Quantcast
Channel: Hugo Schwyzer » Environmentalism
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 10

Babies, family planning, environmental stewardship and the needs of the preborn: the real roots of the culture war

0
0

Regular readers know that I tend to discourage my conservative commenters from derailing threads by questioning the very suppositions on which this blog is based. This is a feminist blog, for example, and one which seeks to explore various things from a feminist perspective. This is not a place to question whether the feminist lens is an appropriate one through which to see the world; similarly, a Calvinist blog which seeks to offer a Calvinist perspective on current events is not the place to question the essential tenets of Calvinism. This is why I read quite a few very conservative blogs, but rarely — if ever — comment there. I’m interested in what is said, but since I reject the fundamental premises on which their worldview is based, I don’t think I have much to offer to the conversation. It would be like insisting on speaking Finnish to a group which prefers to dialogue in Thai.

That said, reading all these blogs, I’m increasingly convinced that the core of the split between social conservatives and progressives in this country revolves around not abortion or gay marriage, but a more fundamental disagreement: population. Religious conservatives have become increasingly vocal about their desire to see larger and larger families; indeed, their arguments against abortion and gay marriage seem less couched these days in an assumption that these are intrinsic evils, and more in the language of concern that these practices pose a threat to the large families which the right venerates above all else. Hostility to feminism is surely a sine qua non of contemporary social conservatism, but reading what the pundits on the other side have to say, it seems more and more obvious that their hatred of feminism is rooted in the recognition that increased sovereignty for women over their own bodies is inextricably linked with the reasonable desire to not have, in Amanda Marcotte’s happy phrase, their “vaginas turn into clown cars.”

Feminists and environmentalists have formed common cause over the vital issue of family planning. Those who believe that the world’s resources are already over-taxed by humans whose behavior is frequently parasitic have allies in those who believe that women can and should be encouraged to find fulfillment in pursuits other than motherhood. The longer women wait to marry or reproduce, the less likely they are to have large families; the more opportunities we can create for women to pursue happiness outside the home, the greater the likelihood they will delay marriage and childbirth. The intersection of sound environmental policy and the campaign to give women the precious right of personal autonomy is a fortuitous one indeed! And almost to a man and woman, social conservatives despise this alliance, one which is changing family structures across the western world — and increasing the possibility for greater happiness for the earth and its creatures.

Here, replete with grammatical error on top of grammatical error, is a piece by David Goldman in First Things: What Should Conservatives do about Obamanomics? It takes the “we must have big families” argument to a new level, by suggesting that the collapse of the real estate bubble is due — wait for it, can you guess? — to, yes, birth control:

The first thing that conservatives have to tell Americans is: “You are poorer because you failed to bring up enough children. The decline of the traditional family is undermining the American economy.”

Right. Apparently, that’s why the countries with the highest birth rates, like Sierra Leone and Chad are so rich, and countries with among the lowest, like Sweden and Switzerland, are so desperately poor?

This isn’t the place to point out the risible foundations of the “we must have more babies or the world will collapse” argument. Plenty of economists have pointed out that the “growth” model can be replaced by a healthy “sustainability” model. The transition may be wrenching, but far less so than the apocalyptic impact on our planet of ever-growing voracious human appetites.

What I’m wondering — to get to the point of this post — is why religious conservatives are so eager to have large families? I get the economic argument (we need more future workers to maintain retired ones), but the churches were urging their flocks to “be fruitful and multiply” long before anyone thought up modern pension schemes, or modern feminism. Beyond the instinct to reproduce and survive, what are the theological roots of this obsession with making babies?

I know my Mormon friends believe, or so they tell me, that there are countless billions of “pre-born souls” wandering around up in the ether, each longing to be born. Thus, having a large family is an act not of irresponsibility but of self-sacrifice: parents give up their freedom in exchange for the satisfaction of helping as many of these pre-born souls as possible become incarnate. (My LDS friends, please tell me if I’ve misrepresented the idea.) Some of my friends in the Kabbalah Centre believe that in the Beginning, God created a “vessel” which then shattered into trillions of tiny sparks. Each of these sparks is a sentient soul, and each longs to be born into human flesh for the sake of reassembling the broken vessel and completing what in Hebrew is called tikkun olam, the repair of the world. Thus for Mormons and Kabbalists, family size limitation is selfish on an eschatalogical level — it delays the final redemption and robs the “pre-born” (the term sends chills down my spine) of their shot at participating in the glories of incarnation.

