorting, etc.? Why do we have a need to have spiritual songs that capture Christian theology sung to us by other Christians, to be in communion with God’s people who speak and sing out God’s wisdom? Shouldn’t it be the case that God just corrects our thinking once and we just think and live rightly from there? Why can’t I just read the Bible and say, “Been there, done that”? Why the need to be continually reminded and endlessly ponder its depths?

The short answer? Because we’re already having the religion of the world shoved down our throats night and day via all of these forms of media. In our culture, our biggest form of self religion is either practical atheism or deism. It is living in the absence of God that is modeled in our conversations, songs, counsel, etc. It’s not that everyone is teaching an explicit atheistic philosophy. Indeed, theoretical atheism is only for daring TV shows with higher ratings. As I’ve said before, most people don’t live in theoretical atheism, but everyone, including most evangelicals in the West live in practical atheism.

And the biggest culprit that has trained us (yes, “trained us”) to live as atheists? Television. Oh, television, as I said, doesn’t use explicit arguments that everyone should live in the absence of God, refrain from talking about God, etc. It just does it. It models for us what is the normative lifestyle. And the more we watch, the more what we see becomes normative in our minds. What departs from the normative lifestyle conveyed to us on TV is considered abnormal, radical, extreme, and just plain weird. It’s not a conscious decision we make to see it as normative. It’s subtle. It has worked itself into our grandparents households, our parents households, and into our households. Once normative, it was adopted and modeled within our schools, personal conversations, and even in terms of what we think in our own minds. Now, the household and the culture as a whole, whether watching any TV anymore or not, has taken over the task of conveying the absence of God in daily life as normative.

The recent article that argued that South American culture, once introduced to certain television shows, which conveyed concepts only through example, without explicit teaching on the subject (i.e., without presenting the theory), that one or two children is the norm, soon had a major effect upon the number of children people were having.

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2012/08/23/the-influence-of-tv-shows-on-cultures/?fb_action_ids=3945594911719&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=246965925417366

We gain our sense of the norm from culture, and so the more we vicariously experience life through others, the more we see those others as setting the bar.

To be sure, one show doesn’t change you from being one person to becoming another. That’s not how it works. One movie may get you to think about something, but it is what is presented as normative, without any explicit argument, displayed time and time and time and time again that sets a subconscious standard in our minds.

This is why atheism in our culture is largely practical rather than theoretical. Most people believe God exists, but God is absent from our daily routine, our daily thought processes. And why is that? Because He is absent from that which sets the standard for normative living and thinking.

Public schooling and the workplace only serve to reinforce this living in the absence of God, as God is not a part of the daily routine. Hence, even in our home life, it’s a struggle to incorporate God in, and when we do, He just seems like some extra addition to what is normative rather than the worship of our Maker being a part of the norm.

A big reason why TV (and movies, books, music, etc.) have such an impact is that we live vicariously through its characters, and so, as they are, so we are for the duration of the program. We’re a part of their world for that period of time. The more we live in their world, and their world is absent of God, the more our world will look like theirs and will be absent of God as well. 

Their morals will be our standards. If they kiss people who are not their spouses as the norm, that will be ours as well. If they have sex outside of marriage, even if we do not accept that theoretically, it will become the norm against which we are fighting in our theory.

Again, one program isn’t enough to do this. It needs to be a consistent influence to set the standard. The more and more we watch and enter those worlds that are absent of God, the more and more our culture will see God as additional to “real life,” and the worship of Him in a daily routine as abnormal.

This is what brainwashing is all about. It trains a society to think a certain way without allowing that society to think for itself by presenting the explicit idea as something to be examined critically. Instead, it just assumes the truthfulness of the idea and sets the stage accordingly.

To be sure, TV (and movies) is just a major vehicle through which we enter into alternate worlds and make them our own. If women and kids are the leaders on TV, and the men are a bunch of unthinking clowns who can’t grow up, over time, our society begins to look like that as well. Life imitating art, as they say. Here we see a major reason why that is.

Now, it is possible to enter into the television and movie experience with a critical mind and to inject the norm of Scripture, which to us who believe is true reality rather than the fabricated one adopted by our culture, into the program by thinking about what is said and talking about the reality presented in the program with one another; but who does this? Very few unfortunately.

But whether through television in our time or literature and song in previous generations, the call of the Christian in all cultures is to renew their minds, and so, to sanctify their bodies, set themselves apart as a living sacrifice for God. 

