Something like the SBC’s opposition to vitro fertilization demonstrates the reverse cycle of the spiral historiography, in the shock-but-genuine question, “My God, what has happened to ‘American Protestants’, when did they become ‘Catholic’?”

 

 

 
40 years ago, I was at an evangelical college, and the line taken was ‘anti-abortion-but-neutral-on-IVF’. The evangelical world at that time took IVF, at its dawn, as a personal issue. It was the basic conservative Catholic outlook which wanted all genetic engineering and all artificial interference in human reproduction banned (or at least severely restricted).

 

 

 
The question has to be asked is whether such religionists are simply opportunists? And one can challenge this bullshit thinking through the critiques of what many still refer to as “religionists”, such as Barth and Bonhoeffer. Can Philosophical-Founded Christianity be taken as “religion” any more, in 2024 and the future?
 

 

 

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