Did Protestants Get Contraception Wrong?

but one of the things you have to do when you're running experiments is you have to. Run them in some kind of contained environment and then be very honest about reality.

Hey everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I am here with Phil Cottenoir. Phil, thanks for joining me today. My pleasure. So Phil and I, we've been getting to collaborate on various things. Phil, uh, has been helping with, um, different, uh, editing projects with my new book, The Ruling Household. And you can also read, um, some of the articles Phil is writing over at philcottenoir.

So some of you guys are very familiar with Neval. Some of you don't know anything about Neval. Some people think he's like the smartest guy alive. I've heard many people make that comment. Um, he's, he doesn't go on very many podcasts. He's kind of like a little bit of an elusive, uh, figure. Um, so when he pops up, it's always really interesting what he has to say.

And it changed the nature of the family. And now we're in this situation where you kind of had enforced monogamy in society before. Right? Uh, like and and if you had sex, you had a child, you needed two people to raise a child. You know, you didn't have washing machines, you didn't have cars or whatever, maybe, etc.

We're biologically hardwired for those bundles. So I would say, like, the happiest situation is if you have a happy family. If you're happily married and you got your kids and everyone loves each other, that's the best of all possible worlds. But that's so rare. Most people, you know, either fail trying to get to that, or they don't even want to, Take the risk, because if you try for it and you fail, there's so much downside that they sort of are opting into all of these alternative models.

You use the same rules that you have with the existing kid. So in that sense, it's probably, probably worked out. But if you tell people like, Oh, I'm going to have another kid. with my ex wife. Like, that triggers them, right, that breaks their mind in so many ways. And I think it's weird. Like, it's, it's fine.

You get outta jail out. Get outta I've, I've been holding that card in case I need it someday. It's like, well, you know, I wasn't gonna mention it, but now bring it up. , right. Put on a wig. Yeah. Okay. All right. So basically Naval is giving us kind of like, there's three different parts to his, his statement. The first part that really struck me was that the Catholic church was right. That contraception was the end of the family. Now, a lot of people are not aware that this was a position of the Catholic Church.

Um, children and women will suffer the most. I mean, it really described in detail everything that happened over the, the, the years after the 1960s and when the incontraception became completely ubiquitous, everybody just accepted it. And I, I don't hear this conversation happen very often in, in Protestant circles and, and, you know, you see this a little bit more in Catholic circles, but basically most Protestants have completely.

Of course, officially, although Catholics practicing Catholics by and large have no problem with contraception. Um, . Yeah. And so that's an important distinction. Yes. , yes. Yeah. The, the, the, the single, um, priests of the Catholic church are very against contraception. The, uh, the married families of the Catholic church, you know, it's very split and unless you're a very observant Catholic, you tend to be a little bit more, so that's his, the first part of his argument is the Catholics were right, and I a hundred percent agree with him, but this is not a conversation we're willing to have, especially within Protestant circles.

I think that's one of the things that people have to understand that because we've adopted the position in the West, that freedom is the highest value. Any technology that comes along and gives us freedom is unambiguously good. And any of the side effects of that are, are not, are no longer assigned to that technology.

But anyway, yeah, Phil, anything in that that you'd want to react to? I'm curious how, how that struck you. Yeah. A lot of thoughts. Um, I, I like, I like what you said so far. I think that's true. Um, you know, I, I actually don't know this guy, uh, Naval. I haven't seen him before. He's not in the circles of, of, of people that I've, I've listened to, but, um, So having a very limited exposure, I've just seen this two minute clip.

And he strikes me as a guy who's willing to basically question received wisdom, right? And he's saying, we've all been told that these are de facto good. And he's like, I look at the actual outcomes and I say, Hmm, I don't sign it. And, and, um, You know, evangelistically, I think the reality respecters are the most ready crop of people who are.

Yeah, to return to contraceptives, this is definitely something Protestants were mostly asleep at, at the wheel, um, when this came through. And I think the church, uh, largely analyzed it from an individualistic point of view and said, we can just leave this up to the individual conscience. The Catholic church took a more societal scale approach.

