Every sperm is sacred, every sperm is great
If a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate
Let the heathens spill theirs on the dusty ground
God shall make them pay for each sperm that can’t be found
Crazy fundamentalist pastor Steven Anderson recently grabbed a good deal of attention by demanding women stop using birth control and go back where they belong, the kitchen. Here are some of his gems:
Anderson pointed out that God, in the book of Genesis, had made childbearing painful to punish women for their Original Sin, adding that the husband “shall rule over thee.”
He goes on to quote genesis 3:16.
Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
According to Anderson, birth control is wrong, because it stops the pain that comes with labor, as God wishes it should (no word on what he thinks about obstetric pain control). He went on to add another biblical violation the the list of birth control’s sins: it allows women to decide their priority is not to “get married bear children and guide the house”, which is against 1 Timothy 5:14.
I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully.
The rant is pure gold and, while I cannot embed it, I fully recommend watching it in full.
Now, while it is certainly true that this extreme position does not represent evangelicals’ view on birth control as a whole, it is far from their first blanket condemnation of it. It is noteworthy that while the Catholic church opposes birth control use on a doctrinal basis, this doesn’t apply to protestants, as the Monty Python pricelessly point out. Yet according to the polls, when it comes to the faithful rather than the church, evangelicals have more extreme views than Catholics.
And while this maybe eyebrow raising, evangelicals have other views that are, if anything, even more puzzling: they are against health care for everyone if that means they have to pay higher taxes, do not want the government to be involved in decreasing income inequality, and attribute hard economic times to “the decline of the two parent (heterosexual, of course) family”.
Now, regardless of the merits of each and every one of these views, I just want to know what on earth they have to do with Christianity. Why do people who identify themselves not just as Christians, but strict followers of the bible, are opposed to paying for everyone’s healthcare? Didn’t Jesus himself say that you’re supposed to sell everything you have and give the proceeds to the poor (Luke 12:33)?
Which brings me to my pet hypothesis: today’s American evangelicalism is not a religion in the sense we tend to think. Ever since the days of the unholy alliance between Jerry Falwell and Ronald Reagan, it has resembled a right wing political movement more than a religion. Why else would they vote overwhelmingly for a man, according to their own doctrines, will spend an eternity in hell?