There is, therefore, an idolatry, a betrayal of God, that has taken place in our lives somewhat without our consent. And our current state may be a judgment of God upon a church that has made its norm a world that is not of God, indeed, that is absent of God and His standard, His norm, His reality. 

 Perhaps, we are like children playing in the ocean, who have drifted farther away from our marker than we realize, and are in need of swimming back to it. Only by setting our sights on the marker again will we be able to do so. And it is often a hard swim and struggle against the tide we have allowed to carry us away.

To the extent that we do not saturate our lives with the Word of God that changes our minds and prayer that conforms our wills and applies the Word to our lives, the constant and unrelenting, silent screams of implicit philosophies that wage war against the mind and heart will take their effect and bring us to the ruin of a pagan and hedonistic norm of fallen humanity. 

O Be careful, Little Eyes, what you see. Be careful little ears what you hear.

Therefore I exhort you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice – living, separated for purity, and pleasing to God – which is the service of your thinking. Do not be conformed  to this present world,  but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may test and approve that which is the will of God – what is good and well-pleasing and perfect. (Rom 12:1–2).

 

Why the Leaders and Theology of the Emerging Church Are So Attractive to Younger Evangelicals

It was bound to happen. The emerging movement is softer and gentler in tone, more nurturing, at least in the eyes of our culture, than traditional evangelical churches, its more inviting, more inclusive, and has far less of a disciplinary tone to it. This isn't a movement that is some sort of reformation caused by reading the Bible more thoroughly. Indeed, one might say that certain passages are read more thoroughly where others that would give, perhaps, a harsher and more exclusive tone to the movement are dismissed or rejected or simply unknown.

So what is it that is so attractive about its leaders and theology? You might think the leaders themselves because of their theology; but it has become very clear over the years that the theology of the leaders is irrelevant to the movement. It's the tone, and any theology that supports the tone, that is attractive. This isn't a movement under submission to commands and proclamations, but a discussion. You know, like you'd have with your mom.

And that's precisely why it's so attractive, because it's feminine, motherly. There is no father to be found. Indeed, fathers aren't welcome.

Over the course of the past century, various societal elements have worked hard to destroy the father within all of our institutions. First, the feminine is lifted up to equal his status. He cannot rule the household, for that is an ancient caveman course of thought to us. He cannot discipline his children, for that is too harsh and may emotionally damage the child. He must share leadership with his wife. On TV, he is the idiot. The woman is the smart, sensible one. He is just a bundle of emotion and immaturity. She is mature and level headed. The true leader, according to television sitcoms, is the woman. If a man actually asserts his role, he quickly cowers for daring to forget his place. If one asserts his role without cowering, he is seen as an authoritarian pig, who is a stuffy, close-minded blockhead, who doesn't understand the times.

Our culture does not like the father. The father is more harsh in tone. He instructs with commands and proclamations. He disciplines. He's intimidating.

However, our culture loves the mother. The ideal mother is never harsh, always accepting, always nurturing so as to not judge or be judgmental. She is inviting. She bakes you cookies. She is not as concerned about robust theological thinking unless its a concern about the caveman father who is locked away in his traditions and need for control therein.

Couple all of this with the fact that long hours, a 60% divorce rate, abandonment, and men having babies outside the marriage commitment and you have a new society of children that does not see the importance of the father as a leader in the home anymore. Hence, it doesn't see the father as important in the church anymore either. And the elder is meant to be a father to the church because he represents God as Father.

Those who would lead with a more feminine tone, therefore, will gain an audience here, but that tone must be maintained. Hence, there can be little to no traits of the father left in one's various forms of media through which he conveys the message. There can be little to no traces of fatherhood in one's message either.

Hence, what the younger evangelicals are attracted to are men who are more motherly, because they are attracted to the fatherless home, even if there are technically "fathers" within it. They just want their fathers to be more like their mothers.

This whole thing struck me while I was watching Rob Bell. I'm not meaning to make some sort of ridiculously superficial critique of appearance here, but most of the Emergent leaders who got this thing rolling are either very effeminate looking in their mannerisms and/or in their tone (and of course all in their theology). In fact, when I originally saw Bell for the first time, the volume on one of his Nooma videos was turned down, and I literally thought he was a lesbian. When it was turned up, I still had to listen a bit to figure out that he was a male. Now, again, I'm not trying to bash him, only to point out that his mannerisms, looks, tone of voice (and theology) is much more effeminate, and this may explain why he is such an attractive leader to the younger generation that has grown up without much, or any, respect for fathers actually being fathers/men.

