First Things: Anderson: The Quiverfulls and the Future

Excerpt: "But have you heard about the students at Princeton? Frustrated with the sexual chaos on campus, they founded the Anscombe Society, named for the Cambridge philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe, author of the famous essay “Contraception and Chastity.” Without appeals to revelation or authority—that is, by human experience and reason alone—members of the Anscombe Society are making the case on the Princeton campus for chastity, authentic feminism, and traditional marriage. And I believe that thinking through the case for traditional marriage may be a key element in the reevaluation of attitudes toward sex even within marriage.

All these groups have got me thinking. Although contraception was rejected as intrinsically immoral by Christians—Eastern and Western, Protestant and Catholic—for centuries, the juggernaut created by the invention of the anovulent birth control pill in the early 1960s drew hardly a word of criticism from Christian leaders. Yes, the Vatican made a ruckus; but no one listened, least of all Catholics. Now, after several generations, some Christians are beginning to reexamine the fruits of the pill. And for the Quiverfulls, the fruit is so sour that they have responded with a complete rejection of any human family planning. Of course, the Quiverfulls are a minority. Most Christians continue to accept contraception as morally legitimate. Some, like Southern Baptist theologian Albert Mohler, take something of a critical stance, while not going so far as to reaffirm the traditional Christian teaching that contraception is intrinsically immoral. But other prominent groups of Christians are propounding traditional orthodox doctrine: See the United States Catholic Bishops’ statement released last month, “Married Love and the Gift of Life.”

As people continue to see the bad results of the sexual revolution, they are likely to reevaluate their current attitudes toward sex, and while doing so they may find that the logic of human sexuality leads right back to traditional Christian orthodoxy. Might the continued push for same-sex “marriage” and the normalization of homosexuality prove to be the tipping point, the catalyst for a widespread reexamination of Christian sexual practice? Might these issues push the envelope so far that, as faithful Christians reflect on the reasons why they must conclude that homosexual acts fail to embody the truth of human sexuality, they come to realize that these same reasons entail the immorality of contraception? (For the moment I’ll assume that anyone entertaining this line of thought has already concluded that premarital and extramarital sex likewise fail to embody the truth of human sexuality.)

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