Thursday, December 15, 2005

pro-creationists?
One of the unsettling things about working on my new blog (explanation here) is reading through the strange proclamations/ideas/personalities that make up the conservative religious world on the way to finding actual stories and writings that are relevant to the website. Sometimes conservatives are correct on church-state matters; sometimes they are the antagonists in the story. Either way, I have to keep up with them, for better or for worse. Most of the time that means reading stories that qualify as neither, and moving on.

So yesterday I read this and just had to scratch my head:
A Southern Baptist leader previously on record as saying it is a sin for married couples not to have children has added a new rationale--demographics.

In a Nov. 27 Chicago Tribune story about married couples choosing to remain childless, Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said he sees such a decision as violating God's will. "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 [not having children] ought to be falling short of the glory of God. Deliberate childlessness defies God's will," he said. Instead of being worried about overpopulation, as many of the deliberately childless couples say they are, Mohler said he is more concerned about under-population.

"We are barely replenishing ourselves," he said. "That is going to cause huge social problems in the future."
I know the population of the world is growing. I know the population of the U.S. is growing. Who, exactly, is the "we" that "are barely replenishing ourselves"? I think I know. I think you do too.

No comments: