This was such a fascinating reflection. I've found the Catholic Church's firm teachings on sexual morality and abortion to be proof of her divine origin.
Thanks for commenting and sharing! I had the same experience, but didn’t realize the extent of this confirmation until I started reading “Defenders of the Unborn” by Daniel K. Williams. That is where most of the quotes are from.
Oh, cool! Sounds like a book I would enjoy. My love for apologetics began in college when I became involved with Students For Life. It eventually extended towards Catholicism in general, but I'll always have a special attachment towards fighting abortion.
From my limited exposure to Daniel Williams, whom I respect, I think he is pro-life himself, but otherwise writes from a place on the evangelical left.
The late, great Fr Richard John Neuhaus, back in 1968 when he was still Lutheran, wrote,
"The pro-abortion flag is being planted on the wrong side of the liberal/conservative divide"
By which he meant, according to his longtime associate, Joseph Bottum, "It ought to be those heartless conservatives who want to define the fetus as a meaningless lump of tissue; it ought to be caring liberals who want to expand the community of care to embrace the unborn."
And I think this sentiment would resonate with Dr Williams. Hope you enjoy his book. I have a copy, and also of another one he wrote on the Religious Right generally, but have yet to get to these
Really enjoyed this piece. I hope you know the can of worms you have opened up, but hope (even more) that you keep digging and following where your discoveries lead you. (In the wish that you do) I'll be reading.
I had the same thought. It is interesting that even with Catholic adoption of liberal ideas being high, I think the practicing Catholics are covering a lot of ground but also its pull on tradition is likely to see people come back to it after they have their “prodigal” phase.
But that is speculative. Might have to look into it more.
Sir, I think you need to get out more, expand your understanding. You’re conflating both the believing and unbelieving varieties of Protestants. Liberal Protestantism is a whole other religion, doubting or denying all the Cardinal doctrines of the Christian Faith, the Virgin Birth, miracles, the Resurrection and on and on.
The believing variety, under labels like fundamentalist and evangelical, have their own problems, and about half of the latter seem to be marching slowly or quickly right out of the fold to join with the liberal Protestants, as “exevangelicals” or “Progressive Christians.”
Can we perhaps have a narrower conversation about non-abortifacient forms of birth control, by pro-life, Bible-believing Christians, focus on them, without muddying the waters with apostates and what they might or might not do?
And no, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) was not pro-life in 1971, or later in 1973 when it welcomed Roe, because by then it was a liberal mainline denomination at the leadership level.
The Bible believers either kept their heads down or often made their individual churches independent. These were informally woven together in a network in the basis of their shared orthodoxy.
With great effort the SBC was subsequently dragged kicking and screaming back across the line of Biblical faithfulness. The liberals, who call themselves Moderates in Baptist circles, refer to this as a fundamentalist takeover, but mostly left to create the liberal Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, to replicate the liberal version of the SBC, with Jimmy Carter as a charter member.
For the historic division of Protestantism into separate parallel camps, believing and unbelieving (making the word “Protestant” absolutely useless as you’ve tried to use it here):
Thank you for reading and responding. I'll try to respond to these point by point:
1. The Protestant is loaded in terms of denying certain cardinal doctrines like you have mentioned here, but abortion and contraception are, I think part of that category. I grew up in a fundamentalist church, I know multiple theologically "conservative" protestant institutions, like the SBC, that would affirm all the things you mentioned but have never come out against contraception.
2. The argument here is that contraception at least appears to impact all groups, regardless of their beliefs on other orthodox doctrines (i.e. trinity, incarnation, virgin birth etc).
3. Abortifacients vs non-Abortifacients is not essential to the question of whether or not a "contraceptive" culture in Protestant Churches, especially the ones that we would consider conservative, is effecting their birth rates. The argument here is precisely to say that EVEN the conservative denominations adopt contraceptives by omission. This is why the Baby-Maker 3000 thought experiment is included. There are plenty of deeply conservative Protestants, and I have spoken with them personally, that would be willing to say that technology is ok to use.
4. The SBC is still liberal on contraceptive use. They have not come out and condemned it. Furthermore, while the SBC did condemn IVF (which kills more babies than abortion every year according to pro-life groups), Ted Cruz had said he would "fight to the death" to protect a families right to IVF.
5. I'm familiar with the conservative resurgence and I worked closely with individuals during my time in seminary that were intimately involved with that fight. Some of them went on to hold the office of President of the SBC. The point I'm making here, is that you can be as conservative as you want on scripture's inerrancy and abortion, but if you don't get rid of contraception, it appears that your birthrate will plummet and lead to your extinction.
