THOUGH I GREW UP in a church that could be considered fundamentalist, it was my grandmother, my primary caregiver, who in many ways formed my identity as a Christian woman. She was a closet feminist. When it came to what my faith community considered the proper role for a woman (being a good wife and mother), she engaged in significant deprogramming efforts. “See this suit?” our pastor said during one of his sermons. “I have received a lot of compliments on it today. My wife made it for me.” My grandmother pursed her lips. After we got home, she paced around, loudly announcing that I was going to get as much education as possible and was never going to sew for any man. Education, she believed, would protect me from dependency on a husband or an identity solely based on being a mother. It would also allow me to freely explore my creativity.
Many of the Christian scientists I have interviewed tell me that science itself is evidence of God’s creativity. “I sort of feel like God kind of has a sense of humor with how there’s so much in the creation that is surprising and delightful, and not just . . . solemn, and so I find a lot of that in seeing the various ways that quantum mechanics pops up in different parts,” a physicist said.1 And humans seem wired for that creativity. “There is little that shapes the human experience as profoundly and pervasively as creativity. Creativity drives progress in every human endeavor, from the arts to the sciences, business, and technology,” writes psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman in an essay for Scientific American.2 Creativity, some would say, is even the key way that humans are made in the image of God. According to Dorothy Sayers, when we look at a person we see “something divine, but when we turn back to see what [the person] says about the original upon which the ‘image’ of God was modeled, we find only the single assertion ‘God created.’ The characteristic [common] to God and to [humans] is apparently that: the desire and the ability to make things.”3 Biochemist and Anglican priest Robert Gilbert writes about science and play: “The playfulness of scientists is very good for the effectiveness with which [we] humans get a realistic understanding of reality. After all, the first and most fundamental characteristic of play is that it is free, that it operates freely.”4
Although my grandmother feared that I might spend my days sewing, I never did learn to sew. I tried once to take a class but quickly decided that I was not meant to express my creativity in that way; it did not feel like play to me. But I do have three academic degrees, including a doctorate, and a meaningful career. I have had the privilege of being able to live creatively, to make things; my scientific work—research, teaching, writing, and mentoring—has allowed me the creative freedom to help others in ways I never could have imagined when I was a child. And at times it even feels like creative play to me.
Yet, after obtaining my degrees and beginning my career, I still desperately wanted to be a mother. In Christian communities, human life is seen as special and sacred, and children are seen as evidence of that specialness. Creating children, a family, and a home is talked about overtly or lifted up symbolically as an essential piece of being a good Christian and a good Christian woman in particular. In the beginning God created us, Christians believe, and then God empowered us to be creators, to “be fruitful and increase in number” (Gen. 1:28). In a number of churches, motherhood and mothering is elevated over all other kinds of creation or creativity.
My mother had eight children, and since fertility experts will tell you that one predictor of your ability to have children is the fertility of your mother, I felt certain that getting pregnant would not be a problem. If I wanted a baby, then I would have a baby. From everything I could see, babies just happened. I figured pregnancy would come easily to me as well, but it didn’t. After more than fifteen years of trying to get pregnant and one significant pregnancy loss, I finally had a beautiful daughter, my only child.
Given the church’s focus on children, family, and motherhood, Christians who do not have children, are not part of a nuclear family, or do not stay home with their children full time can feel judged at church, as if they are not entirely fulfilling their creative role. Jaime, one of the scientists we met before, told me, “Even though I am a scientist, my primary identity in church is as a mother. I come to church. I bring my daughter. My daughter is very good; she is extremely well-behaved in church. And so I feel as if we tick all of the socially appropriate women-in-the-church buttons, and it’s that and not my scientific work that is absolutely my primary identity at church.”5
In many church environments, having children and creating a family is considered the “norm.” Yet for some, having children does not feel like part of their Christian calling; they feel called to other creative pursuits. For others, me included, their bodies do not function the way they would like them to, which means that even when they desperately want to have children, their biology does not cooperate.
