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. He edits the opinion page of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
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more on family from the online archives
33.3—May/June 2020
Maternal Body: A Theology of Incarnation from the Christian East by Carrie Frederick Frost
Fertile Ground: A Pilgrimage Through Pregnancy by Laura S. Jansson by Agnes R. Howard
24.4—July/August 2011
The Cultural Marxists’ Strategic Assault on Religion, Life & Family by Patrick F. Fagan
more from the online archives
31.5—September/October 2018
on the Congregation as a Wilderness by Paul Gregory Alms
31.5—September/October 2018
Errands into the Moral Wilderness
Forms of Christian Family Witness & Renewal by Allan C. Carlson
24.5—Sept/Oct 2011
on Wondering or Wandering Through College Education by Anthony Esolen
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