And there's a, there's a famous, um, Pope, uh, Pope, the sixth Pope, something, the sixth, um, I'm not, I'm not super versed in the Catholic stuff, but he wrote a, an encyclical called Humanitae Vitae. And, um, and it basically just made this, made this argument succinctly and powerfully. So you're saying that Protestants mostly aren't willing to have this conversation, and I think that's probably true, but I would say now more than ever, um, there is definitely among thoughtful Protestants, a willingness to say, okay, we, we, we really missed something here.

And it makes me think, you know, if you think of it as like four things, sex, love. covenant or marriage and children. And like at the most hedonistic approach, you just have sex separated from everything else. Then in the more sentimental sort of secular approach, you say, well, sex should always be coupled with love.

I. And in possible simulation theories and futures and time. I mean, it's just like, you know, they're, they're very, like, free thinking atheists, right? Um, but both of them feel like something radically crazy has been, has happened to the family. And I love your phrase of reality respecters, because I think there's a way in which if you And this is what's weird to me about the fact that as, as believers, we should be the ultimate reality respecters.

And so, you know, I, I'm not against the idea that maybe we can, um, in the modern world, find things that could improve, uh, and technologies, for example, that might help. Um, but one of the things you have to do when you're running experiments is you have to. Run them in some kind of contained environment and then be very honest about reality.

Like, and this is the way a lot of people are talking about family today. It's just, it's so rare. It's so unlikely that you'll find that person and that you'll have a healthy family that we need to attempt these choose your own adventure, alternative arrangements as, and I think that what we're not doing is necessarily saying, well, there are places in times in which, um, This does work.

And so I think that somebody like Naval, who's around a culture that has such a low divorce rate, Has the ability to say, well, it doesn't mean necessarily that this whole institution is bankrupt. It doesn't, but the further you get, and now of course, living in on the West of the West coast, you know, he had living his life in California, in Silicon Valley, being surrounded by alternative, hyper independent, hyper individualistic versions of the family.

You don't hand that freedom to the new young couple and say to them, Hey, um, I know that you've just gotten married. I know that you love each other. You're going to have sex. Um, but Whether or not you have children, whether or not you value children, um, that's completely up to you. There's no, there's nothing our faith has to say about that, that, about that decision.

Yeah. I mean, that's, that's a mindset that is absorbed from the wider culture and sadly absorbed pretty deeply. among a certain stream of evangelicalism. Um, I was just flipping through this before we started. Uh, this is a book called God, marriage, and family by Andreas Kossenberger.

And he says, we must start with a rejection of the contraceptive mentality. Contraceptive mentality that sees pregnancy and children as impositions to be avoided rather than as gifts to be received, loved, and nurtured. This contraceptive mentality is an insidious attack upon God's glory in creation and the creator's gift of procreation to the married couple.

You know, I first encountered it through Protestants and, but they were pointing to some Catholic resources and saying, yeah, we missed this. So it is a conversation that's taking place. But like I said, I don't think it's filtered down to the, to the masses yet because evangelicalism is also, it's so widespread and there's so many alternative, um, pockets in it that don't all share the same sort of, um, uh, tradition or, or thought leaders.

And so, I think all of these conversations around the family, it's been very difficult for Protestants not to get sort of sucked in to the culture. Um, and then discover 20, 30, 40 years into a experiment that we are, um, whoops, I guess, you know, that was actually a theological question. It wasn't a practical question.

You, um, you posted, uh, recently, um, a review of, uh, Gavin Ortland's book, What It Means to Be Protestant. Protestant, um, which I found your review to be really helpful. Um, and it got me excited about the book and I've been reading it and I'm like, Oh, this is so good. This is so needed. Like I'm, I, I, I enjoy reading, you know, books. So, I wanted to get, uh, your take on his just really brief statement here on his beef with the Protestantism. Okay.

And the, the offering there is that This is a strange offering the offering there is that that's possible It's possible for each person to operate as a center of divinity in the world And I believe that I don't believe that there is a more reliable truth than that And I also think that's true scientifically by the way.

You are a part of their tradition. He contrasts that with, um, more of a Catholic view of how the faith works, and he says it's more of how you live it out in the world, how you act out in the world, which, which is Aimed at what he describes as the imitation of Christ, and that, um, this tension exists between traditions that emphasize, like, and Protestants look at that oftentimes and say, well, that's sort of salvation by works, that's sort of like a, um, it's, it's, it's really, there's a collision between a focus on that as, as primary and the gospel itself, which is a, which is rooted in what, what, what we actually believe.

