Baptist Leaders Call For Larger Christian Families

Well, it's about time. Joe Carter over at First Things Blog reports that Southern Baptist leaders are calling on Christians to have larger families. He notes that the president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary writes:


"Southern Baptist leader Daniel Akin is concerned about declining baptism totals, a benchmark used by the denomination to gauge the effectiveness of missions and evangelism. To fix the problem he proposes that the denomination focus on ten “commitments” including committing to biblically healthy churches, sound biblical preaching, and . . . having more babies."

Other Southern Baptist leaders who have called for larger Southern Baptist families include Al Mohler, the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Russell Moore, the Academic Dean at Southern. Joe Carter writes:


"Over the past few years, one of the hot topics in evangelical bioethics is whether the Catholic Church hasn’t been right all along about contraceptive use being a sin. And on the popular level, the pro-natalist quiverful movement has exploded within churches and homeschooling circles.

Soon when you see a family with a dozen children you may find yourself thinking, “Oh, they must be Baptist.”

I don't think we are anywhere near that point yet. But it is true that as the culture of death takes hold in North America, as it has already done in Europe, any family of larger than two children will look "large." This does raise the question, "Should Christians have larger families?" My answer is "yes" and in the next post I will give a brief list of reasons why I think so.