About a year ago, I remember talking to a pastor I respect a great deal. In the course of our conversation about our work and our families, it came up that I have one child. “So you let your work get the best of you, didn’t you?” he said. “So many women work so hard and then when they get near middle age they wish they had more children.” I am not sure what compelled me toward honesty in that moment, but I replied, “Actually, I have been trying to get pregnant for the last fifteen years—the entire time I have been married—but have struggled deeply with infertility.” He responded sheepishly that he was sorry. He also said that in his thirty years of ministry, he had not known very many people who spoke openly about infertility.
It would be helpful if churches became more willing to openly discuss infertility and its associated hardships with congregants so that the church can become a place of support and sympathy for those struggling to have children. Christians dealing with infertility often feel afraid to talk about their difficulty and despair with fellow congregants or to turn to their pastors for support. They suffer in silence. They believe they are the only ones experiencing the pain of infertility.
One Christian couple described how it felt to struggle with infertility in their faith community: “We soon discovered a gaping hole in the churches that we went to. With the exception of a few supportive Christians, people generally didn’t talk about this problem unless we initiated it. There didn’t seem to be many younger Christians who had thought about how to minister to people with infertility, and there didn’t seem to be many older Christians who talked about their experience with it. The result was that people didn’t know what to say to us.”6
“My wife and I attend a church full of young families where people seem to have children all the time,” explained Jeff Cavanaugh, a Christian writer who has chronicled how he and his wife have struggled with infertility. “Not only does such a church [environment] remind infertile couples of their infertility with painful regularity, it can also leave them feeling isolated and alone, out of step with everyone else their age in a different stage of life.”7
In numerous ways, the Bible and church teachings tell us that children are a blessing from the Lord. The Old Testament psalmist, for example, writes,
Children are a heritage from the Lord,
offspring a reward from him.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Blessed is the man
whose quiver is full of them. (Ps. 127:3–5)
The cover of my first Bible depicted Jesus with little children flocking around him. I remember one woman in my church exclaiming when she was pregnant with her tenth child, “I cannot believe God has blessed me with another!” I have heard many times from people in churches that I have been part of, “I am praying for God to bless you with children.” Because fertility is seen as a blessing, as the main or only way we can truly “create,” those who do not or cannot have biological children can feel devalued, marginalized, and lonely. Phillip Wheeler, a pastor, explains that in the Scriptures “there is an expectation, even a command, to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, as part of a mandate given to [humanity]. There is an expectation that from a marriage union will come children.”8
Wheeler also discusses how the stories of infertility in the Bible can be discouraging for Christian couples experiencing difficulty in having children. He explains, “The Bible is full of stories of women who were infertile and who experienced the pain of childlessness. Look at Sarah, or Rebekah, or Rachel and how distressed she became at the taunts of her rival, or Samson’s mother, or Hannah or Elizabeth. In each of these cases, the woman was eventually able to conceive and give birth, for nothing is impossible with God.”9 Christians should try to reframe the narrative around infertility. The narrative should not be limited to stories of hope that result in God bringing biological children but should include both stories of hope and stories of suffering. Questioning, doubts, worry, and even dissatisfaction with a life different from the one a believer had wished for can often lead to glorifying God.