The same can be said for many of the other Emergent leaders, if not in their tone, in their theology and ethics. And this may also explain why there is such a trend in the younger generation wanting young leaders as well, as younger leaders are brothers, not fathers. They are buddies, and are, therefore, less threatening.

I could say similar things to the movements theology. We don't like leaders who are fathers, because we don't think they reflect God as well. Why? Because we don't like God as Father either. Therefore, in emerging circles, God is much more gentle, non-judgmental, doesn't care as much about certainty of truth in his people, etc. than the God of the Bible who is clearly also harsh, judges even everlastingly, and sends people to hell forever who do not love the truth so as to believe it. We love God as mother, but not God as Father. We want God to bake us cookies, but not to command us to believe whether we get it or not, or discipline or punish us for not obeying.

God doesn't punish that harshly because a mother would never punish harshly; but a father would. God doesn't reject and exclude people who are viewed as threatening to the well-being of the family from joining the family because a mother is very inviting and hopeful; but a father sees a threat, and as protector of the household, will remove the threatening element. God is not a harsh warrior because the mother isn't, the father is. God does not draw boundary lines because the mother doesn't, the father does.

But the father is dying out in our society, and so the idea that God is Father is also dying out. Oh sure, we'll retain the title, but the role will be gone, and with it all of the aspects of God that distinguish Him from the false image our culture has crafted to place in His stead.

But it isn't only the Emergents, but what we look for in leadership in general today. Less men receive jobs when competing with women who are viewed as leaders. Less men receive scholarships because a woman who pursues academics is worth twice as much. If men want to compete, they need to become more like the woman, more effeminate, not more masculine. Likewise, even within other sectors of evangelicalism, the more less threatening a man is, the more he takes upon mannerisms that are effeminate, tones that are more motherly, theology that is less rigid, shies away from church discipline over most matters, the more he will be acceptable to the larger audience. To the extent that he is a father, that is where the conflict will come in. That is where he may lose his job as a pastor or not get it in the first place.

There is a reason why Joel Olsteen thrives, and it isn't because he has a profound message. It's because his message and its delivery are just what the audience ordered. They don't want fathers anymore. They want mothers in fatherly clothing.

So the movement is attractive because it is a movement that fits the zeitgeist. It's why we care more about tone than the content of what one is saying. It's why we don't like "those churches" that seem more harsh, critical, authoritarian, etc. We don't like them because we don't like fathers, and those churches are often run by fathers. As anyone will tell you, of course, fatherless families destroy children and mold them into golems rather than healthy, functioning adults. The church is no different. Without the father, chaos in thought and deed runs rampant, and as the description found in the Apocalypse describes the whorish church, it becomes "a prison of every evil spirit and unclean bird."

The father doesn't speak like the leaders in the emerging movement, because he doesn't have the god that the emerging movement has. His God is the One in the Bible who displays both masculine and feminine aspects, both father and mother, with the fatherly role leading the motherly one. He nurtures those who are His children when they repent, but commands obedience, speaks harshly to them and disciplines them in order to get them to that place of refuge and nurture. Without getting God as Father we never get Him as mother. That is the message of the Bible, and that is the message lost in our quest for a motherly leadership and a motherly theology. It was bound to happen.

"I'm Spiritual, Not Religious" Is a Cop-out

Yep.


http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/29/my-take-im-spiritual-not-religious-is-a-cop-out/?hpt=hp_c1

Review: Godly Seed: American Evangelicals Confront Birth Control, 1873-1973

Summary:

In Godly Seed: American Evangelicals Confront Birth Control, 1873–1973, Allan Carlson documents the change from a “no birth control” to “pro-birth control” mentality within the evangelical community.  In other words, he notes “how American Evangelicals, so defined, moved from fierce opposition to quiet affirmation of the practice of birth control” (11).

He  begins the book by stating:

For most contemporary Americans, contentious questions about birth control are considered a peculiar “Catholic” problem. With the use of contraceptives at some point being nearly universal among fertile adults (and quite common among teenagers as well) and with birth control enjoying a blessing of state and federal governments as the alternative to both “unwanted” births and abortion, only a minority of especially devout Catholics seem to be left to puzzle occasionally over the issue. Even their interest is commonly understood to be a consequence of medieval thinking codified in Pope Paul VI’s reactionary 1968 Encyclical, Humanae Vitae.

