Hopeful Signs in the SBC

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A Southern Baptist Turns Catholic on Birth Control

available at http://blogs.theledger.com/default.asp?item=2388560

Contributed by Cary McMullen - Posted: June 11, 2009 1:56:14 PM

See the following excerpt:

Danny Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., has attracted a good bit of attention lately in Southern Baptist circles as the primary author of a proposal called the Great Commission Resurgence, intended to shore up flagging membership and baptism numbers.

One of the points in that document calls for Baptists to have "gospel-saturated homes that see children as a gift from God and as our first mission field." That's a pretty generic statement that most Baptists would go along with, but apparently, Akin has in mind larger families.

Associated Baptist Press reports that Akin said in an April 16 chapel address, "Southern Baptists have been seduced by the sirens of modernity in a very important place. We have been seduced in how we do family and how many we should have in the home." Akin recalled a former missionary who declared that birth control is a sin and said, "You say, 'What are you saying?' I'm saying you need to have a bunch of kids. It has a missiological motivation."

For a more extensive article on this same post, see http://www.churchexecutive.com/newsprint.asp?print=1&mode=4&N_ID=1938

For an earlier related post see http://lutheransandcontraception.blogspot.com/2009/04/different-denomination-same-story.html

For a related video about a Southern Baptist seminary professor who delivered a sermon at the seminary chapel which included a message against birth control, see http://www.swbts.edu/dashboard.cfm?dateString=20081007&dateToLoad=October%2007,%202008