G.

Brent McGuire
Seminary on Contemporary Theology
February 11, 2003
Hauerwas and Contraception
For nineteen hundred years the Church has opposed the practice of contraception.
Not until the 1930s did a Christian denomination ever sanction birth control, and the first
to yield were the Anglicans. Indeed, the Christian proclamation had until the Lambeth
Conference of 1930 involved a consistent rejection of the practice of contraception as
contrary to the will of God. But today most Protestant theologians consider Christianity
as having matured since the days in which the act of avoiding the gift of children was
regarded as sin. As even a leading Lutheran theologian has recently said, Were past
that.1
Enter Stanley Hauerwas, a Yale-trained professor of ethics who has taught at
Notre Dame and now sits as the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics in the
Divinity School at Duke University. Over the course of his career Hauerwas has had
much to say about Christian social ethics in general and the Christian attitude toward
children in particular. At a time when even the most conservative Christian church
bodies have acquiesced to the culture of contraception, the Post-Constantinian Methodist
Hauerwas dares to assert that the most decisive political practice for Christians is [t]o
be a community capable of having and raising children.2
The following essay seeks to explain Hauerwass argument for the Churchs
commitment to the having and raising of children, especially in light of his obvservations
concerning the crisis of the family. Afterwards, time will be given to an evaluation
1

Charles Arand, viva voce, July 24, 2001.

Stanley Hauerwas, After Christendom: How the Church Is To Behave If Freedom,
Justice, and a Christian Nation Are Bad Ideas (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1991), p.
131.
2

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Welcoming Children
Of Hauerwas published writings the most sustained treatment of the ethical
considerations surrounding procreation is to be found in his 2001 essay, The Radical
Hope in the Annunciation: Why Both Single and Married Christians Welcome Children.
There he expands on a theme that has been part of his thought at least since 1981 when he
stated in an essay entitled, A Story-Formed Community: Reflections on Watership
Down:
One of the most profound commitments of a community, therefore, is
providing a context that encourges us to trust and depend on one another.
Particularly significant is a communitys determination to be open to new
life that is destined to challenge as well as carry on the story.3
It is this thesis that the Church is to be a people capable of welcoming new life that
Hauerwas defends in his Radical Hope essay.
He begins by announcing the birth of his grandson, an event about which, he
supposes, many of his readers will not care. But as Christians they should. What
prevents Christians from welcoming children into the world Hauerwas traces to the effect
culture has had on the way even Christians think about the family. He then proceeds to
discuss two cultural forces that he considers most deleterious to the family.
The first development is that of the economic marginalization of the family. Here
Hauerwas turns to the man whose name is synonymous with capitalism, Adam Smith. In
his Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith argued that capitalist institutions would foster a
growing perception of the family as yet another exchange relationship. Heretofore
familial ties were so strong that the weakest members of a community were necessarily
dependent on heads of households and tribal chieftains; but in a free economy made safe
3

Hauerwas, Hauerwas Reader (Durham,.NC: Duke University Press), p. 114.

3
by a strong rule of law, there would emerge an increase in sympathy between strangers
and cooperative forms of behavior that had not previously been realized.4 As
Hauerwas writes elsewhere, the family, which was traditionally rooted in biology and
whose core function was to provide human continuity through reproduction and child
rearing, now becomes based on contract; its economic, political, and moral functions are
now severely weakened.5
That Adam Smith was prophetic, Hauerwas argues, may be seen today in most
contemporary social and psychological work. Indeed, the call from these quarters to
save the family often expresses disappointment in the familys failure to promote an
attitude akin to Smiths sympathy. Thus, social workers and psychologists are but
trying to cure the illness by infecting more people with the disease.6 Along the same
lines, because the political units in a democratic society are assumed to be, not the state
and family, but the state and the individual, the function of the family has become to
produce a person with an appropriate democratic personality.7 In a 1981 essay,
Hauerwas observed the irony of the contemporary scene in which public welfare officials
were insisting that the family could not provide for its own needs without expert
intervention while the family was at the same time being held up as the last refuge of
privacy in a forbidding society.8 In the case of the family, the individualist ethos has
lead to alarmingly increasing appeal to state intervention.9

Hauerwas Reader, p. 508.

