In a culture saturated with contraceptive messaging, one Baptist ethicist is encouraging Christians to reflect more deeply on the morality of birth control.
“It’s things like hormonal contraception,” Evan Lenow, associate professor at Mississippi College and director of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in Clinton, Mississippi, recently told Baptist Press. “The students say, ‘I didn’t even think there was even an issue to be considered here.’”
While students recognize abortion as morally wrong, they rarely consider the ethical implications of preventing pregnancy within marriage. Lenow argues that believers should reexamine assumptions about family planning.
“What I want to prevent from happening is just a wholesale acceptance [of the notion] that everyone should use contraception until they feel like now is the right time to have the 2.1 children we’re going to have,” he said.
Contraception is widespread. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 99% of sexually active U.S. women have used birth control, and 65% report using at least one form in the past year, the Baptist Press article noted.
Historically, many Christians opposed contraception. The article noted that the Catholic Church opposes all contraception except Natural Family Planning, teaching that every marital act should be open to new life.
Ethicist and moral philosopher C. Ben Mitchell, writing for the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) in 2022, noted believers “mostly avoided contraception until recently, welcoming children as a gift from the Lord and realizing that widespread use of contraceptives would inevitably lead to promiscuity.”
Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) resolutions have addressed the issue since 1934, initially opposing loosening federal restrictions, the article noted. Later resolutions objected to contraception for minors without parental consent but did not reject birth control entirely.
The SBC’s confession of faith affirms: “Children, from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord.”
Lenow warned against shifting from this view. “I would caution against saying, ‘this is not convenient, or I don’t need the burden of another child,’” Lenow said. “That shifts our perspective away from Psalm 127 [and] children as a blessing from the Lord, and we begin to view children as burdens rather than blessings.”
He also warned against commodifying children — weighing their cost against lifestyle goals like travel or luxury. He discouraged couples from settling on a “perfect number of children” and ruling out more after reaching it.
Still, Lenow acknowledged that postponing pregnancy may be appropriate in some cases, such as mental illness, financial strain, or unresolved medical conditions.
Medical professionals share Lenow’s concerns about contraception. Dr. Jeff Barrows, a pro-life OB-GYN and former senior vice president of the Christian Medical and Dental Associations, urged couples to avoid any methods that might harm a fertilized embryo.
“Life begins at fertilization,” the moment the egg and sperm come together to generate a new human life; methods of contraception should prevent fertilization rather than preventing a fertilized egg from implanting in a woman’s uterus and developing, Barrows said.
He encouraged couples to consult a pro-life OB-GYN to navigate questions about various forms of birth control and whether a certain type is embryocidal.
Lenow, meanwhile, says he hopes believers will simply begin the conversation.
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