“Fertility is described in the Bible as a blessing for the obedient and infertility as a curse from God,” writes Megan Best, a Christian doctor and bioethicist, in an article for the Gospel Coalition. “Some couples, then, may need reassurance that while all the sickness, suffering, and trouble of our world results from the fall, problems like infertility aren’t necessarily connected with our personal sins in a neat one-to-one correspondence.”10
In an article she wrote for Time magazine on how the church could show more compassion for those facing infertility, Elizabeth Hagan, a Christian pastor who struggled with infertility herself for eight years before adopting, wrote that she “often wondered: If I wasn’t the pastor, would I come to church during this difficult time? The answer on many occasions was no.” She said that Christian leaders do not often provide words of comfort or encouragement to those struggling with infertility and that couples do not feel safe discussing at church their struggle with infertility. Part of the problem, she writes, is that “with the idea of immaculate conception sitting center stage every December, the church is a sucker for a good miracle story. It’s not that miracle babies aren’t possible. . . . But not every couple gets a miracle. Instead of focusing on the few miracles that do occur, the church needs to highlight stories of resilience. For example, the woman who still gets out of bed in the morning after her in-vitro fertilization cycle didn’t work.” For Hagan, “the bottom line is that the church would be wise to learn that infertility is a medical condition, not a spiritual one.”11
Today, more and more Christians who struggle with infertility are turning to science (alongside or as part of their faith) to seek help with conceiving. The existence of these technologies is a piece of scientists’ own creative pursuits to alleviate the suffering of infertility. In-vitro fertilization (IVF) is the most common and effective type of assisted reproductive technology that is used to treat infertility. During IVF, a woman’s eggs are removed from her body and mixed with sperm to form embryos (the early form of the egg and sperm after they have just joined), which are then implanted back in the woman’s body. Assisted reproductive technologies sometimes use eggs or sperm from donors, or they use previously frozen embryos. They may also involve a surrogate or gestational carrier. A surrogate provides her own eggs, while a gestational carrier “becomes pregnant with an egg from the female partner and the sperm from the male partner.”12
These technologies are not without their problems. Assisted reproductive technologies are typically not covered by insurance and can be extremely costly—an IVF cycle can cost $15,000 or more, for example, which means it is often available only to the wealthy.13 I spent thousands of dollars on fertility treatments. In churches, the fact that one is even using infertility technologies feels like it should be kept secret. Although I talked with close friends at work about my infertility and treatments, I almost never talked about these things at church. Fertility technologies also do not seem accessible to all. (During the entire time period that I went to an infertility clinic, I only saw a handful of nonwhite couples in the office waiting area, which is remarkable given that I live in the most racially and ethnically diverse city in the US.)
These technologies are nonetheless becoming more and more common. And, for many, these technologies seem like a sign of the God-given creative capacity humans have. Between 1987 and 2015, more than one million babies born in the US were conceived through the use of IVF or other assisted reproductive technologies, according to a report released in 2017 by the US Society of Assisted Reproductive Technology.14 Most churches, whether or not the leadership or congregants are aware, likely have kids running around who were born through the help of assisted reproductive technologies like IVF.
When it comes to creating new technologies that seem to construct the beginning of life, some Christians raise moral concerns about whether such technologies represent imprudent or unfettered creativity. My research shows that Christians tend to have complex feelings about assisted reproductive technologies. On the one hand, they see the benefits these technologies can afford. By helping couples dealing with infertility, these technologies have the potential to alleviate suffering. They can also help bring children into the world and church. On the other hand, there are concerns that these technologies allow scientists to “play God” and interfere with God’s will. Some Christians believe children are a blessing that should come only naturally, directly “from God and not from a test tube,” as I have heard some in churches say. And the process of IVF generally results in the creation of more embryos than can be used. Some are kept frozen and some are donated to other couples, but some of the embryos are destroyed in research or other parts of the process, and a large minority of Christians see this as destroying human life. “The procedures have amplified profound questions for the world’s theologians,” reporter Ariana Eunjung Cha wrote in a Washington Post article on the fortieth anniversary of the birth of the first IVF baby. She continued, vocalizing these questions: “When does life begin? If it begins at conception, is it a sin to destroy a fertilized egg? What defines a parent? Is the mother the woman who provides the egg or the woman who gives birth? What defines a marriage? If a man’s sperm fertilizes an egg from a woman who is not his wife, does that constitute adultery?”15
As Christians face these and other questions related to technologies that treat infertility, they often have to decide between competing theological ideals. For evangelical Christians, sources of authority for the faith, such as the Bible and Christian doctrines, are central in shaping how they weigh the potential benefits of these technologies against the importance of protecting embryos and the sacredness of life. In a national survey I conducted, I found that evangelical Christians are more likely than members of other major faith traditions to express moral concerns about IVF. Of evangelicals who were surveyed, 18 percent identified IVF as “morally objectionable” compared with 13 percent of all Americans, 15 percent of Catholics, and 11 percent of Protestants more broadly.16
Concerns about humans “playing God” or usurping God’s creative role often came up in discussions about IVF with Christians who find it morally objectionable. Some Christians believe that “unnatural” intervention in the process of conceiving children diminishes the role of God because it allows humans to involve themselves in the process of creation. They see assisted reproductive technologies as interfering with what is “meant to be.” As one evangelical woman opined, “It’s not the right thing to do. [Those who use IVF] are treading on places that can get very dangerous—the word dangerous may not be right—but it could become disastrous. . . . I believe people who cannot have children need to resolve the fact that they do not. And they need to find children they can adopt, or they can love the children they encounter in life. That’s probably what is meant for them to do.”17 This woman views infertility as at least a temporarily immutable imposition from God that should not be changed but that should cause those who do suffer from infertility to love children already in the world who need love.