I agree that I can do more research on the subject. One thing I wanted to included was a chart around birthrates within religious groups, but I may save that for the next article on the subject.
In the mean time, I myself would not say the article is not sufficient to draw the conclusion that contraception is the "cause" of the decline. I merely wanted to point out that historically, there is a parallel between when Protestants institutionally accepted contraception and the decline in their numbers according to several statistical outlets. I only included Gallup for brevity, but there are others out there with the same trend lines. Around 1943, you have widespread acceptance of contraceptives. Within a generation, the decline begins to occur.
In short, there is probably a combination of factors, but hopefully I will tackle those in more depth in the future.
Again thanks for your thoughtful feedback, and hopefully there will be more thoughtful back and forth in the future.
You didn’t ask me to edit your piece, but I think you somewhat threw a whole kitchen sink of correctives, but somewhat at the wrong targets.
Behind or within that you wrote lies a contention that even non-abortifacient forms of artificial birth control are illicit, or stated another way, sexual expression must be open to life, and that this is a truth, one that non-Catholics need to confront and embrace. Fine! While I’m open to hearing counter arguments, I tend to agree.
But, let me lovingly suggest, your essay today wanders around quite a bit into irrelevant territory.
Your starting point is that people identify as Protestant today in greatly fewer numbers.
So:
• First, thats a percentage, so doesn’t even show that absolute numbers are dropping (although they well may be)
• Second, it may be that Protestantism, however defined, is growing by leaps and bounds, but people are using other labels for themselves, identifying as Pentecostal, Presbyterian or simply Christian, so again, even if absolute numbers were dropping, we can’t, without further argument, backed by data, tie this to declining birth rates.
• As I pointed out, the term “Protestant” is used to include effectively post-Christian people and groups whose churches are declining even when having children, because congregants are fleeing them to find Biblical faithfulness elsewhere. The Jesus Movement is a great example. Bible believing churches boomed in the 1970s, even as the supposedly hip, “relevant” liberal ministers saw their flocks decline
• Overwhelmingly Bible believing Christians are pro-life, and thus immediately receptive to ceasing from birth control methods they learn are abortifacient.
• Even within the believing contingent of Protestantism, there are those who are keener on their faith, are more thoroughly people of the Book, and these are pro-natal, because God is, and have lots of children on principle, filling big vans in proportions similar to their Latin Mass Catholic counterparts
• I’m not sure how Senator Cruz is relevant to this discussion. His recent betrayal of the pro-life position is not a reason to reject the scientific fact that life begins at conception, it’s a reason to reject Senator Cruz
1. Glad we agree. Just one clarifying point: I never made the argument that contraceptives were illicit, but merely pointed out that the impact of contraceptives is a lower birth rate in the general population so we should not be surprised that this trend would be part of the largest subset of Christians if they welcomed it. I am planning to write more on why it is illicit, so stay tuned.
2. I don't think its irrelevant based on the amount of engagement it generated. That is a good indication a topic or argument is relevant, but to be clear, relevance is not a test for truth.
3. This is going to address the bulk of your comments. First, Bible-Believing Christians do use contraception and believe it is a matter of "individual conscience". John McArthur said, "In our viewpoint, birth control is biblically permissible." He's about as much of a conservative protestant as you can get.
Senator Cruz was referenced as a public figure who is affiliated with the conservative wing of the SBC and is a representative of the denomination in public politics, although that seems to have changed since his comments on IVF and the SBC condemning the practice.
In the 1970s, Norman Geisler, one of the most conservative, brilliant, and orthodox protestants you will find, and founder of the seminary that I attended, argued for both abortion and contraception in his ethics text from 1971. Geisler would become a key fighter in the turn back to conservative values and Bible-based Christianity. Eventually, he would rewrite his ethics text and remove the arguments for abortion after science caught up. But as far as I know, he never amended his arguments for contraception.
In the end, Protestantism is declining, all the data shows this, you just have to be willing to look. If you have other research that points this out, feel free to share it, I just haven't seen it. Regardless, the low birth rate is having an impact on ALL religious groups, so it's not a leap to point out that it may have the largest impact on the group whose most conservative and famous influencers from the 1970s to the present, led them to adopt the practice that would ultimately lead to fewer births among their ranks.
