Protestants and contraception

Last semester, a young man from the Catholic Campus ministry at ULL came to my office wanting to know what Methodists throught about contraception. He was writing a paper for a class on the subject of contraception and one of his campus ministers suggested that he come talk with me for an alternative view.

I explained to him basically that The Book of Discipline, in the Social Principles, contains official guidelines for social issues, but that (unlike the doctrinal and legal parts of the Discipline) they lack the force of Church Law. In any case, the Social principles don't really have much to say about birth control - except that we do not accept abortion as a means of birth control. So I did my best to offer a vague, situational, and "it's complicated" response to his question.

This is an issue of some interest to me because I feel it is likely that (as on the issue of divorce) Protestants in the West have by-and-large put the broader Christian ethical teachings on the back burner in favor of our own cultural assumptions (the Lambeth Conference famously flip-flopped on this issue after just a few decades).

As I began to read about this here and there, I learned that most of the anti-contraception laws that were struck down in the 50s and 60s had been put in place by the efforts of Protestant and Evangelical Church leaders in the 19th century. I began to wonder 'why are the Roman Catholics the only major US Christian group that holds this view today?'

One Sunday School teacher at the Methodist Church I attended in Dallas used this issue in passing to explain the four-fold way of theology (Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience), saying "For example, the Roman Catholic position on contraception is simply not reasonable" without offering much further explanation, since it was (I suppose) self-evidently the case in her view.

I remember immediately wondering how well aquainted with Roman Catholic positions, or with ecumenical Tradition this person was. In my experience most Methodists are not very well aquainted with either (one reason the four-fold way of theology doesn't usually work for us - another is a tendency to assert that something does or does not "contradict reason" without doing the harder work of step by step logical analysis to back up that assertion).

From my barely cursory familiarity with Roman teachings on the body and sexuality, my impression was that they were generally much more thought out, deeply rooted, and internally coherent and intrinsically beautiful than Protestant teachings on sex which rarely go beyond "before you do it, first get in a Biblical marriage covenant." The Book of Discipline seems to stammer even in saying that much, though the Bible and the early Fathers do not.

I've been saying for years (and I said this to that young man who showed up in my office) that I need to just sit down and read Humanae Vitae, the papal encyclical that really articulated all this. I hear that John Paul II's Man and Woman he created them: A theology of the Body is also very good.

I know lots of Protestants are beginning to take interest in the theology of sex and reproduction, and Roman Catholic sources are usually more advanced intellectual touchstones for this (the rapidly rising profile of Homosexuality in our pop-culture in recent years is perhaps forcing us to think these things through more than we are accustomed to). I got to thinking about all this recently because I ran across this article at Duke Divinity School's website about Protestants who are taking interest in Roman Catholic teachings on 'natural family planning.' Now I'm not saying that I am endorsing a Roman position on contraception. At present I am not. But I am asking the question.

What about you guys? Have you given much theological attention to sex and contraception? Have you read Humanae Vitae? Do you feel threatened by the suggestion that the Roman Catholic Church might be right about some of this stuff? Are the historic Protestant Churches (Methodists, Anglicans, Lutherans, etc.) prepared to have a serious biblical and theological discussion on these issues even if it means taking positions that are at odds with our culture?