by the Most Rev. Craig Bates, Patriarch
The recent debate about President Obama’s mandate to force religious institutions to provide insurance that covers contraception, surgical sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs has led many to discuss once again the whole area of human sexuality, marriage, reproduction, contraception and family planning. It is certainly not something that one could cover briefly, whether in a short piece like this or even in a sermon. The topic is vast, but, as vast as it is, something that every Christian should seriously consider.
It wasn’t long ago that the issue of family planning wasn’t even an issue for most couples. In the late 1950’s we began to see reports on the increase in worldwide population and those reports predicted mass starvation, economic collapse, and rampant disease pandemics all because there were too many children being born. Around the same time Planned Parenthood and its founder, Margaret Sanger — a known friend of the Klu Klux Klan and an advocate of the sterilization of people of color — became widely known and acceptable to the American Public. Planned Parenthood, riding on the fear of overpopulation, began pushing, along with politicians of both political parties, for smaller families. They insisted that smaller families would mean a better economic climate and indeed would increase the upward mobility of millions of people. The political climate was such that the government gave financial support to agencies like Planned Parenthood to help women in family planning. Since then, Planned Parenthood has not only dealt with family planning but, in providing free contraception, has become a number one provider of sex education for minors and is the largest abortion provider in America.
By and far, however, family planning, whether in regards to the size of the family or the spacing of children, became common practice with the development of the birth control pill. There was a great deal of controversy around the sale and use of the pill until, by a vote of 7 to 2 in 1965, the United States Supreme Court struck down a Connecticut law prohibiting the use of birth control in Griswold v. Connecticut. The Court held that the law was a violation of a married couple’s right to privacy. It was the precedent of a right to privacy set by Griswold v. Connecticut that laid the foundation for the ruling in 1973 (Roe v. Wade) that legalized abortion. It should be noted that nowhere in the Constitution, Declaration of Independence or any other founding document is the phrase “right to privacy” ever used.
John 10.10 also reminds us that the Church is in a spiritual war. This scripture tells us, particularly those of us in the North American Church, that the battle line is drawn between a post-modern, hedonistic, consumer driven, materialistic, contraceptive culture of death and the liberating, restoring, reconciling, eternal Gospel culture of life. This is an ancient spiritual battle that has crossed time and space, and it will be waged until our Lord – the giver of life – finally comes again to fully establish His Kingdom.