Hauerwas, A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic
(Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), p. 159.
6
Hauerwas Reader, p. 509.
7
Community of Character, p. 170.
8
Ibid., p. 163.
9
Hauerwas Reader, p. 509.
5

The second destructive force for the family is the romantic idealization of it.
Beecause people have ceased to see in family any unique economic, political, and moral
functions, the family has assumed as its sole role that of meeting emotional needs. These
emotional needs are fulfilled both in the relationship between husband and wife and in
the relationship between parent and child. In terms of husband and wife, prevalent is the
view that people fall in love and then get married, which then justifies divorce when
the same couple fall out of love.10 Correlative to such a view is the identification of
marriage principally with being with the one you love. Against such an attitude,
Hauerwas quotes Ortega y Gasset, People do not live together merely to be together.
They live together to do something together. In other words the affection and
personality cultivation which modern couples presuppose for the success of their being
together cannot exist apart from the moral, economic, and political goals of marriage
which modernity has obliterated.11
The romantic idealization of family is also expressed in the expectations people
have for the relationship between parents and children. The Carnegia Councils All Our
Children report, for example, concludes that the primary function of the family is
fulfilling the emotional needs of parents and children.12 The approach of many is to
cling to the familiy as the one place that supplies us with relationships that we have not
chosen.13 But Hauerwas again doubts the family, stripped of its other traditional
functions, is able to bear the burden of such intense psychological importance. Indeed,
10

Ibid., p. 502.
Community of Character, p. 169.
12
Ibid., p. 164.
13
Hauerwas Reader., p. 510.
11

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the familys failure to meet such emotional and psychological needs is witnessed by an
entire industry of family counselors.
Moroever, the romantic view of family and marriage leads to raising children not
to carry on a religious or moral tradition but rather to make intelligent choices when
they are adults. The most terrible example of such a practice is seen in those parents
who refuse to impose their religion on their children, leaving it to their children to
decide whether to be religious or not.14
At this point Hauerwas turns to a proper depiction of Christian marriage. Over
against certain Christian social thinkers, Hauerwas finds dangerous the view that
Christianitys principal strength is its defense of the family. The correct impression is the
reverse. Christians, he says, are not called to marriage for fulfillment, but for the
upbuilding of that community called church.To be married as Christians is possible
because we understand that we are members of a community more determinative than
marriage.15 Indeed, the churchs openness to singleness is itself a challenge to those
defenders of the family who insist that Christians have to have children to be Christians.
The significance of singleness, Hauerwas says, is a confidence that the Gospel will be
received even by those who have not been, so to speak, raised in it.16
But for those who do marry it is important that marriage not be seen as simply a
matter of personal fulfillment. Over against the romantic view, Hauerwas sees the
Christian conception of marriage as emphasizing the faithfulness of a promise made at a
time when that promise was not fully understood. The question then for a nubile woman