Since we agree, (1) we can go straight to your 2., about relevance: if you conflate unrelated categories to prove causation when yet other factors you don’t address are in play it just makes your argument(s) unconvincing. Your conclusion might well be true in the real world but your arguments and data would never get you there
Your 3. Again, your premises don’t get your conclusion. Catholics using NFP or just going to sleep instead are using birth control. Now do I think that MacArthur has more than NFP in mind? Almost certainly, but for the purposes of making an argument, “birth control” is still not the same as “artificial contraception.”
• I’d not associated Ted Cruz with the SBC. I thought his roots were Pentecostal.
• Geisler and your seminary: you went to SES? We have more to talk about!
• “Protestantism is declining:” with all respect and even affection I must say I’m still puzzled that you still want to lump in those who deny the truth of the Christian Faith with those who embrace it. True, the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church U. S. A., the United Church of Christ and other liberal denominations lack a Pope just as much as their believing counterparts do. This is what is important about them? Organized atheist groups also lack a Pope. Are they Protestants too? 🤔
You can't demand that the author redefine his terms to make his thesis false. 'Protestant' and 'birth control' have specific meanings in his article and those meanings are in line with his conclusions. If you want to quibble about the meaning of protestant and birth control, such a thing is doable, but it has no bearing on his thesis.
Just kidding. My stance was that his use of “Protestant” encompasses groups known to be shrinking because they are losing parishioners, even as others grow by leaps and bounds. Just look at the chart: the robust growth of religious “Nones” almost exactly mirrors the decline of “Protestants.”
If you didn’t know any better (and you wouldn’t) you’d think all the Nones are the former Protestants, it looks about like a 1:1 ratio of losses to gains.
This is a problem for his thesis that contraception is what is responsible for “Protestant” decline, since the Nones are even likelier to be infertile, or even anti-natal.
This was such a fascinating reflection. I've found the Catholic Church's firm teachings on sexual morality and abortion to be proof of her divine origin.
Thanks for commenting and sharing! I had the same experience, but didn’t realize the extent of this confirmation until I started reading “Defenders of the Unborn” by Daniel K. Williams. That is where most of the quotes are from.
Oh, cool! Sounds like a book I would enjoy. My love for apologetics began in college when I became involved with Students For Life. It eventually extended towards Catholicism in general, but I'll always have a special attachment towards fighting abortion.
From my limited exposure to Daniel Williams, whom I respect, I think he is pro-life himself, but otherwise writes from a place on the evangelical left.
The late, great Fr Richard John Neuhaus, back in 1968 when he was still Lutheran, wrote,
"The pro-abortion flag is being planted on the wrong side of the liberal/conservative divide"
By which he meant, according to his longtime associate, Joseph Bottum, "It ought to be those heartless conservatives who want to define the fetus as a meaningless lump of tissue; it ought to be caring liberals who want to expand the community of care to embrace the unborn."
And I think this sentiment would resonate with Dr Williams. Hope you enjoy his book. I have a copy, and also of another one he wrote on the Religious Right generally, but have yet to get to these
Really enjoyed this piece. I hope you know the can of worms you have opened up, but hope (even more) that you keep digging and following where your discoveries lead you. (In the wish that you do) I'll be reading.
Thank you, sir! God bless!
Yes. Authority is key.
However, if you compare Catholic birth rates to Protestant birth rates broadly, you see the same trends.
Why is this?
I’d also like to see data that supports the idea that birth rates are more important than “evangelization.”
I had the same thought. It is interesting that even with Catholic adoption of liberal ideas being high, I think the practicing Catholics are covering a lot of ground but also its pull on tradition is likely to see people come back to it after they have their “prodigal” phase.
But that is speculative. Might have to look into it more.
Thanks be to god.
The Catholic Church will take ya! :)
They did take me 😇
Sir, I think you need to get out more, expand your understanding. You’re conflating both the believing and unbelieving varieties of Protestants. Liberal Protestantism is a whole other religion, doubting or denying all the Cardinal doctrines of the Christian Faith, the Virgin Birth, miracles, the Resurrection and on and on.
The believing variety, under labels like fundamentalist and evangelical, have their own problems, and about half of the latter seem to be marching slowly or quickly right out of the fold to join with the liberal Protestants, as “exevangelicals” or “Progressive Christians.”
Can we perhaps have a narrower conversation about non-abortifacient forms of birth control, by pro-life, Bible-believing Christians, focus on them, without muddying the waters with apostates and what they might or might not do?
