"There is a scriptural mandate for it, and you have admonitions in the psalms that speak of the blessedness of God providing many children to a husband and wife. And there's a general tenor throughout scripture that children are a blessing and a heritage from the Lord. So, should Christians be fruitful and multiply? I say absolutely. In fact, I would say this: the only instance in which Christians should not seek the gift of children would be in extraordinary ministry circumstances where perhaps having children would be ill-advised or dangerous."

Daniel Akin, president, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

"We become more like God when we marry. Two become one; when I choose to love my wife and become one with her, we become more like God. When two of us become three and have one family, I become more like God. That's when I understand the father heart of God, the mother heart of God. So, for our own sanctification, godliness, and becoming like God, we need to have children."

Vishal Mangalwadi, Revelation Movement

"While it's trendy to talk about curbing baby emissions, most industrialized countries actually need more population: more babies to sustain and care for their aging population. It's a general misread of demographics across the world to see it as a baby problem. But most importantly, the world needs to see Christians leading lives of fruitfulness. That's fruitfulness across the board - biological fruitfulness in marriage, but also lives of fruitfulness where we're showing generosity in care for the elderly and our concern about social problems, but not trying to solve them by adopting trendy practices of birth control."

Steve Watters, author, Start Your Family: Inspiration for Having Babies

"Children are a blessing from the Lord, and we should be promoting a culture of life in our nation. The Bible certainly encourages us to respect and honor human life, and speaks to the blessing children are and that human life is. There are a lot of decisions to be made within individual families that churches have to look at individually, but it's certainly pretty clear in the Bible-celebrate life."

Aaron Mercer, project director, nae Generation Forum

"God calls us to be fruitful and multiply but ... it has to do with how God speaks to each family and person, for the children we're called to raise, the children God wants us to have. The more important question is, as parents, especially disciples of Christ who are called to care and tend his garden, do we raise our children to be good stewards of the earth, to use the resources that God gave us wisely? I think that's the biblical question. God calls us each to provide and multiply. The question is how do we raise them to live as disciples?"

Mitch Hescox, president, Evangelical Environmental Network

"Most of my adult life I've lived around all kinds of people screaming about population explosion. In the last 10 or 15 years it quieted down, largely because fertility dropped ... . If there's something important going on in fertility now, it's the fact that European nations are far below replacement fertility. I don't know whether Christians have a duty to be fertile, but I certainly do not see that they have a Christian duty to not have children."

Rodney Stark, professor of social sciences, Baylor University

"As a human species, we are successfully filling the earth. I don't think every individual has the responsibility to reproduce, because God hasn't given every individual the capacity to reproduce, or the desire. Humans are all responsible for fruitfulness. The context of the scripture in the creation account is about being fruitful, multiplying, subduing, and caring for the earth. We can express fruitfulness through responsibility, care, and stewardship for all of creation, which includes our biological children as well as all other children and all other parts of creation."

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