The 112th Congress should
- recognize that the monogamous heterosexual family is the foundation of civilization, of free and prosperous societies.
Family Values
- The Permanence of Marriage
- We believe that the institution of marriage is a sacred covenant designed by God to model the love of Christ for His people and to serve both the public and private good as the basic building block of human civilization. Marriage is intended by God to be a thriving, lifelong relationship between a man and a woman enduring through trials, sickness, financial crises and emotional stresses. Therefore, Christians are called to defend and protect God’s marriage design and to minister in Christ’s name to those who suffer the consequences of its brokenness.
- “‘Haven’t you read,’ He replied, ‘that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.’” Matthew 19:4-6
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- The Value of Children
- We believe that children are a heritage from God and a blessing from His hand. Parents are therefore accountable to Him for raising, shaping and preparing them for a life of service to His Kingdom and to humanity.
- “Has not the Lord made them [a husband and wife] one? In flesh and spirit they are His. And why one? Because He was seeking godly offspring.” Malachi 2:15
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- The Sanctity of Human life
- We believe that human life is created by God in His image. It is of inestimable worth and significance in all its dimensions, including the preborn, the aged, the mentally disabled, those deemed unattractive, the physically challenged, and every other condition in which humanness is expressed from the single cell stage of development to natural death. Christians are therefore called to defend, protect, and value all human life.
- “For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Psalm 139:13-14a
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- The Value of Male and Female
- We believe that God created humans in His image, intentionally male and female, each bringing unique and complementary qualities to sexuality and relationships. Sexuality is a glorious gift from God to be offered back to Him either in marriage for procreation, union and mutual delight or in celibacy for undivided devotion to Christ. Christians are called to proclaim the truth and beauty of God’s design and the redemption of sexual brokenness in our lives and culture through Jesus Christ.
- “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – His good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:1-2
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- Vision and Guiding Principles of Focus on the Family
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“It is surely the mark of a sound society that the center of gravity of decision and responsibility lies midway between the two extremes of individual and state, within genuine and small communities, of which the most indispensable, primary, and natural is the family.”
— Wilhelm Roepke
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Sarah Ruden, the Yale-trained classics translator, explains the culture into which Christianity appeared in her 2010 book Paul Among The People. Ruden contends that it’s profoundly ignorant to think of the Apostle Paul as a dour proto-Puritan descending upon happy-go-lucky pagan hippies, ordering them to stop having fun.
In fact, Paul’s teachings on sexual purity and marriage were adopted as liberating in the pornographic, sexually exploitive Greco-Roman culture of the time—exploitive especially of slaves and women, whose value to pagan males lay chiefly in their ability to produce children and provide sexual pleasure. Christianity, as articulated by Paul, worked a cultural revolution, restraining and channeling male eros, elevating the status of both women and of the human body, and infusing marriage—and marital sexuality—with love.
Sex After Christianity | The American Conservative |
America's Founding Fathers would agree with George Gilder, author of Sexual Suicide, that men will only fulfill their paternal obligations when women lead them to do so, and that this civilizing influence, free from government-created economic obstacles, is a most important factor in maintaining a productive, healthy, loving society.
This mutually edifying arrangement is the monogamous heterosexual family. It is the foundation of civilization, of free and prosperous societies.
- It advances the rights given to us by our Creator, as it recognizes that human beings were created "male and female."
- It provides the most effective model for morality and benevolence.
- The fulfilling of paternal obligations in the family deters the growth of an oppressive "paternalistic" State.
Marriage attaches males to families, the source of community, individuality, and order in a free society. As we are increasingly discovering in our schools, prisons, mental hospitals, and psychiatric offices, the family is the only agency that can be depended upon to induce truly profound and enduring changes in its members. The family is the only institution that works on the deeper interior formations of human character and commitment. Thus it is the only uncoercive way to transform individuals, loose in social time and space—into voluntary participants in the nurture of society.
—George Gilder, Sexual Suicide
(Gilder was Ronald Reagan's most
frequently quoted living author.)
I am very much interested in the history of government from its very beginning, and I am more than interested in the Government of the United States and how it originated, and the why of its origin. You see, people came to these shores and they came in family units. North of us the French fur traders went to Canada for a purpose, for the enrichment of themselves, and to take things out of the country. Families came to the United States to build homes and to create settlements, and to live in peace.
Therefore, today, when you look back on the settlement of North America, you wonder how it was ever done. I have been to Plymouth Rock, and I have
been to Rhode Island. I have been to the Jamestown River's mouth at Jamestown, and I have been to South Carolina, and I have been to the coast of North Carolina, and I have been to Georgia. And I look at some of the things that those ancestors of ours had to contend with, and I wonder how in the world they ever did it.
I will tell you how they did it. They did it because there was an incentive. They brought with them ideals. They brought with them an idea of God. They brought with them an idea of liberty. And as a result we have, I think, the greatest republic on which the sun has ever shone.
And people talk about the powers of a President, and what a powerful Executive he is,
and what he can do. Let me tell you something--from experience! The President may have a great many powers given to him in the Constitution, and may have powers under certain laws which are given to him by the Congress of the United States; but the principal power that the President has is to bring people in and try to persuade them to do what they ought to do without [compulsion]. That's what I spend most of my time doing. That's what the powers of the President amount to.
Harry S. Truman: Remarks at the National Conference on Family Life. |
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next: Abortion
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