And no, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) was not pro-life in 1971, or later in 1973 when it welcomed Roe, because by then it was a liberal mainline denomination at the leadership level.
The Bible believers either kept their heads down or often made their individual churches independent. These were informally woven together in a network in the basis of their shared orthodoxy.
With great effort the SBC was subsequently dragged kicking and screaming back across the line of Biblical faithfulness. The liberals, who call themselves Moderates in Baptist circles, refer to this as a fundamentalist takeover, but mostly left to create the liberal Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, to replicate the liberal version of the SBC, with Jimmy Carter as a charter member.
For more on the Baptist struggles:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Baptist_Convention_conservative_resurgence
For the historic division of Protestantism into separate parallel camps, believing and unbelieving (making the word “Protestant” absolutely useless as you’ve tried to use it here):
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist%E2%80%93modernist_controversy
Thank you for reading and responding. I'll try to respond to these point by point:
1. The Protestant is loaded in terms of denying certain cardinal doctrines like you have mentioned here, but abortion and contraception are, I think part of that category. I grew up in a fundamentalist church, I know multiple theologically "conservative" protestant institutions, like the SBC, that would affirm all the things you mentioned but have never come out against contraception.
2. The argument here is that contraception at least appears to impact all groups, regardless of their beliefs on other orthodox doctrines (i.e. trinity, incarnation, virgin birth etc).
3. Abortifacients vs non-Abortifacients is not essential to the question of whether or not a "contraceptive" culture in Protestant Churches, especially the ones that we would consider conservative, is effecting their birth rates. The argument here is precisely to say that EVEN the conservative denominations adopt contraceptives by omission. This is why the Baby-Maker 3000 thought experiment is included. There are plenty of deeply conservative Protestants, and I have spoken with them personally, that would be willing to say that technology is ok to use.
4. The SBC is still liberal on contraceptive use. They have not come out and condemned it. Furthermore, while the SBC did condemn IVF (which kills more babies than abortion every year according to pro-life groups), Ted Cruz had said he would "fight to the death" to protect a families right to IVF.
5. I'm familiar with the conservative resurgence and I worked closely with individuals during my time in seminary that were intimately involved with that fight. Some of them went on to hold the office of President of the SBC. The point I'm making here, is that you can be as conservative as you want on scripture's inerrancy and abortion, but if you don't get rid of contraception, it appears that your birthrate will plummet and lead to your extinction.
I agree that I can do more research on the subject. One thing I wanted to included was a chart around birthrates within religious groups, but I may save that for the next article on the subject.
In the mean time, I myself would not say the article is not sufficient to draw the conclusion that contraception is the "cause" of the decline. I merely wanted to point out that historically, there is a parallel between when Protestants institutionally accepted contraception and the decline in their numbers according to several statistical outlets. I only included Gallup for brevity, but there are others out there with the same trend lines. Around 1943, you have widespread acceptance of contraceptives. Within a generation, the decline begins to occur.
In short, there is probably a combination of factors, but hopefully I will tackle those in more depth in the future.
Again thanks for your thoughtful feedback, and hopefully there will be more thoughtful back and forth in the future.
Alright, back to my real job :)
S i r ~
Quickly (my “real job” has its demands too):
You didn’t ask me to edit your piece, but I think you somewhat threw a whole kitchen sink of correctives, but somewhat at the wrong targets.
Behind or within that you wrote lies a contention that even non-abortifacient forms of artificial birth control are illicit, or stated another way, sexual expression must be open to life, and that this is a truth, one that non-Catholics need to confront and embrace. Fine! While I’m open to hearing counter arguments, I tend to agree.
But, let me lovingly suggest, your essay today wanders around quite a bit into irrelevant territory.
Your starting point is that people identify as Protestant today in greatly fewer numbers.
So:
• First, thats a percentage, so doesn’t even show that absolute numbers are dropping (although they well may be)
• Second, it may be that Protestantism, however defined, is growing by leaps and bounds, but people are using other labels for themselves, identifying as Pentecostal, Presbyterian or simply Christian, so again, even if absolute numbers were dropping, we can’t, without further argument, backed by data, tie this to declining birth rates.
• As I pointed out, the term “Protestant” is used to include effectively post-Christian people and groups whose churches are declining even when having children, because congregants are fleeing them to find Biblical faithfulness elsewhere. The Jesus Movement is a great example. Bible believing churches boomed in the 1970s, even as the supposedly hip, “relevant” liberal ministers saw their flocks decline
• Overwhelmingly Bible believing Christians are pro-life, and thus immediately receptive to ceasing from birth control methods they learn are abortifacient.