14

Ibid., p. 511.
Ibid., pp. 512-3.
16
Ibid., p. 512.
15

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contemplating a prospective mate is not whether the man means it when he says he loves
her but whether he is the kind of man who will keep a promise he made before he knew
what he was promising. The churchs task is to create and cultivate such people by,
among other things, holding them to account when they make such promises.17
But more than these things, Christianity does not separate marriage from the
having of children. While Adam Smith sees in the biological connection between parent
and child grounds for ownership, Christian parents understand themselves to be
vessels, recognizing that the children of our bodies are gifts of God, not our
possessions.18 In the face of the democratic, capitalistic culture in which we find
ourselves, the church in order to sustain the having and rearing of children must be a
people not bent on the control of our economic destinies.19 The poor are especially
instructive in this regard: [T]hey understand the having of children is not a matter of our
being able to make sure the world into which children are born will be safe.
Hauerwas is pessimistic about the success of this project. In previous essays,
Hauerwas has called attention to the work of ethicists and sociologists such as Paul
Ramsey, Robert Nisbet, and Robert Paul Wolff, the latter of whom has said that if
children, a la the romantic view, are to be seen as merely the fulfillment of some
psychological need, [T]he state has no reason to treat [the parents] interest in his
children as taking precedence over his neighbors interest in racing cars or fine food.20
Furthermore, because of the individualist Zeitgeist, there is scarcely a justifiable reason in
the present age to have a child: Any reason I might havewould appear immoral, on
17

Ibid., p. 513-4.
Ibid., p. 515.
19
Ibid., p. 517.
20
Community of Character, p. 162.
18

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grounds of the use of another as a means for my own satisfaction, or irrational, since a
child would only enter the world as a threat to my autonomy.21 For these reasons,
Hauerwas expresses doubt as to whether Christians can sustain the practices of
singleness, marriage, and the having of children in a world that makes such practices a
matter of individual satisfaction.22
Nevertheless, that Christians should concern themselves with having and rearing
children and with institutions that support the having and rearing of children is
paramount. What we are about as Christians, he writes, is the having of children
that must come first, and then we must subject other aspects of our lives to that reality.23
Although the world cannot give a good reason for having children:
the church is formed by a story that gives it the convictions necessary to
sustain those called to marry and have children in a world that has been
bent by sin and evil. We have the courage to call children into such a
world because our hope is not in this world but in a God who has called us
to his Kingdom through the work of Christ.24
This eschatological hope frees us to remember that children are a gift from God.
Summary
In broad outline, Hauerwas believes that the crisis of the family campaign
notwithstanding, the world more or less has the kind of family it deserves. Having
absorbed the democratic/capitalistic Weltanschauung, the family has been transformed to
fit societys larger goals. The traditional view of the family as grounded in biology rather
than contract; as providing human continuity through reproduction and child rearing; as
involving specific economic, political, and moral functions; and as bearing a moral and/or
21

Ibid., p. 172.
Hauerwas Reader, p. 516.
23
Hauerwas Reader, p. 517.
24
Community of Character, p. 174.
22

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religious tradition has been supplanted by a simpler, but ultimately more demanding,
romantic idealism. The crisis of the family reflects how the family has increasingly
been formed by the deepest moral convictions about ourselves.25
Before the church underwrites a crusade to save the family, it should make clear
what is meant by family. For Hauerwas, the test of any such definition is the place of
children; that is to say, a proper description of family should be able to answer the
question, Why have children? in a Christian way. Children are not had for the sake of
personal fulfillment or to satisfy some psychological need but received as gifts from God,
to beraised up under the story of Jesus. Christian parents do not avoid children as
impediments to economic success or out of fear of a hostile tomorrow but receive them in
the knowledge that there is a hope which this world cannot justify. And this hope which
sustains the having and raising of children is to be found in a community more essential
than the family itself the church.
Evaluation
There is much to commend in Hauerwas argument concerning marriage, family,
and children. Particularly cogent is his observation that the family, even the version
pushed by most conservative Christians, is the product more of the world than of the
church. His quotation from Paul Ramsey is to the point: In spite of our societys alleged
interest in the bond of marriage, that bond is now understood simply as a contract
between individuals who remain as atomistic as before marriage.26 From the standpoint
of one suspicious of church/world alliances, Hauerwas quite perceptively recognizes
what is at stake in debates about the family. At issue is not whether or not the family will
25
26

Ibid., p. 161.
Ibid., p. 160.