Uh, so, so yes, I think he's onto something. It's, this is Jordan Peterson and I've seen and listened to him enough to. To see I think It's kind of convenient for him to, you know, if we're going to weigh these things, right? The, the more propositional or, or theological intellectual approach of the faith versus the, the, the praxis, the imitation of Christ, the, the lifestyle, the being a little center of divinity for those around you.

I just don't think you should, the best Protestantism and the best, the best Christianity biblically has never allowed a division between these two things. And um, and so I would reject his framing of it a little bit, but he's onto something when he says that. You know, there's a stream, I think, especially coming out of a fundamentalism in the early 20th century.

And, um, and that is a gross distortion of a, of a thoroughly biblical worldview. Um, so that's what I would say. Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I, yeah, I think, I think keeping these two things together is really important. There has been a challenge that Protestants have had in overemphasizing the theory of the world.

Sorry, I interrupted you there No, that's perfect. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we have to, we have to keep these together, uh, and I, I really like your observation just about Peterson in general, that he has famously, um, been allergic to admitting to certain metaphysical beliefs because I think it immediately changes the category that people put him in.

And there's a wisdom in avoiding those Um, those attempts to get him to mouth certain metaphysical beliefs. But it comes at a really high cost and I think that you're pointing out that maybe one of the costs it's coming at is that he's incapable of understanding the importance of that as an initial step because he wants to endlessly exist in a world in which he does not have to make those kinds of those kinds of declarative statements of belief which allows him to really exist within the category of psychologist or academic and he's afraid that as soon as he mouths believes Um, that are overtly Christian, he's going to be categorized as a Christian, and there is a ghettoization of Christians that happens within the public conversation, and I think that you're immediately written off, and, and then you start to live inside of a exclusively Christian ecosystem in which, um, Peterson has really avoided this, he's, he's able to exist in a ghettoized environment.

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Um, it's been successful for him to obviously grow an absolutely massive platform. Though some people have observed recently that young men like Gen Z and stuff, they're, they're not listening to him as much. And, uh, they've moved on to other guys. Um, I don't know if that's true or not. Um, but for men, let's say about, about my age, millennial generation, I think.

He's like, I think my role is to, to be on the margins. So there's a, there's an interesting sort of self conception there that he sees his own role, in a certain way, which sort of precludes him. Joining a team and putting the sweater on, you know, so to speak, um, But I would say my observation is at scale, he has become a bridge where a lot of people, you know, who were far from any kind of Christian truth claims, uh, started to entertain them in a much more serious way because of his content.

And so, you know, now they've become totally irrelevant and they don't resemble, um, they don't really resemble the Bible or the Christian faith historically at all. Peter says a different thing. He, but he's like on the other side of the political cultural spectrum, right? He, he also rejects the miraculous or at least You know, navigates this ambiguous space where he won't commit.

He notices that These more traditional and biblical patterns are what actually help people and I think he's confused by that So I'm sort of started there. Why Jungian somebody who really appreciates Story, archetype, um, he began to explore the possibility that the Bible itself contains the world's best archetypes.

Was so rigid that by the time they began to really use those same tech tactics on the scriptures It just they couldn't salvage their faith And whereas I think I think that one of the things that's happening increasingly is people are just saying but why does it work? Why does Christianity work and why does the Bible have the patterns that work the best and why it's some of the most ancient Descriptions of those patterns like his new book that's coming out in a few days You Dawkins in his conversation says he references Cain and Abel over 300 times in his book, his new book, which I haven't read yet I can't wait to read it, but He's obsessed with that symbol, the archetype of the, of these warring brothers, and what it says about the nature of our current times.

And so I would say like, Um, intake of, of what he's proposing, uh, from the scriptures is, is, it can be an enriching experience as a believer. Um, but I just, yeah, obviously we can't follow him and everything that he's, that he's concluding about, uh, about these things. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks, Phil. I love getting to kind of dive into a little bit of the, you know, the, this sort of crossover between the way that these, especially ideas of family and marriage are being, um, are being kind of seen and recovered in some ways, especially when I see it pop out of the most unlikely places.