Mostly forgotten is the fact that, as recently as one hundred years ago, it was American Evangelical Protestants who waged the most aggressive and effective campaigns against the practice of birth control within the United States; Roman Catholics quietly applauded on the sidelines. It was Evangelicals who—starting in 1873—successfully built a web of federal and state laws that equated contraception with abortion, suppressed the spread of birth control information and devices and even criminalized the use of contraceptives. And it was Evangelicals who attempted to jail early twentieth-century birth control crusaders such as Margaret Sanger. All the same, by 1973—the year the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the abortion laws of all fifty states—American Evangelical leaders had not only given a blessing to birth control; many would also welcome the Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade as a blow for religious liberty. (1–2)

He then very briefly traces the position of the church on birth control from the Fathers to the Reformers, as they argued against both variations of Gnosticism (antinomian and ascetic) that moved against the act of procreation, and then proceeds to note that it was Protestants, not Roman Catholics, who led the charge against birth control throughout history, the last notable figure spearheading the crusade against it being Anthony Comstock, to whom an entire chapter is devoted, and who Carlson calls “the last and—in a certain respect—the greatest of  the Puritans” (15). 

After discussing the biography and amazing accomplishments of Comstock, as well as the uniformity of all Christendom (Evangelicals and Catholics and even the Social Gospel advocates alike) in what was clearly as much of a hostile environment when it came to sex as our current culture (with the exception of having much support in more civilized places within society as opposed to our current state which sees these things as normative for mainstream society and not just from within the lowest sectors of it),  Carlson moves on to discuss the part that the Post-Millennialism (the dominant view held by most American Evangelicals during the nineteenth and early twentieth century), combined with an Anglo-Saxon ethnocentricism, played in the acceptance of birth control in society as a whole.  

Carlson argues that this idea, that society was moving, and needed to continue to move, toward a majority of evangelical Christians led to the idea that, although wrong for evangelical Christians, who were largely Anglo-Saxon, stunting the now growing population of other religious and irreligious groups, which were largely made up of the immigrants coming into America, was a part of the work of the kingdom—thus sanctioning the use of birth control for those groups.

Furthermore, birth control had been “silently” accepted within evangelical circles largely due to three main shifts in thinking within the movement: 

1.      The removal of marriage from an understanding that saw it as a sacred event under God.

2.      The Protestant emphasis on the individual that eventually overshadowed seeing the family as the “germ cell” of society and lifted up individual concerns over that of familial ones.

3.      The move from defining marriage as primarily for purposes of procreation , and instead, emphasizing the institution as one which was primarily meant to foster companionship.

On the last point, Carlson comments:

While innate to understandings of Christian marriage since at least the time of Augustine, the mutual relationship of husband and wife was always linked, or even subordinate, to procreation. Over the course of the nineteenth century, though, Protestant writers tended to give more emphasis to the companionship ideal. Typical was George Weaver’s The Christian Household, published in 1856: “The grand idea of companionship is unity, and companionship is perfect just in the degree that unity is secured.” Procreation and the nurture of children subtly gave way to a focus on the moral, physical, psychological, and intellectual development of the couple. In turn, this tended to legitimate sexual pleasure as an end in itself, making companionship “a significantly receptive value for conception control” (63).

He also cites an article which noted the shift in attitude within our society when it came to parents with large families. It stated that “once such fathers and mothers [of large families] were considered by the wise, the good, and the great as public benefactors; but now their conduct is not only questioned and censured, but by some they are regarded almost as human monsters” (64).

Hence, despite the call to advance the purity of culture through evangelization and procreation, most nominal Christians had so practiced various forms of birth control that the population that was made up of the descendents of the Puritans was reduced to an “insignificant minority” (67), a phenomenon among these evangelicals that Carlson notes soon gained the designation “race suicide” (68).

The answer of some of these leaders was to elevate the conditions of the lower masses and reduce their population.  Carlson notes that this essentially was to “open a crack between Protestant and Catholic leaders and theologians on the birth control question” (75). 