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continue to exist but in what form. Even self-styled defenders of the family play into the
hands of their enemies by peddling the very ideals which threaten the family in the first
place individualism, democracy, privacy, autonomy, self-fulfillment.
God and Children vs. Modern Theology and the World
Another significant feature of Hauerwas argument is the centrality of children.
For Hauerwas, going back to his 1981 theses for reforming social ethics, ones attitude
toward new life is reflective of the community of which oneis a part. To be a member of
the Christian community is to be open to new life, even in the face of the threat that new
life poses to ones autonomy, sense of security, and even happiness. By putting the case
for children in these terms, Hauerwas exposes much of what passes for Christian
reflection on the subject of procreation these days.
After Walter A. Maier shifted the Synods position on contraception in his 1935
For Better, Not for Worse, by endorsing the rhythm method as a means for avoiding
children, Concordia Seminary Professor Alfred Rehwinkel promulgated an even more
permissive attitude toward birth control in his book, Planned Parenthood, published in
1959.27 Rehwinkel defends setting limits on the number of children one has by making
appeal to
such social problems as housing, standard of living, health and social wellbeing.The decay of a nation begins in the family. But on the other hand
a nation which propagates more rapidly than the available or potential
food supply is also headed for serious trouble.28

27

Alan Graebner, Birth Control and the Lutherans: The Missouri Synod as a Case
Study, Jounral of Social History ___________, pp 316-321.
28
Alfred Rehwinkel, Planned Parenthood: Planned Parenthood and birth Control in the
Light of Christian Ethics (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1959), pp.2-34.

10
Such an argument would obviously be lost on Hauerwas who has no patience for an ethic
based on nationalist or survivalist assumptions. As Hauerwas says, [C]hildren are the
way we remember that it is God that matters, not making the world safe or rich.29
Also exposed is a theologian who has exercised a profound influence on
Hauerwas himself, Karl Barth. In the course of arguing that avoiding children is
adiaphoron, Barth writes:
Again in consequence of mistaken reflection, a child may be generated of
whom it might well be said from the parents standpoint that they would
have been better without it.30
For Barth the question of parents and children is principally one of responsibility. For
Hauerwas, in a manner more consistent with the mind of the Savior who commanded,
Suffer the children to come unto me, the question is one of trust in God. Indeed, to say
that life would be better without a certain gift from God sounds downright unChristian.
Likewise, Stanley Grenz considers the need to control ones economic destiny as
a first principle:
Birth control is a valid option for married couples on the basis of the
importance of responsible family planning in the midst of the
contemporary situation. In a world in which the population is increasing
rapidly and the cost of providing for children is escalating, it is not
surprising that many couples are deciding to limit the size of their
families.31

29

Hauerwas Reader, p. 517.

On Moral Medicine, edited by _______________ (Some City, State: Press, Date), p.
461.
31
Stanley Grenz, Sexual Ethics: An Evangelical Perspctive (Louisville, KY: Westminster
John Knox Press, 1997), p. 153.
30

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But Hauerwas reminds us, The Hebrew-Christian tradition helps sustain the virtue of
hope in a world which rarely provides evidence that such hope is justified.32
Affinity with Traditional Lutheranism
By starting the discussion at the point of the child Hauerwas echoes the strongest
statements of Martin Luther on the subject. It is not in an explanation of the Sixth
Commandment or a comment on the account of Onan but in a discussion of a genealogy
in Genesis 25 that Luther writes, How, great, therefore, the wickedness of human nature
is! How many girls there are who prevent conception and kill and expel tender fetuses,
although procreation is the work of God!33
In terms of traditional dogmatics, the status of contraception historically figures in
discussions of the commandment, Thou shalt not kill. Chemnitz, for instance, includes
among trespassers of the Fifth Commandment those qui impediunt conceptionem.34 In
other words, the more egregious problem with contraception is not its abuse of the sexual
act but the hateful attitude it reflects toward new life. While Hauerwas is loath to present
himself systematically, his criticisms of the Roman Catholic method of reading off the
act of sexual intercourse (a Sixth Commandment approach, if you will) are consistent
with the traditional Lutheran approach.35 No doubt a natural law argument that improved

32

Community of Character, p. 166.