• Even within the believing contingent of Protestantism, there are those who are keener on their faith, are more thoroughly people of the Book, and these are pro-natal, because God is, and have lots of children on principle, filling big vans in proportions similar to their Latin Mass Catholic counterparts
• I’m not sure how Senator Cruz is relevant to this discussion. His recent betrayal of the pro-life position is not a reason to reject the scientific fact that life begins at conception, it’s a reason to reject Senator Cruz
Thanks for commenting and the sub! I’m sure we will engage more in future posts.
Sorry for the delayed response.
1. Glad we agree. Just one clarifying point: I never made the argument that contraceptives were illicit, but merely pointed out that the impact of contraceptives is a lower birth rate in the general population so we should not be surprised that this trend would be part of the largest subset of Christians if they welcomed it. I am planning to write more on why it is illicit, so stay tuned.
2. I don't think its irrelevant based on the amount of engagement it generated. That is a good indication a topic or argument is relevant, but to be clear, relevance is not a test for truth.
3. This is going to address the bulk of your comments. First, Bible-Believing Christians do use contraception and believe it is a matter of "individual conscience". John McArthur said, "In our viewpoint, birth control is biblically permissible." He's about as much of a conservative protestant as you can get.
Senator Cruz was referenced as a public figure who is affiliated with the conservative wing of the SBC and is a representative of the denomination in public politics, although that seems to have changed since his comments on IVF and the SBC condemning the practice.
In the 1970s, Norman Geisler, one of the most conservative, brilliant, and orthodox protestants you will find, and founder of the seminary that I attended, argued for both abortion and contraception in his ethics text from 1971. Geisler would become a key fighter in the turn back to conservative values and Bible-based Christianity. Eventually, he would rewrite his ethics text and remove the arguments for abortion after science caught up. But as far as I know, he never amended his arguments for contraception.
In the end, Protestantism is declining, all the data shows this, you just have to be willing to look. If you have other research that points this out, feel free to share it, I just haven't seen it. Regardless, the low birth rate is having an impact on ALL religious groups, so it's not a leap to point out that it may have the largest impact on the group whose most conservative and famous influencers from the 1970s to the present, led them to adopt the practice that would ultimately lead to fewer births among their ranks.
Since we agree, (1) we can go straight to your 2., about relevance: if you conflate unrelated categories to prove causation when yet other factors you don’t address are in play it just makes your argument(s) unconvincing. Your conclusion might well be true in the real world but your arguments and data would never get you there
Your 3. Again, your premises don’t get your conclusion. Catholics using NFP or just going to sleep instead are using birth control. Now do I think that MacArthur has more than NFP in mind? Almost certainly, but for the purposes of making an argument, “birth control” is still not the same as “artificial contraception.”
• I’d not associated Ted Cruz with the SBC. I thought his roots were Pentecostal.
• Geisler and your seminary: you went to SES? We have more to talk about!
• “Protestantism is declining:” with all respect and even affection I must say I’m still puzzled that you still want to lump in those who deny the truth of the Christian Faith with those who embrace it. True, the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church U. S. A., the United Church of Christ and other liberal denominations lack a Pope just as much as their believing counterparts do. This is what is important about them? Organized atheist groups also lack a Pope. Are they Protestants too? 🤔
You can't demand that the author redefine his terms to make his thesis false. 'Protestant' and 'birth control' have specific meanings in his article and those meanings are in line with his conclusions. If you want to quibble about the meaning of protestant and birth control, such a thing is doable, but it has no bearing on his thesis.
Why, I can demand anything I want!
Just kidding. My stance was that his use of “Protestant” encompasses groups known to be shrinking because they are losing parishioners, even as others grow by leaps and bounds. Just look at the chart: the robust growth of religious “Nones” almost exactly mirrors the decline of “Protestants.”
If you didn’t know any better (and you wouldn’t) you’d think all the Nones are the former Protestants, it looks about like a 1:1 ratio of losses to gains.
This is a problem for his thesis that contraception is what is responsible for “Protestant” decline, since the Nones are even likelier to be infertile, or even anti-natal.
My two cents
So I feel somewhat
Lol
Maybe not extinct but definitely losing ground. I wonder sometimes if the Protestant experiment as a whole has run its course.
Agreed.