Just in time for the 40th anniversary of Humanae Vitae, here’s some surprising news: some of our non-Catholic brothers and sisters are riding the Natural Family Planning (NFP) wave.

This comes from the Austin American-Statesman in Texas:

Phaedra Taylor abstained from sex until marriage. But she began researching birth control methods before she was even engaged, and by the time she married David Taylor, she was already charting her fertility.

Taylor, a fresh-faced 28-year-old who would blend in easily with South Austin bohemians, ruled out taking birth control pills after reading a book that claimed the pill could, in some cases, make the uterus uninhabitable after conception occurred. She viewed that as abortion, which she opposes.

“I just wasn’t willing to risk it,” she said.

Taylor wanted her faith to guide her sexual and reproductive decisions after marriage. Natural family planning felt like the best way to honor God, she said.

The Taylors are one of several couples at Hope Chapel — a nondenominational church where David Taylor, 36, was the arts minister for 12 years — who practice natural family planning. Christian scholars say they may reflect a growing trend among non-Catholic Christians who are increasingly seeking out natural alternatives to artificial contraception.

Natural family planning is frequently dismissed by Protestants as an outmoded Catholic practice that most Catholics don’t even follow anymore. But 40 years after Pope Paul VI released Humanae Vitae, the document outlining the church’s position on marital sex and procreation, the method and the theology behind it are earning respect among some young Protestants, according to Christian scholars.

The 1968 papal encyclical explains the church’s interpretation of the moral and natural laws, which includes a prohibition against artificial contraception but allows couples who want to plan their children to “take advantage of the natural cycles immanent in the reproductive system and engage in marital intercourse … during those times that are infertile.”

This approach, for years known as the rhythm method because it relied on a calendar to track a woman’s ovulation based on past cycles, underwent improvements over the years, becoming a more reliable system known as natural family planning.

The natural family planning movement among Protestants is difficult to quantify, but there appears to be growing interest, said the Rev. Amy Laura Hall, a Methodist minister and associate professor at Duke Divinity School. Because she’s one of the few Protestant scholars writing about reproductive issues — her latest book is called “Conceiving Parenthood” — Hall frequently fields questions from Christians about family planning at conferences and by e-mail.

She said they ask questions like whether it’s truly Christian to be preoccupied with finances and getting children into the right schools rather than welcoming children as gifts on loan from God — even if they don’t fit into the parents’ ideal life plan.

Alexis Dobson, an instructor with the Fertility Care Center of Central Texas, said she’s noticed more people who say they are Protestants enrolling in classes, joining the standard flock of Catholic couples required to take at least one class to have a church wedding. Dobson has worked with the Taylors and other couples from Hope, helping them not only avoid pregnancy but achieve conception as well.

Usually, she says, women hear about the method from a friend. That’s how it happened for Katie Fox, 31, another Hope Chapel member. After learning about the method from an acquaintance, she researched her options.

Before getting married, she took the pill to regulate her menstrual cycle, but she said it had negative side effects. Other forms of birth control such as condoms didn’t appeal to her. When she got married, she and her husband used natural family planning.

Failure rates can be as low as 1 percent but can rise to as high as 25 percent when people do not follow the method perfectly, experts say.

Fox was raised Catholic but said her mother didn’t agree with the church’s stance on contraception. Only after she became an adult and left Catholicism did she begin to appreciate that part of church teaching, she said.

“I feel like it really works in harmony with the way that God designed our bodies to work,” she said. “In contrast with the pill, which works by altering and suppressing our natural systems, NFP works by supporting those systems in harmony with their functions. It goes with the flow, so to speak. There is a wisdom and a rightness to that which I really appreciate.”

She now is a nondenominational Christian and has a 1-year-old daughter. The method worked, she said, until she and her husband got lazy one month and had sex during Fox’s fertile period. But the pregnancy, she said, helped remind them that God was ultimately in charge.

Check the Austin American-Statesman link for more. H/T to Rod over at Beliefnet.

Photo: David and Phaedra Taylor, with their Natural Family Planning chart. By Bret Grebe .