One Christian couple recalled a friend who, upon learning they were undergoing IVF, told them, “I really think you should be adopting instead; it’s much more ethical.” The friend did end up apologizing, but the initial response reflects a commonly held position in the church. Christians who support or undergo IVF often experience backlash from their fellow Christians and congregants. In one church service I attended, we had a rare discussion group on fertility technologies. One woman raised her hand with tears in her eyes to say this was the first time she felt freedom to say that her children were conceived through the support of IVF technologies; she wanted to share this with the congregation so that others who are struggling with infertility might have someone to talk with.18
Yet I have also found that many evangelical Christians do not have moral objections to IVF. Among the evangelical Christians I surveyed, 42 percent say IVF is always morally acceptable or is morally acceptable in most cases, and another 32 percent say it is not a moral issue.19 Many of them believe that God affords humans the ability to create and advance medical technologies, and because God actively allows humans to discover and use these technologies, they do not see these technologies as replacing the role of God. Instead, God is, in a way, working through these technologies and through the creative power he gives to the humans who created them and to the humans who use them. Put another way, these Christians view technologies like IVF as God-given tools that allow humans to work in partnership with God. I call this moral framework a “co-creator schema” (in which humans, through the gifts of God, share the creator role).
Christians offer many reasons for their support of IVF technologies. One woman I interviewed at a church in Houston explained, “I do not believe that [IVF] in any way goes against the fact that God created the egg and the sperm. . . . He just made people smarter to where they can harvest them and freeze them and use them. No, I do not have a problem with that!”20 Another evangelical Christian explained that IVF could be part of humans and God working together. For him, IVF is “one of those things God has revealed science to do to help people,” and thus scientists and God are seen as working together.21A Christian biologist I interviewed talked about how a couple in his church applied their Christian principles to how they used IVF:
I [knew] one couple who . . . knew that the standard practice, which is still pretty prevalent, is that they would do what’s called hyper-ovulation or super-ovulation where you would get many oocytes [eggs] produced by the woman and then [the fertility doctors] would fertilize all of them, but not implant all of the fertilized embryos. And then the rest are frozen. And [the couple wasn’t] comfortable with those embryos sitting in a freezer in liquid nitrogen some place for years. So they wanted to go to an IVF clinic where they would only fertilize enough oocytes that they could implant all of them if they all successfully developed. So that’s one specific way that [someone’s faith matters]. They are pretty savvy, that couple, I will say. I mean they thought about a lot.22
Future Humans
Like assisted reproductive technologies, gene-editing technologies, which allow scientists to change the genetic makeup of a fertilized egg by inserting, deleting, or modifying DNA, also trouble some Christians because of ethical concerns and feelings they have about the creative power of God and the sacredness of human life. A 2016 survey by the Pew Research Center revealed that “highly religious Americans are much more likely than those who are less religious to say they would not want to use gene-editing technology in their families.”23 According to Pew, many Christians felt that using gene editing to reduce the risk of disease in babies was morally unacceptable. They were concerned that it would be altering “God’s plan” or “going against nature.”24 Among Protestants overall, 54 percent see gene editing that would reduce the risk of serious diseases in babies as meddling with nature, compared with 31 percent of those who have no religious affiliation. (Among white evangelical Protestants, the number goes up to 61 percent, while 42 percent of white mainline Protestants and 50 percent of black Protestants felt the same.) Those who felt gene editing for this purpose was morally acceptable referenced its similarity to other medical advances and pointed to the potential positive effects.25
