Marriage and the Family

We believe that the family is the basic social unit as designed by God. It is formed as a man and a woman make an exclusive marital commitment for love, companionship, intimacy, spiritual union, and the passing down of our faith. As a result of their physical union, children may be added to the family, per God’s blessing.

We believe that children are a gift, as well as a responsibility from God to the family. Parents are thusly entrusted with providing and modeling love, nurture, protection, and spiritual training. The inability to have children need not diminish the fullness of the family.

Infertile couples may choose adoption or seek medical care when they desire children. Adoption emulates God’s adoption of us as spiritual children. Some reproductive technologies are an appropriate exercise of mankind’s God-given creativity.

Certain reproductive technologies may present direct and indirect dangers to the family. As technology permits further divergence from normal physiological reproduction, it increasingly leads to perplexing moral dilemmas. Not every technological procedure may be morally justified.

We believe the principles which can guide the development and implementation of reproductive technologies include the following:

• Conception resulting from the union of a wife’s egg and her husband’s sperm is the ideal Biblical design
• Individual human life begins at conception (fertilization); therefore, God intends for us to protect it
• God holds us morally responsible for our genetic offspring

In accordance with the above statements, we refute and rebuff any attempt by groups or individuals who attempt to redefine marriage or family (as the homosexual agenda is attempting) as deleterious to our society and the world, and an attempt to void the honor and tradition of passing one one’s faith to their children.