"For Domestic Security: Atoms, Genetics, and the Impermeable Family"

That's the title of the talk that Dr. Amy Laura Hall will be giving this Thursday at DePaul University.  Here's the details.  This excerpt is from an interview with The Other Journal.

TOJ: North American Evangelicals have heartily embraced reproductive technology in order to have our own biological families. What thoughts do you have on how to educate the evangelical community about the difference between being pro-family and supporting reproductive technology?

ALH: One way to educate evangelical Christians about reproductive technology is to consider, historically, how the nuclear family became in North America a symbol of the responsible, pure family. That occurs largely during the atomic era, during the 50’s. With the return of soldiers and the creation of new suburbs, you have this sense that what is truly “the family” is two parents -- and by in large the standard became two parents with only two, possibly three, children. Mainline as well as Evangelical Protestants bought into that image as the icon for the best family. There are examples of this in posters that were distributed in the late 40's and early 50’s by social hygiene organizations seeking to promote this vision of the comparatively independent and isolated family.

When you gain such historical perspective, you can ask a new set of questions. Is the independent, nuclear family the only biblically sound depiction? You can go further to ask whether this is even the primary Biblical depiction of the family? Back up into Scripture and try to think through how, especially in the New Testament, Christ re-configures the Roman family. The primary image of the family in Jesus’ words (as well as in Paul’s words) is the Church. Its through baptism we are made heirs according to the promise. We are not foundationally related through blood ties genetically, but through blood ties Eucharistically. Through Christ, through Christ’s blood, we are made one, and Paul refers to this both baptismally and Eucharistically. It is through Christ’s blood that we are made one family.

When you look at those images alongside a nuclear family that is all genetically related and fairly isolated, even from grandparents, the difference is salient. That image of the nuclear family, the four individuals – mom, dad, son, and daughter – alongside the image of the Eucharistic family, I think it calls into question our somewhat obsessive pursuit of our “own children” who will fit neatly into the Midwestern suburb.

TOJ: So stemming out of the 50’s there was an elevation of the nuclear family above, at least as a Christian culture, the church…

ALH: Well it is complicated. It is not as if prior to the 1950’s you have the ideal, more biblical family. You don’t have a very biblically sound version of the family in Christian history, period. BUT, you get a particular kind of warping of the family that continues today, and that is, the warping of the family as being almost exclusively about genetic and biological ties and about being primarily about the immediate, relatively small and efficient family of four.

Later in the interview:

ALH:  And one thing I’ve had people ask me, is OK, you’re critical of reproductive technology to try and have your own children, but also you want to call into question the meticulous timing of children that goes on with more and more effective kinds of birth control. And yes, what I see as consistent with both of those efforts, both birth control (at least the way birth control is used by white dominant Americans in our culture) and reproductive technology is the sense that reproduction is something that one must control in order to fashion a family that will fit with one’s expectations. With the onset of especially effective forms of birth control (there were ineffective forms prior and they didn’t really matter that much for how we thought about the family), and reproductive technology, you have this ever-more efficient quest of controlling one’s form of family. I think this has warped the way we think about incipient life, the way we think about the gift of life, that parenting has become so much a task.

I mean, we have become Pelagian in how we think about the gift of life. It is something that we must control, navigate, and adhere to in order to craft a family that will fit in with economic demands that will fit in with cultural expectations. Evangelicals have to ask ourselves “Why?” What are the norms by which we are trying to adhere when we are seeking a particular kind of family. I suspect many of us are at least influenced by the images in the media. Ya know, “baby gap kids”, “better homes and gardens”, as we are influenced by a scriptural witness to the gratuity of life.

...And so even to ask questions about what images one has in view for having children goes a long way towards being more faithful. Just asking questions, why, why do you want to have kids? What do we have children for? A Mennonite colleague asked that right to my face at a conference -- that we need to ask what are children for. He explained to the group that, in the Mennonite tradition, children are born for martyrdom. (And at that point I was thinking, that’s why you’re a Mennonite and I’m not.) But, to even say that, to witness that in the Mennonite tradition you have children so that they can bring witness in a cruciform way to Christ’s love, that’s a whole different set of questions than the questions mainline Evangelicals usually ask.

TOJ: In your interview that was published in Christianity Today in July, you mentioned that the crux of the technical issues about IVF and ESCR are more “upstream” You also mention that having genetic children and being fertile is given elevated status to caring for those who are the “least of these” and those children who need to be tended to. Where do you think Christ speaks most aptly to this problem of the objectification of the family?

ALH: Oh the banquet, no question, last Sunday our church read the banquet passage in Luke. No question that would be the one I would refer to. When we’re going to have a banquet, what more characterizes the kind of ideal family gathering than the family dinner? If we’re going to have a family dinner, who are we going to invite, are we going to invite only those that fit? Or, are we going to invite the children that don’t fit… whether they be children who come from us biologically, the extra child that we didn’t anticipate or plan and who snuck through our ever more efficient contraception we’re using. Or are we going to invite only those who fit? I think that is a great passage for parents to dwell on.