But my orthodox (small o) Christian friends are not permitted to believe these things. Roman Catholics certainly don’t teach of the eager pre-born multitudes; the Church is rightly wary of claiming knowledge of just how many souls there are. Indeed, in teaching that life begins at conception (as the magisterium now does), the Church argues against the possibility of a soul existing before that moment. Indeed, the current catechism speaks of the soul being created by God “immediately” at the point of conception – and from that moment forth, the soul is eternal. From that perspective, the obsession of some conservative Catholic pundits and clerics with fecundity is much more difficult to understand than that of the Mormons or the Kabbalists; in the Catholic view, there is no multitude in heaven of as-yet-unconceived babies desperate for a chance at life, wailing and gnashing their teeth at every swallowed pill and every unrolled condom!

So, my dear Catholic and evangelical friends — for I too am washed like you in the Blood of the Lamb, though I understand His call differently — feel free to weigh in here. What do you see as the prime reason for bringing the maximum number of children into the world? Is it simply to act in accordance with the instincts of nature? Is it in the hope of glorifying God by adding still more voices to the chorus which sings His praise? Is it the hope of creating a critical mass of believers so that the Messiah will return? Jesus is still tarrying with seven billion people running around, drinking the planet dry and driving species extinct; will He be more likely to return if we get to ten billion? Twelve? Or are you really closet Mormons, worrying about the “pre-born souls”, desperate to grow in a woman’s womb? Inquiring minds want to know.

I’ve spent many years trying to bridge the cultural divide. I’ve marched with pro-choicers and pro-lifers and then pro-choicers again. I’ve worshipped with conservative Pentecostals, and known that sudden shock of being “slain in the spirit.” I’ve engaged and wrestled with friends on both sides of the abortion issue, the gay marriage issue, the pre-marital sex issue. I’ve always believed that approaching a discussion with the cheerful willingness to hear, really hear, the hopes and fears of one’s opponents can make for surprising breakthroughs. I’ve always believed in the importance of making one’s case winsomely rather than rudely, irenically rather than ironically. But when it comes to the debate over family size, I wonder what common ground can be found; indeed, on this issue more than any other, I despair of ever finding a solution that will unite two radically different world views.

Yes, economists and environmentalists can disagree about the ideal number of human beings we should have on this earth. We can construct economic and resource models that serve to make our arguments with greater clarity and effectiveness. But our underlying world views are so profoundly different that I see no viable avenue for rapprochement. As a Christian, I await the return of Jesus. But I have a strong sense that while no one knows the time and the hour, He is likely to continue to tarry — perhaps for another ten thousand, or ten million years. I think about environmental policy in terms of preserving the earth for eons, because I expect it to be around for eons, or at the very least, feel called to act as if it will be around for eons. Some of my friends on the other side of the culture war suspect — or hope — that we are living in the end times. They have little reason to worry about the long-term carrying capacity of our earth, and our sensibly alarmist models about global warming and species destruction carry no weight with them.

For at least some anti-feminists, the rage against reproductive rights is rooted less in a concern for the preciousness of a single life and more in a philosophical conviction that having babies is at the very core of a woman’s raison d’etre. Feminism and modern liberal thinking, with their insistence that individual happiness is possible for both men and women without reproducing, distorts not only the “natural order” of things but robs all of Creation what conservatives appparently believe it desperately needs more of: human beings. Apparently, God as they understand Him wants ever greater multitudes to praise His name, and those who do not do their part to bring those multitudes into the world dishonor the very purpose of Creation. (It’s a bizarre view of God that assumes He needs this constant increase in praise.)

The God I believe in created the heavens and the earth because at the core of His being was love, and life is love made manifest. But that is all life, not just human life. That is the life of the oceans, the life of the fowl, the life of the invertebrates, the life of the fragile desert ecosystem. We humans are God’s stewards of that creation, called to tend the earth with reverence because we are called to understand that every thing that exists contains within it a spark of God. When we reproduce wildly without regard for how our presence impacts the other, equally valuable living sparks of God, we misunderstand and misuse His creative gift. God is in my daughter; God is in my chinchillas; God is in the rain forests; in all creatures great and small. Preserving and protecting the earth for all of them is doing His work; preserving and protecting the earth means having fewer of one particularly destructive species on it.

A smaller and less voracious human population is the best way for those of us with the power to be God’s stewards to honor his gift. And while empowering women to have sovereignty over their reproductive lives may lead to the occasional Nadya Suleman, such sovereignty will lead far more women to have two, or one, or no children at all. The goals of invididual autonomy and the needs of creation — of feminism and environmentalism — thus happily coincide.

Little wonder then that this issue, above all others, is at the root of the culture war.


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 10

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images