Chapter XLV: Section 4: Birth Control Condemned by Protestant Churches

The Protestants, at the time of the Reformation, retained and even exaggerated certain beliefs of the undivided Catholic Church. None of them doubted, for instance, that the Bible was the Word of God and therefore a guide to moral conduct. They knew that artificial birth control is forbidden by the Bible, and that in the Old Testament the punishment for that sin was death. [102] In 1876, when Charles Bradlaugh advocated in a notorious pamphlet the practice of birth control, his views were denounced from every Protestant pulpit in the land, and were widely repudiated by the upper and middle classes of England. But it would seem that Protestant morality is now disappearing with the spread of indifferentism, and the Protestant Churches have no longer the same influence on the public and private life of the nation. Protestantism has lasted for 400 years, but though it has lasted longer than any other form of belief which took rise in the sixteenth century, it is now also dying.

In 1919 the number of people over seven years of age in England who professed belief in _any_ church was 10,833,795 (out of 40,000,000), and the church attendance equalled 7,000,000, or about 1 out of every 5 people. [103]

Again, a Commission appointed by the Protestant Churches to inquire into the religious beliefs held in the British armies of the Great War has endorsed the following statements:

"Everyone must be struck with the appalling ignorance of the simplest
religious truths. Probably 80 per cent, of these men from the Midlands
had never heard of the sacraments.... It is not only that the men do
not know the meaning of 'Church of England'; they are ignorant of the
historical facts of the life of our Lord. Nor must it be assumed that
this ignorance is confined to men who have passed through the
elementary schools. The same verdict is recorded upon those who have
been educated in our public schools.... The men are hopelessly
perplexed by the lack of Christian unity." [104]

In my opinion these statements are exaggerations, but that was not the view of the Commission. As regards Scotland, it has recently been stated at the Lothian Synod of the United Free Church that in 1911 at least 37 per cent. of the men and women of Scotland were without church connection. [105]

In 1870, of every 1,000 marriages, 760 were according to the rites of the Established Church, but in 1919 the proportion had fallen to 597. During the same period civil marriages without religious ceremonial increased from 98 to 231 per 1,000. [106] These figures are an index of the religious complexion of the country. The Protestant Churches are being strangled by the development of a germ that was inherent in them from the beginning, and that growth is Rationalism. The majority of the upper, professional, and artisan class can no longer be claimed as staunch Protestants, but as vague theists; and amongst these educated people, misled by false ideas of pleasure and by pernicious nonsense written about self-realisation, the practice of birth control has spread most alarmingly. This is an evil against which all religious bodies who retain a belief in the fundamental facts of Christianity might surely unite in action.

In a Catholic country there would be no need, in the furtherance of public welfare, to write on the evils of birth control. The teaching of the Catholic Church would be generally accepted, and a moral law generally accepted by the inhabitants of a country gives strength to the State. But Great Britain, no longer Catholic, is now in some danger of ceasing to be even a Christian country. In 1885 it was asserted, "England alone is reported to contain some seven hundred sects, each of whom proves a whole system of theology and morals from the Bible." [107] Each of these that now survives gives its own particular explanation of the law of God, which it honestly tries to follow, but at one point or another each and every sect differs from its neighbours. On account of these differences of opinion many people say: "The Churches cannot agree amongst themselves as to what is truth; they cannot all be right; it is, therefore, impossible for me to know with certainty what to believe; and, to be quite honest, it may save me a lot of bother just at present to have no very firm belief at all." This means that in Great Britain _there is no uniform moral law covering all human conduct and generally accepted by the mass of the people_. As the practice of artificial birth-rate control is not only contrary to Christian morality, but is also a menace to the prosperity and well-being of the nation, the absence of a uniform moral law, common to all the people and forbidding this practice, is a source of grave weakness in the State.