Dear friends, I am truly brokenhearted. Today, the very anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the very day that we should be rejoicing in life, declaring the antithesis between God’s vision for life and the world’s hatred for children, I received on my desk the most remarkable newsletter I have read in some time.

I showed the newsletter to at least a half a dozen people to make sure that I was not dreaming, but was actually reading the words before me. The response from each person was the same — sadness and incredulity. One person actually wrote to me that “[the] diatribe was so far beyond the pale that it left me reeling.”

The newsletter accused some Christian home educators with a passion for biblical patriarchy as “treating their wives as baby machines,” of embracing a worldview similar to the wife-beaters and daughter-murderers of pagan Rome, and the tyrant fathers of organized crime (as discussed in Mario Puzo’s Godfather), of being arrogant spiritual tyrants of the Spanish Inquisition type, and of harming women. This same day, I received a series of tapes and transcripts indicating that the very words of the newsletter were being repeated in sermons delivered in churches at locations around America.

Had this letter come from Planned Parenthood or the National Organization for Women, I would not have been surprised. It did not. This newsletter came from Andrew Sandlin, a man who claims to be a Christian worldview speaker.

Some of you have written me in the past with questions about the numerous attacks (veiled and explicit) of Mr. Sandlin on Vision Forum and our work to encourage the restoration of Christian family culture. I want to assure you that, after several years of silence and personal private appeals to Mr. Sandlin by ourselves and others regarding issues of Christian character in public discourse, we are prayerfully considering (out of necessity) a public response. Please stay tuned.

One mother wrote to me expressing her own hurt over the viciousness and insensitivity of this cleric: “Mr. Sandlin seems to think that all of us who are married to such men are mindless drudges — Stepford Wives without brains who can do nothing other than drag along from day to day, breeding children like so many maggots. God help us! What a perversion of the beautiful and blessed vision of children and children’s children God has given us in Scripture!”

In the same letter she correctly observed that Mr. Sandlin accuses brothers in Christ “of ‘turning their wives into baby machines,’ among other degrading slanders. Friedrich Engels made a very similar remark in 1884 when he wrote The Origin of the Family: ‘The overthrow of mother right was the world historical defeat of the female sex. The man took command in the home also; the woman was degraded and reduced to servitude; she became the slave of his lust and a mere instrument for the production of children.’ Can Mr. Sandlin really believe that this is what the proponents of patriarchy think of women when they exhort men to provide for their wives, protect them, shelter them, and nurture them spiritually?”

For the record, I do not think that Mr. Sandlin deliberately planned for his newsletter attacking families with many children as “baby machines” to arrive on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. (To be precise, he accuses husbands of abusing their wives by demanding more babies — as if the decision to have children is a tyrannical coercion on the part of the husband against the wife.) Nevertheless, the irony is compelling: While Christians should be embracing child birth on the thirty-first anniversary of Roe, Mr. Sandlin is focusing his pen on attacking “baby machines.” In fact, he is using the very type of terminology employed by Margaret Sanger (the founder of Planned Parenthood) to express disdain for the commandment to “be fruitful and multiply.”

My question for men like Mr. Sandlin is this: Which of these babies, these products of “baby machines,” would have been better off, had they not been born? Which of these mothers and fathers would have been better off without that precious child, had they simply resisted the temptation to become “baby machines?” In the years to come, will Mr. Sandlin and his cotere have the courage to look these children in the eyes and say: “Sorry kid, you were the product of an abusive patriarchalist and his baby machine.” And while we are on the subject, which of these parents were sinning by conceiving children? If the procreation of such children to a married man and woman is as tyrannical as Mr. Sandlin believes, are parents who engage in such wicked procreation subject to church discipline? If not, at the minimum, should these patriarchalists who turn their wives into “baby machines” be disciplined by the church for spousal abuse?

Sadly, we do live in a day and age in which some of the greatest persecution against the Christian family comes from professing Christians. May God give us sweet speech which embraces the ethic of life, welcomes babies, boldly proclaims hope for the family, and never ridicules those who take the Bible seriously concerning the blessing of children by labelling them “baby machines.”

Oh, Father in Heaven, have mercy on your Bride. Give us an all-consuming love for your Son, and a passion for His most precious of creations — the young lives You entrust into our care. May your people acknowledge You as the Lord of the womb.

Doug Phillips,
Father of Seven Children

Postscript:

Mr. Sandlin’s Published Vision for Building Christian Culture:

We here know that Christians won’t win back the culture by sad-sack “quiet times,” funeral-dirge “worship services,” fifth-rate apocalyptic fiction, tofu Sunday school socials, and Little House on the Prairie bonnets, but by boisterous invocations of the Almighty God, ear-blasting steel guitars, full-bodied Napa Merlots, exotic marital sex, and God-drenched avant-garde teenagers. We won’t win the culture until we get over being embarrassed by our robust, world-affirming Bible. Embarrassed by Song of Solomon’s stunning eroticism. Embarrassed by Israel’s worship dance and loud musical instruments. Embarrassed by Jesus’ water-to-wine miracle (WWJD should really mean, “What Would Jesus Drink?”) ... So crack open the Bible, fire up a Cohiba [cigar], mix the martinis, and crank up the latest Coldplay CD [a British rock group]. (“Those World-Affirming Dudes — crack open your Bible, and mix a martini” by Andrew Sandlin, October 16, 2002, published at RazorMouth.com.)

Vision Forum’s Published Vision for Building Christian Culture:

1. Turning the Hearts of Fathers to Their Families
2. Proclaiming the Nobility and Glory of Motherhood
3. Reviving the Doctrine of “Women and Children First”
4. Embracing the Blessing of Children and the Sanctity of Human Life
5. Building a Culture of Virtuous Boyhood and Girlhood
6. Reinforcing Godly Masculinity and Femininity
7. Understanding Family Culture as Religion Externalize
8. Teaching History as the Providence of God
9. Developing Biblical Worldview Through Presuppositional Thinking
10. Training Character by Hebrew Discipleship and Home Education
11. Communicating the Applicability of the Law of God
12. Addressing the Ethical Issues of the 21st Century
13. Preparing Men to Stand in the Gates
14. Encouraging Unity Between Church and Home
(“Preserving Our Covenant with God through Biblical patriarchy and multi-generational faithfulness,” published at www.visionforum.org.)