Bible against childlessness, a Southern Baptist warns

Does God care whether couples have children?

The Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., ever-controversial president of Kentucky's Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has stirred debate by asserting that it's "an absolute revolt against God's design" if husbands and wives purposely avoid bearing children.

American Jewish thinkers have expressed alarm about their community's shrinkage and conservative Roman Catholics hold pro-birth attitudes.

Secular columnist Mark Steyn predicts that much of what we call the West "will effectively disappear within our lifetimes" due to declining birth rates. Other analysts worry that declining births mean that eventually there won't be enough younger Americans to pay into the Social Security system.

Likewise, Mohler warned about "huge social problems" that lie ahead in commentaries for his Web site and his denomination's Baptist Press, and in subsequent media interviews. But his major concerns lie elsewhere.

To him, rearing children is both a God-given duty and "one of the most crucial opportunities for the making of saints."

Following Southern Baptist style, Mohler based his case on the Bible, saying it teaches that "marriage, sex and children are part of one package. To deny any part of this wholeness is to reject God's intention in creation — and his mandate revealed in the Bible."

"Couples are not given the option of chosen childlessness in the biblical revelation," he contended. "To the contrary, we are commanded to receive children with joy as God's gifts."

A favored Mohler proof text:

"Children are a gift of the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth. How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them" (Psalm 127:3-5).

A bitter response was written for ethicsdaily.com by Miguel De La Torre, a fellow Southern Baptist minister, alumnus of Mohler's seminary and father of two who teaches social ethics at the Methodists' Iliff School of Theology in Denver.

He protested that whether Mohler realizes it or not, his "full-quiver" theology is "white-supremacy code language advocating for the increase of white babies." Presumably, his fury stemmed from the fact that Mohler's Southern Baptist Convention is predominantly white. But Mohler urged childbearing upon all right-thinking Christians, not just whites or Southern Baptists.