"Pressures culminated at the 1930 Lambeth Conference, where bish-ops heard an address by birth-control advocate Helena Wrighton on the advantages of contracep-tion for the poor. On a vote of 193 to 67, the bishops (representing not only Eng-land but also America, Canada, and the other former colonies) approved a resolution stating that: In those cases where there is such a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, and where there is a morally sound reason for avoiding complete absti-nence, other methods may be used, provided that this is done in the light of the same Christian principles. This was the first official statement by a major church body in favor of contra-ception. Thus was Christian unity on the question broken. The decision was condemned by many religious and secular bodies, including the editors of the Washington Post. Pope Pius XI responded to it in his encyclical Casti Connubii four months later. The same stress line emerged in America. For example, in the very conservative Lutheran Church/Missouri Synod, the average pastor in 1890 had 6.5 children. The number fell to 3.7 children in 1920, 42 percent below the 1890 number. Other churches saw a similar decline. Here, too, the Protestant clergy had ceased to be models of a fruitful home for their congregations and the broader culture. During the 1930s, the Missouri Synod quietly dropped its campaign against the Birth Control League of America. In the 1940s, one of the church’s leading theologians, Albert Rehwinkel, concluded that Luther had simply been wrong. God’s words in Genesis 1:28—“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth”—were not a command; they were merely a blessing, and an optional one at that."