Carlson ends his chapter by concluding that “the Christian consensus on the sinfulness of birth control (other than through abstinence) was subtly undermined by Strong’s new ‘law of population’.  Margaret Sanger would soon discover how to widen that fissure into a virtual canyon, and so transform America” (Ibid.).

On that note, he begins his discussion of Margaret Sanger and her role in dividing the church over the issue. Sanger grew up in an atheistic, feminist, and socialist home, where her father despised Roman Catholicism especially. She originally, and this perhaps displays her movements raison d'être, argued that women needed to be freed from men, and that children bound women to men. They needed to have the same ability that men had to have sexual pleasure without the consequence of a child that would hinder their advancement within society. She would argue that women shouldn’t give any more slaves to society, and that they ought to have no masters and no gods. She was heavily anti-religious at first, but then realized that her dream of having birth control legalized and widely used by all women would never be realized in a largely religious society if she was marginalized for her atheistic stance. Hence, Carlson argues that she used prior animosity and fear of a Roman Catholic Empire to gain evangelical Protestant support. She largely pretended that this was only a Roman Catholic issue of domination and that the Protestants were largely on her side. In point of fact, as Carlson notes, no Protestant denomination supported her, and all formally condemned the use of birth control as evil. He states that “another of Sanger’s brilliant strategic techniques was simply to ignore Protestant writers, preachers, and churches that continued to denounce birth control. By demonizing the Catholic Church alone . . . by claiming to defend the Protestant conscience from Roman oppression, she left the impression that Protestants were on her side, in apparent hope that this would become a self-fulfilling prophecy” (87).

This would change when, using another commonly held belief among Protestants concerning their post-millennial hopes, she argued in favor of the use of birth control as a vehicle to bring about those hopes through eugenics. Most Christians at this time were heavily in favor of the eugenics movement in order to bring about a more civilized, Christian race and usher in the kingdom of God. As such, her arguments soon won favor among the parachurch organizations that had largely mobilized for those purposes. Carlson points out that Sanger, the founder of the American Birth Control League (later joining together with the Birth Control Federation of American, otherwise known today as Planned Parenthood) had a direct hand in this change of thought within these groups, and would have a direct hand in the sudden turnabout of the Anglican Church concerning the issue at the 1930 Lambeth Conference, where Carlson states: “So ended the 1,800-year-old consensus on birth control” (103).

But he further notes that the vast majority of Protestants in America still rejected the practice as evil. Heated debates broke out between liberals and conservatives within all of the mainline denominations over the issue. Carlson further notes that the evangelicals, who were now called “fundamentalists” due to their adherence to distinctive doctrines that fought against the modernity adopted by liberalism, were largely silent (with the exception perhaps of institutions like Moody Bible Institute). It wasn’t until a major noted leader of fundamentalism moved toward a more conservative-liberal hybrid position, now ironically called “neo-evangelicalism,” even though its ethical positions began to be in conflict with the mindset of historical evangelicalism, that we begin to see a turn within evangelical denominations toward a pro-birth control stance. The name of that leader was Billy Graham.

In his chapter entitled, “Birth Control in the Age of Billy Graham,” Carlson notes that most evangelicals condemned birth control as evil until around the 1960’s when hysteria over apocalyptic visions of an overpopulated world were once again at the fore. He notes that the turnabout in an article published by Christianity Today in 1968 that argued that contraception was not only morally acceptable, but was even a good to be performed.

But Carlson notes that it was “at a decisive moment” that “[Billy] Graham would also enter the debate over birth control” (117).  Carlson recounts that Graham woke up in the middle of the night to craft a magazine that would “give theological respectability to evangelicals” (118). That magazine, born with the help of Carl F. H. Henry in 1956, would become Christianity Today.

Carlson notes two important background issues that contextualize the move toward accepting birth control (and abortion) as legitimate: (1) Neo-evangelicalism during this period became identified with the “American way of life,” and by this time, many Americans in secular but conservative culture had adopted a more “family planning” mindset. The fact that the movement had become amazingly, in the words of Martin Marty, “theologically inclusive and ethically disengaged” likely explains the popularity of Graham as the representative of the movement (Ibid.) With the advent of the Draper Report that argued that family planning should be a part of American development aid programs, to be more respectable within American society and politics was to advocate the same. Hence, neo-evangelicalism followed suit. (2) The neo-evangelicals now emphasized a radical distrust of institutional authority, relied therefore more on parachurch organizations to feed them their beliefs on issues due to a new and more radical form of sola Scriptura, which excluded all other authorities rather than just set it up as supreme. By doing this neo-evangelicalism was able to reinterpret passages for its own culture and shake hands with those within the Protestant mainline who had come to accept birth control (now called “family planning” in order to put a better face on what constituted the intent of the practice) as morally legitimate and a matter of “responsible parenthood.”

