The Reverend Al Mohler is the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY. Reading his words gives you an indication of what is being taught there to ministers in training. He attended the church I grew up in, but he was after the right wing "hijacking" (as I call it)...I was before it happened.
I left the Baptist church when they called the Iraq invasion a holy war, and since that time I can see their words objectively. I am no longer that pre-teen girl who told a very fine man that, yes, he would go to hell if he were not saved. I often wonder what he thought of me after that. I guess you could say I see them clearly now.
The wedge issue of contraception has become of their major issues. Here is part of what Al Mohler had to say.
Can Christians Use Birth Control?
He uses the term "contraceptive mentality".
First, we must start with a rejection of the contraceptive mentality that sees pregnancy and children as impositions to be avoided rather than as gifts to be received, loved, and nurtured. This contraceptive mentality is an insidious attack upon God’s glory in creation, and the Creator’s gift of procreation to the married couple.
At his blog in 2010 he wrote about Time Magazine's cover and article on The Pill.
The Pill Turns 50 — TIME Considers the Contraceptive Revolution
Gibbs is particularly adept at pointing to the Pill’s significance. It “rearranged the furniture of human relations in ways that we’ve argued about ever since.” It was “the first medicine ever designed to be taken regularly by people who were not sick.” The Pill became “the means by which women untied their aprons, scooped up their ambitions and marched eagerly into the new age.
Nothing wrong with that at all. Except....
The Pill turned pregnancy — and thus children — into elective choices, rather than natural gifts of the marital union.
I look on that as a good thing, he does not.
“Go back a hundred years,” Mohler says. “The biblical idea you’d have adults who’d intend to have very active sex lives without any respect to the likelihood of children didn’t exist. And it’s now unexceptional.
Mohler believes that planning to not have children is an affront to God.
Southern Baptist leaders on birth control.
"I am trying to look at this from a perspective that begins with God's creation," Mohler said. "God's purpose in creation is being trumped by modern practices."
"I would argue that it ought to be falling short of the glory of God. Deliberate childlessness defies God's will," he said.
"..."First, we must start with a rejection of the contraceptive mentality that sees pregnancy and children as impositions to be avoided rather than as gifts to be received, loved, and nurtured. This contraceptive mentality is an insidious attack upon God's glory in creation, and the Creator's gift of procreation to the married couple."
More from the same link:
The Southern Baptist Convention is reacting after News 8 showed a message from a Southern Baptist preacher teaching Fort Worth seminary students that the birth control pill equals murder.
In a controversial sermon to students at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. Thomas White, acting as the student services vice president this month, preached that birth control is murder and called attempts at family planning selfish.
"Some of you are involved in that exact same sin," he said.
Well-known Baptist minister Richard Land modifies the position a little. But, Land said he ultimately agrees with Dr. White on the subject of the birth control pill.
"The Southern Baptist Convention is not opposed to the use of birth control within marriage as long as the methods used do not cause the fertilized egg to abort and as long as the methods used do not bar having children altogether unless there's a medical reason the couple should not have children," he said.
There were some wise words in 2009 from Rev. Bill Leonard, dean of the Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, N.C.
Southern Baptists look for cures to stagnation
"I think in many ways, the Southern Baptist Convention mirrors the Republican Party in that they have cultivated such a narrow base," said the Rev. Bill Leonard, dean of the Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, N.C.
"They have to keep defining themselves to say to a new generation, 'Here's what we delivered you from,' because this new generation doesn't remember."
Those fights included whether to boycott the Walt Disney Co., forbidding women pastors, telling wives to "submit graciously" to their husbands and screening out would-be missionaries who pray in tongues, as well as public-square battles over abortion and homosexuality.
Akin, the 52-year-old president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., says the annual fights over hot-button theological or social issues aren't moving the next generation of Baptists.
Wise words, and I hope the leaders of that church started listening.