Martin Luther, Luthers Works, Volume 4: Lectures on Genesis 21-25 (St. Louis, MO:
Concordia Publishing House, 1964), p. 304. Luther does see Onans sin as against the
order of nature established by God in procreation (LW 7: 20-21). Barth, Rehwinkel,
Grenz, et al., dismiss the example of Onan as irrelevant on the grounds that Onans sin
was a trespass merely against the lex leviratus, which would not be promulgated for
another 200 years. (On Moral Medicine, p. 463; Rehwinkel, pp. 49-50; Grenz, p. 150)
34
Martin Chemnitz, Loci Theologici, translated by _______________ (St. Louis, MO:
Concordia Publishing House, 19___), p. _____.
35
Perhaps it would be fairer to say of Hauerwas that guidance in the area of sexual ethics
is principally to be found in the Fourth Commandment. See, e.g., his and William
33

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upon the Roman Catholic one could be constructed, but Hauerwas (and Luthers)
approach seems from a Christian standpoint maieutically superior.
The other advantage to which Hauerwas approach points is the possibility of
plausible sympathy for the barren couple. Hauerwas begins his Radical Hope essay by
announcing the birth of his grandson, an event about which all Christians, he says, should
have joy. He ends the essay on the note that all children are gifts of God: Thank God for
Joel Adam Hauerwas.36 The community which does not unqualifiedly welcome
children must also have a difficult time sympathizing with the couple unable to have
children. At best, condolences can be offered in the name of not getting what one wants;
the underlying message would then be that it is the couples own fault for wanting
children so badly in the first place. But the community which sees children as gifts from
God can also see infertility and barrenness as objectively unfortunate and sincerely grieve
with those who grieve. The appeal to Jesus Woe unto them that are with child, and to
them that give suck in those days! as justifying contraception smacks of belligerent
obtuseness. For our Lords words concerning the devastation of the end times to have
any rhetorical impact the assumption must be that to be without children is not normal.
Hauerwas and Eschatology
As has been stated above, an eschatological perspective is decisive for Hauerwas
ethics. In his 1983 essay, Jesus: The Presence of the Peaceable Kingdom, Hauerwas
expresses the implications of Jesus resurrection this way: We can rest in God because
we are no longer driven by the assumption that we must be in control of history, that it is

Willimons sermon on the Fourth Commandment in The Truth About God: The Ten
Commandments in Christian Life (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1999), pp. 67-78.
36
Hauerwas Reader, p. 517.

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up to us to make things come out right.37 The same insight informs Hauerwas thinking
about marriage and family: [The poor] understand the having of children is not a matter
of our being able to make sure the world in which children are born will be safe.
That Hauerwas goes in this direction with eschatology is by no means inevitable.
Karl Barth, for instance, infers just the opposite. Barth argues in his Church
Dogmaticsthat this side of Christs advent Be fruitful and multiply ceases to be a moral
imperative:
In the sphere of the New Testament message there is no necessity, no
general command to continue the human race as such and therefore to
procreate children.Post Christum natum there can be no question of a
divine law in virtue of which all these things must necessarily take place.
Parenthood is now only to be understood as a free and in some sense
optional gift of the goodness of God. It certainly cannot be a fault to be
without children.38
Hauerwas is also keen to remind us of the early Churchs legitimation for some of
singleness.39 Yet Barth and Hauerwas diverge on the specific implications of the
procreative freedom which New Testament Christians exercise. For Barth the question is
primarily one of responsibility and the presumption tends toward childlessness. 40
However, Christians, he says, should avail themselves of their freedom to have children