 

When society had become hysterical with reports that the world would soon be overpopulated, leading to starvation, wars, and many other unimaginable horrors, neo-evangelicals considered it just as much of a crisis as did anyone else. This fear was necessary to move them to adopt the practice as something that would stay the hand of such an apocalyptic vision.

What follows in Carlson’s book is an account of one denomination falling after another to societal influences that originally caused the mainline liberal churches to adopt these practices, only for evangelicals, abortion would be included as that which was considered morally responsible together with other forms of birth control. Carlson summarizes by saying that the neo-evangelical argument now became one where “the two purposes of the sexual act were ‘separable’ and, in a way, procreation became subordinate to companionship” (124). Seeing relationships in this way, then, allowed one to argue that there was no moral obligation to have as many children as God gave him, or even have children at all, since marriage could rightly be fulfilled by a healthy companionship with one’s mate instead [Note that, although Carlson does not point this out, this is the argument that seeks to legitimize homosexual marriage as well].

Carlson writes that many evangelical leaders began to say that the Bible said nothing toward the issue, and therefore, it fell under the category of Christian liberty. There was also a conscious effort to re-read the Bible in light of the imagined crisis of overpopulation in order to look for a legitimization of the sexual act separated from its procreative function.

Billy Graham, therefore, concluded in an interview with the New York Times that there was nothing wrong with using birth control and it was very much needed across the globe in order to fight the crisis of overpopulation and its terrifying and tragic effects. Soon after, Graham and Henry began to use their magazine to paint a neo-Malthusian picture of the contemporary world and the absolute need for birth control. This became an obsession, particularly for Henry, who believed it would be, not communism, but overpopulation that would destroy America. Carlson notes the irony that “in an odd way, evangelism was blurring into birth control” (128). Indeed, Carlson notes that the world had gone mad with overpopulation paranoia, so much so, as to affect even a liberalization within the Roman Catholic Church as well.

Therefore, in 1966, an article by TEDS professor John Warwick Montgomery, sought to “lay out a case for a distinctive New Evangelical acceptance of birth control” (130). As is often typical amongst neo-evangelicals, Montgomery took the middle ground between Catholics and secularists to be the balanced position. His argument was essentially to argue against the lex naturalis as having the ability by itself to convey a normative ethic and then to argue that Genesis 1–2 was not the central marriage passage in the Bible, but instead, Ephesians 5 had replaced it as center. Hence, it was not to be seen in terms of a union primarily for the purposes of procreation and family, but primarily as an analogy of Christ’s relationship with His Church. Hence, the Christian can pursue birth control as a means to subduing the earth for Christ, as marriage is fulfilled as a love relationship.

Carlson notes that evangelicals pointed to Montgomery’s article as the new justification for using birth control. Indeed, based upon Montgomery’s argument, the response in an editorial in Christianity Today to Humanae Vitae argued that “the Bible says clearly that marriage alone sanctifies sexual intercourse.” They rejected the notion that the goal of procreation legitimized the sexual act, and the millennia old interpretation that Onan was killed for his use of a contraceptive method. As Carlson notes, the novelty of the new evangelical  interpretation went unnoted by the editorial.

Carlson also notes a haunting statement by Billy Graham in his response to the encyclical: “In general I would disagree with it . . . I believe in planned parenthood” (133).

Carlson further alludes to Christianity Today’s continual war to advocate for the use of birth control among Christians by using the same tactic used by Sanger in downplaying that Protestants had opposed the practice for the previous 450 years as well. Instead, it was merely presented as a Catholic issue.

Carlson notes a string of scholars who now began to argue for the pro-birth control side, marked by a special symposium that included arguments from Bruce Waltke, Paul Jewett, Kenneth Kantzer, and a host of other evangelical leaders. They argued that the Bible did not prohibit the control of reproduction, including the use of abortion; and instead, that its use might even be the means through which we subdue the earth.