My research has found that most evangelical Christians support the use of disease-focused reproductive genetic technologies (RGTs for short)—that is, gene editing and genetic testing technologies that focus primarily on correcting diseases or health concerns in embryos in the womb. Only 23 percent of evangelical Christians view disease-focused RGTs as morally wrong. Evangelicals who feel these are wrong often think that using these technologies inserts humans into the process of creation, debasing human life, interfering with God’s plan, or contesting God’s role as creator. For example, one young evangelical man who works in medicine told me, “I believe God is in control and that he’s taking care of everything, and [if] this child has a disease, then that’s what God wants for this child.”26 Even though the detection of developmental maladies in utero is a routine part of prenatal care in the US and even though medical professionals typically neither need nor use genetic testing to do it, many Christians worry that disease-focused RGTs will lead to a greater number of abortions. They reason that if the unborn child cannot be “fixed,” then it will be aborted.
Evangelicals who express support for disease-focused RGTs often do so based on the “co-creator schema” discussed earlier. They believe God provides humans with the knowledge and guidance to discover medical technologies, and thus God is working through these technologies and the humans who use them. I interviewed one woman from Houston who says, “I feel that they [scientists] have research that finds illnesses and sicknesses or corrective surgery that could be done while the baby is still in the womb; I think that is fantastic!”27 A youth minister in one evangelical church recounted a personal experience that altered his views toward disease-focused RGTs. He learned his child might have Trisomy 18, a chromosomal disorder that often results in death shortly after birth. While his child did not end up having the condition, he said that he would have used genetic technologies had they been able to prevent his child’s condition and that he was now open to using disease-focused RGTs to treat an ailment before birth. Drawing on “co-creator” beliefs, he explained, “If God’s giving me the power and the ability and the know-how to do it, I’d do it.”28 One of the most interesting findings from my research on how evangelical Christians view these technologies is that their feelings are not always static and their attitudes toward the moral permissibility of these technologies can be changed by personal experiences.
I have also looked at how Christians feel about enhancement RGTs. These RGTs are used not to identify and treat diseases in embryos but rather to select or create specific characteristics in an embryo, like athleticism or eye color, for perceived enhancement purposes.29 Many of these technologies are not yet possible, but many people, including most Christians, are concerned about what enhancement RGTs might lead to. When my colleagues and I spoke with evangelicals, most of them expressed views on enhancement RGTs that are similar to the views of the general American population, raising moral concerns about these potential technologies. In one survey I conducted, 80 percent of evangelical Christians indicated that they saw enhancement RGTs as morally wrong. Evangelical Christians often believed these technologies lead to “playing God” or usurping God’s creative power. For example, one man from an evangelical congregation in Houston said, “I referenced the Tower of Babel a little earlier and people tried to build a tower so high that they could get to God, that they could be equal with God. . . . And I think when we start playing God with human genetics, we are doing the same thing. We’re putting ourselves equal with God, so . . . I think that would be sinful.”30
Most of the time, however, when I questioned evangelicals about enhancement RGTs, they could not articulate their feelings of discomfort or disapproval, nor could they provide a religious or moral framework to explain their feelings. Rather, these feelings, while present, were a visceral reaction. This technology simply did not feel right, but they did not have the language to say why.
Sometimes we have to wrestle with our technologies and newfound abilities. We have to make hard choices between theological ideals and competing values. We have to think about what the limits of scientific creativity should be, what technologies we should wield, how we can use them for good, and how they might go wrong. Beyond reproductive technologies, we have to think about our responsibilities to all we create and to everything we bring into this world. One part of exercising responsibility with our God-given creative power is using it for redemptive healing.
Further Discussion