Feature
From Meddling to Preaching
Three Ways to Expose the Partly Natural Family by David Mills
When a pastor says something in a sermon that you do not like, goes the old joke, he has “gone from preaching to meddling.” He has stopped telling pleasant and comforting stories (or enjoyably convicting stories about the sins you don’t commit) and started interfering with your life.
Many traditional Christians and cultural conservatives love what the family scholar Allan Carlson has called “the Natural Family” as a theory, because Americans love anything “natural.” It seems more direct, more genuine, more authentic, untainted by commerce and calculation. And it has its political uses: They love to appeal to Nature to argue that homosexuality is unnatural.
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David Mills has been editor of Touchstone and executive editor of First Things.
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34.1—January/February 2021
Jesus' Astonishing Other Teaching on Marriage by James Ware
33.2—March/April 2020
Christian Pro-Family Governments?
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36.1—Jan/Feb 2023
A History of the Protestant Debate over Contraception by James A. Altena
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25.3—May/Jun 2012
Calls for Freedom, Democracy & Secularism End Up with None of the Above by Hunter Baker
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