Does Episcopalianism today look anything like what we read about here? Would an Episcopalian from 1931 PECUSA recognize 2008’s TEC?
Where will your church be in 20 years? What about 50? What about 78?
Which Church (like Jesus who is “the same yesterday, today and forever) is advocating the same, no matter how unpopular?
From TIME magazine:
Monday, Jan. 26, 1931
Birth ControlThe American Birth Control League invited 30 Protestant Episcopal bishops to its convention in Manhattan last week. Not one bishop appeared, although their Triennial General Convention at Denver next September is certain to consider birth control in echo to the last Lambeth Conference of bishops of and affiliated with the Church of England, which discreetly approved the movement (TIME, July 14 & Aug. 25). Nonetheless there were several preachers of various denominations among the 200 delegates who attended the convention. Also-present were a few doctors. Conspicuously absent were women who revel in tales of their own childbearing, women too prudish to discuss procreation in any manner, Catholic women obedient to the Pope’s denunciation of any hindrance to conception (TIME, Jan. 19). Last week’s meeting lacked the vigor of previous conventions. Some speakers interpreted the Pope’s denunciatory encyclical as favorable to birth control. “It paves the way for the inevitable fight over what is one of the most important biological findings in history”—Professor Julian Sorell Huxley of London. Other speakers and a formal resolution politely denounced the recent White House Conference on Child Health & Protection (TIME, Dec. 1) for not mentioning birth control at all. Dr. Ira Solomon Wile of Manhattan called the White House Conference “a total, a complete and excellently devised demonstration of an ostrich policy. This is unjust to the ostrich, however, as it does not bury its head quite so deeply.” Otherwise the birth controllers were placid. They reiterated an old boast that their movement has been endorsed by various sectional conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Congregational Churches of Connecticut, the Universalist “General Convention, the American Unitarian Association, the Lambeth Conference. During ten years of formal organization Birth Control has developed an American League, state leagues in Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Pennsylvania; local groups in California. Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, Maryland. North Carolina and Ohio; a Committee for Federal Legislation on Birth Control: and 58 big-city clinics for contraceptive advice.
Where will you be in 78 years?
May 4, 2008 at 8:05 pm |
It seems it was Episcopalian woman, Margaret Sanger, who fought all her life to propagate birth control all over the world. She established the first birth control clinic in America in 1916.
May 5, 2008 at 3:26 am |
Lambeth Conference anyone? This seems to be the logical conclusion doesn’t it?
May 5, 2008 at 4:13 am |
Off topic, but isn’t that pic of the Presiding Bishopess hysterical? The hilarious Christopher Johnson refers to her hat thingy as an oven mitt.
Now I can’t look at that pic without thinking “oven mitt.”
ROTFL!
Diane
May 5, 2008 at 4:13 pm |
C Johnoson was in rare form on that post he did.