37

Ibid., p. 134.
Moral Medicine, p. 458.
39
Hauerwas Reader, p. 497.
40
Barth: [G]eneration and conception are the effects of an action which is in its own
particular way responsible. And as a responsible action it must and will be a choice and
decision between Yes and No.Surely the providence and will of God in the course of
nature has in each case to be freshly discovered by the believer who hears and obeys His
word, and apprehended and put into operation by him in personal responsibility, in the
freedom of choice and decision.Surely he is not allowed to dispense with rational
reflection or to renounce an intelligent attitude at this pointAt this point especially
intelligent reflection may and must constantly and particularly prevail, and nothing must
be done except in responsible decision (Moral Medicine, p. 460).
38

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especially at times of low birth rates to avoid arbitrary decay and to maintain the
race.41
Hauerwas, on the other hand, sees the question in terms of ones openness to
Gods gifts. [I]t is nonetheless significant in such a world in rebellion against its good
creator, Christians are given the time to have and welcome children, not for the use of the
state, but because we know that God rejoices in such life.42 Also, unlike Barth,
Hauerwas nowhere separates the upbringing of children from the purposes of marriage.43
Thus juxtaposed against Barths view, Hauerwas conclusions certainly seem more
consistent with the eschatology that frames both theologians analysis.
Hauerwas and Singleness
On the subject of Christian singleness, as has been said above, Hauerwas calls
for a return to the early Church witness in regarding singleness as a legitimate estate.
That the Church does not need children for its survival is testament to the Gospels
transforming power.44 Although a thorough critique of Hauerwas position is
unwarranted here, there does seem to be in some of Hauerwas formulations a latent
medievalism. While Hauerwas does not expressly say that celibacy (or, as he prefers,
singleness) is the more authentic Christian condition, he does refer favorably to an

41

Moral Medicine, p. 459.

After Christendom, p. 131.
43
Barth: [C]hildren may be at least a serious threat to what man and wife should
together mean in marriage for the surrounding world (Moral Medicine, p. 459). It
would be fair to say that where Hauerwas draws the line between singleness and
marriage, Barth would permit a decision against children even within marriage.
44
One of the arguments Fritz employs in his counsel against contraception is the prospect
of race suicide. John Fritz, Pastoral Theology (_____, ____: ___________, 19____), p.
_____.
42

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article which does.45 The author writes, I think it could be argued from the New
Testament that singleness is the first normal state for every Christian and that there is no
Christian imperative to get married or to prefer marriage. She further says, In that
situation, the burden of proof falls on the married rather than on the single; singleness
becomes a duty until the reasons for marriage are made clear. 46
Such a viewpoint recalls the grave burdens of conscience under which the Roman
teachings on celibacy and marriage placed many a Christian in the days prior to the
Reformation. For if Be fruitful and multiply does not, as the Lutheran Confessions
teach, apply to all men and women, the thought of having displeased God for rejecting a
higher calling must haunt every married Christian.47 As Hauerwas observes with some
validity, modern Christians cast apersions on those who pursue a course of action which
the New Testament commends. Yet Hauerwas would be better served to follow the
Reformers view of celibacy as representing a higher gift, rather than reflecting a more
faithful eschatology. After all, He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.
Hauerwas and Contraception Per Se
As much insightful material as there is in Hauerwas writings on the subject of
marriage and procreation, perhaps the single most frustrating weakness is the failure of
Hauerwas to endorse the position to which the logic of his argument naturally leads.
[Hauerwas not going as far as the logic of his argument would push him deal
with footnote about unitive/procreative; point about expressing it as a not not]

45

Hauerwas cites Mary Jo Weaver, Singleness and the Family (Commonweal, October
26, 1979: 588-91) in Hauerwas Reader, p. 497.
46
Weaver, p. 589.
47
The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, edited by
Robert Kolb and Timothy Wengert (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000), p. 249.

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[In sum, there is much that this proud grandfather has to teach a church which has
so utterly capitulated to a world bent on itself.]