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Facing the Facts 1: Population Growth & The Need for the Church to be involved in population control

Whether we like it or not, humanity faces a huge crisis in the fact that our finite planet cannot support the numbers of people on the planet. This is a spiritual issue and important fact for Christians if we take the idea of ecological stewardship seriously. If we do not face the facts, then we will create a planet that simply will not cope. This has already started.

Adbusters Magazine asks an important question, in our market societies, ‘Are the self-organizing, principles of markets that have emerged in human cultures over the past 300 years in conflict with the self-organizing principles of ecosystems that have evolved over the past billion years?’

Further, why do some aspects of the Church have such issues with contraception? and family planning that attempts to ensure we control population numbers? I do not know why, but so many of my Christian friends have this ideal of having large families, with some sort of aspiration for little house on the prairie, isn’t this totally ecologically irresponsible? Why do so many Christians live in such denial of the facts of what is going on…. So What are the facts?

So given the extremely serious issues we face, will Christians and the Church own the responsibility of population control? The Church own its responsibility to population planning and encouraging families to seek sustainable levels of population, where sex and reproduction are not envisioned with values of abundance, but the reality of scarcity of the planets resources. So that we and our planet can find a sustainable future.

POSTED 01.08.09 BY: admin | Comments (6)

6 Responses to “Facing the Facts 1: Population Growth & The Need for the Church to be involved in population control”

  1. On August 2nd, 2009 at 9:20 am carey said:

    I do agree with some aspects of what you are saying – certainly the world's resources are precious and the growing global population puts huge pressure on all to control their use of resources. And the church has a responsibility to speak up about this.I also agree that the church should not be discouraging use of contraceptives, particularly in the developing world where AIDS is such a massive problem and population growth is at its highest.There are other things to consider too though. On the population growth graph that you've posted, you can see that the vast amount of the increase in population is in the developing world. In countries like ours, there is also the problem of an aging population, people are living longer, and people of our generation are having fewer kids, leading to worries that in the future, the working population will not be enough to support the elderly gerneration. I don't think it's particularly irresponsible for people to have 3 or 4 kids or maybe even more.I'd also say that most people who have more than 1 child don't have romantic notions of skipping through fields with their numerous progeny – it's bloody hard work! And the act of having children does not have to be ecologically unsound. Large families often fly less, may have gardens where they grow a lot of their own food. The more people you have sharing a house, the more efficient the use of heating/electricity etc. Yes, we have to consider the impact of our actions on the rest of the planet. But it's a bit of an assumption to say that having x number of kids is automatically irresponsible. There are whole families with lower carbon footprints than some couples or even single people.I think it's right to attack the church if we see that it isn't acting as it needs to on this issue, but we need to be careful about writing off a whole group of people (ie parents with more than x kids) without knowing to what extent they are mindful of their impact on the planet (especially when x is unspecified!)

  2. On August 3rd, 2009 at 6:14 am PeterR said:

    Ian, thanks for kicking off what I'm sure will be a lively debate. You'll get lots of differing views, I'm sure. For what it's worth, here's mine.Developmentally, the idea of "population control" went out of fashion quite a while ago. Even back in the 1980s the slogan was "the best means of birth control is wealth control" – people want large families for security in places where old age is otherwise vulnerable to penury. More recently family planning has become part of the whole feminist agenda of women's control over their own fertility.I'm happy to encourage reproductive health care – the Cairo Conference on Population finally pushed through reasonable language about sexual and reproductive health in the face of opposition from the Vatican – and I share your dismay at the obscurantist approach of the Roman Catholic church on family planning. However, "population control" was involved during Indira Gandhi's "Emergency" to justify forced sterilisation; China's "one child" policy has led to the selective abortion / infanticide of girl babies, and overall the term has driven a fascist agenda rather than a liberating one.So while you're right to challenge some of the darker, more fear-filled edicts from Rome, I think we need to see the issue through all the lenses. Green, feminist, social, and architectural voices all have their place in thinking carefully about how we as a society value children and families. Since major developing country cultures have gone from over seven children per mother to under two in barely a generation, we need to consider the questions of ageing and care of elderly people in future as well – the EU will need to open its borders to immigration if it is to sustain its social services over the next four decades. The challenge is not a Maulthusian one but a social and political one, and we as Christians need to bring grace and intellectual rigour alike to it.Thanks again for opening up such a debate, Ian – I'm sure there will be lots of lively exchanges in response