Here Carlson notes something of which most evangelicals are unaware. The fear of overpopulation and the desire to be respected by mainstream America, together with the argument that the Bible does not explicitly condemn controlling birth, led most evangelical leaders to conclude that abortion was a perfectly acceptable practice. In fact, Carlson notes that most evangelicals were in full agreement and had nothing but praise for the decision made in Roe v. Wade. John Scanzoni argued that abortion was not the killing of a human being, but even if it was, there were perfectly acceptable cases in the Old Testament where one was justified in taking human life, the most notable cited as being a wanted child, which trumped the right to life.

Some arguments were made from genetics. Some from poverty. Some from Christian freedom. But all in the end concluded that there was ample justification for the Christian to use birth control and abortion as he or she saw fit.

Whereas people like Montgomery argued that abortion was murder, he believed that to be simply a Christian position that should not be pressed upon secular society through law, and that, therefore, abortion on demand should be legal with no stated limits (138).

At the same time, Carlson notes that some were distorting the ethics of Luther and Calvin in order to gain a hearing amongst the more conservative Lutheran and Reformed elements of the church, and they argued that love was the very essence of marriage for the Reformers, not procreation and family. Carlson notes how completely incorrect this truly is.

Carlson notes that the conclusion of many evangelical leaders that contraception and abortion are permissible options left up to the individual Christian conscience had made Margaret Sanger’s victory complete. But a question one woman asked of the subsequent articles in Christianity Today that followed the previous symposium is sobering: “Why was the question of God determining and limiting the number of children in a given family of believers not mentioned even once in the articles on contraception and abortion?”

Carlson notes the irony that the evangelical view, far from being in the middle, was even more liberal than that held by the more liberal mainline churches at the time. He states that the mainline churches at this time condemned abortion, sterilization, and emphasized the covenantal nature of marriage that should seek children when it can. The evangelicals, by contrast, attempted to legalize abortion, embraced sterilization, and emphasized freedom of self conscience in the gospel to do as one sees fit.

The next argument that Carlson makes as his reason for above is even more sobering. The neo-evangelicals, who thought their foe was Roman Catholicism, were actually encountering a far more threatening belief system: Christianity’s ancient foe, the sexual anarchy of the Gnostics.

Carlson now turns to his final chapter where he discusses the fact that neo-evangelicalism, in its adoption of Sanger’s position, has returned to a Gnostic view sexuality. In fact, he notes the eerie uses of Gnostic terminology in court decisions determining the privacy of marriage the right not to procreate therein. He notes that, by 1972, the courts essentially removed “the substance of publically sanctioned marriage and its grounding in the natural law” (150). Finally, in 1973, the abortion laws of all fifty states were swept away at the applause of many evangelical leaders.

Here Carlson notes the work of Harold O. J. Brown, Francis Schaeffer, and C. Everett Koop, who successfully convicted neo-evangelicals finally to condemn abortion. The free sexuality with which evangelicals had flirted was stayed by arguments condemning abortion and gay marriage. However, as Carlson notes, “at the same time, though, contraception or birth control was rarely—if ever—discussed. The implication was quiet approval. In short, following a delay of several decades, Evangelicals had followed the Protestant mainline in this accommodation to the new sexual order” (155).

Carlson ends his book by noting that there may be roots of a return within evangelicalism to the position that all of Christendom has held from the beginning. He states that “thousands of Evangelical young adults have renounced the use of birth control—even the rhythm or natural family planning method—and have placed decisions regarding family size back ‘in the hands of God’” (159).

 

My Thoughts:

I enjoyed this book thoroughly. In fact, as soon as I got it, I could not put it down. I, of course, am well acquainted with the subject, but even I was unaware of many of the leading figures who had sold out on the subject. Carlson’s book is more descriptive than prescriptive, as it is a history, not an ethical treatise. Still, there are so many things he notes in the book that should give any evangelical today pause in his or her use of contraception, I can’t but help feel that this book is a great argument against the use of contraception in and of itself. I highly recommend it, not only because it serves to give an understanding of the history of evangelicalism’s modern relationship with contraception, but also because it ties all of that in to the movement’s larger shifts in thought throughout the past century and a half.

In a day when sexual ethics are still at the forefront of most conversations, what is needed is more, not less, understanding of how we got where we are today in our thinking about the sexual act. Carlson’s book fills a gap, even one in my own book (as I only very briefly cover this period), that is very much welcomed by anyone who would free his mind from the enslavement of our sexually-antinomian culture.