  3. On August 8th, 2009 at 9:59 am Kerry Dawkins said:

    Responding to the points raised.Ian I think you are right to bring this up. Carey I do hear you, but if we are honest, how many large Christian families really think about the environmental issues of large families. Most, if we are honest, do seem to hold to some God given right to have as many children as the want, and not think of the consequences. I don't think the aging population is a good enough argument to say we need more children. No, I think what Ian is saying, is that families should be encouraged to maintain our current population. That if couples have two children then it keeps things in check. The world criticizes China a lot, but I do think they prevented an even bigger problem by managing birth control. I don't see China struggling for a work force – so I think we need to face this one. Our Country – UK – is already over populated. There simply are two many people living on this Island, so that we don't have the room for enough crops or food production. The UK is unsustainable, and we just can't expect the 2/3rds world to make the sacrifices – we need to set an example.

  4. On August 11th, 2009 at 3:05 pm grace said:

    I'm fascinated by this topic and David Attenborough's weighty support of it I think is bringing the discussion more and more into the public sphere from what has been a pretty outside-edge discussion for a long time. Carey I think you've made some really intelligent points, and I can't agree Kerry about China except in a reductively end-result way – I can't get my head around the way they've enforced their 'one child per family' policy being ok even though you're right, it's worked what it needed to work. But my main feeling on the whole issue is this: I lived ten years of my childhood in a region of South Africa with a conservatively-estimated 40% AIDS prevalence, i.e. at the very least 40% of people there are going to die of AIDS probably before they are 40. Its one of the highest in the world. There are children apon children growing up with, if they're lucky, a grandmother in her last years caring for them, and likely to die soon and leave them alone, or an older sibling by which I mean maybe a 10 year old. If they're unlucky they're street kids, sometimes from birth, and usually get into pretty scarey gangs, the rehabilitation from which is not far off child soldier rehab. I've learned barely any of this from charities or government stats. It's just where I lived and go back to a lot. And so I can't consider the child-rearing and population issues without going back to this reality. It is so rough on those children that I consider adoption a really, really key option to look at for people wanting to care for children. I'm noticing I'm writing this a little emotively so forgive me if the tone's a bit hard, I suspect its the kind of subject matter that's not easy to express lightly. And bear in mind I am still twenty-four, so I have a pretty impersonal, young view on the whole thing still. But with those provisos, I'm very glad we're discussing this!

  5. On August 14th, 2009 at 9:25 pm Kerry Dawkins said:

    GraceI think your comment argues even more for the need of a joined up church and government approach to the very real issues of population management. But this will not get sorted until the Church sorts out its attitude, and shift from an attitude or delusion of ecological unlimited abundance to the realism of stewardship and the need for care of the scarce and fragile environment. I reiterate what I said, from sophisticated science we now know that the planet cannot sustain the population we now have, so we need a farer and multi-national approach to population control. Carey, you can read what you have said as meaning 'well the problem is in the 2/3rds world, not the 1st, so let them sort it out.' I hope seeing what Grace is talking about, helps us own the need for macro and mico approaches to population control, and that means families in the west owning this too. That way, we may develop better international approaches to population management and health care, and not that having unending children as some form of God given right. This delusion needs to be challenged.

  6. On August 17th, 2009 at 11:35 am PeterR said:

    Kerry, I can see where you're coming from but the question needs care as well as passion. Carey was not arguing for "unending children", but against a discourse that condemns and excludes people with more than 2 kids. In the UK the average family size is well below replacement levels, so your "it's the 2/3 World's fault" line also seems to me ill-founded. Rather than saying "the UK is unsustainable" because we don't grow our own food, surely we need to think a little more carefully about the kind of global society we have and the kind we want? London is certainly unsustainable, as is any city, if we measure sustainability by growing your own food; the essence of our economy is that we move away from subsistence (or "Good Life" fantasies). I'm not saying that we should simply buy our way to convenience, but that this debate deserves care and attention to detail rather than sweeping statements that may elide some key aspects.Grace, I share your concern over HIV/AIDS. I've worn a red ribbon every working day since the 1998 ICASA debate on the impact of AIDS in Southern Africa. And what you say about the impact on families is really vital – I've been to too many funerals of the relatives of colleagues not to feel it deeply. I don't think, though, that this speaks to the "population control" debate at all, unless it is to make sure that we support condom distribution and other preventive programmes whatever the Roman Catholic Church says. I just do not want us to get caught up in incompletely thought-through approaches that readily can become authoritarian, when there is (I'm certain) a God-given "more perfect way" that fulfils the whole of our society – including giving mothers the respect and welcome they richly deserve, not condemning them – while respecting (probably through simple lifestyles among other things) the needs of the planet as a whole.