The sexual revolution of the nineteen-sixties was an extraordinary time, exemplified by surprising bedfellows. In today’s post we read of Christianity’s positive acceptance of progressive sexual practices.
In a January 1969 article in the Christian Century Gordon Clanton wrote: “We must begin to teach that sex is morally neutral,” and told readers, “Properly understood and lovingly practiced, sex outside of marriage is indeed a positive good.” The following month the same magazine printed an article calling for mandatory sex education for students and teachers, accessible birth control for anyone over fifteen, liberalised abortion laws, and the end of all laws regulating the sale of erotic material. In December 1971 the Journal of Pastoral Care printed an article by marriage counsellor David Mace endorsing masturbation, adultery, and homosexuality. Around the same time, the United Church of Christ became the first major American denomination to ordain an openly gay minister. Some ministers endorsed secret extramarital affairs, and others encouraged group marriage and open marriage.
The Reverend Raymond Lawrence wrote, “I am increasingly convinced that we are living in a time in which a new form of marriage is in the making . . . The old marriage of total and exclusive commitment is going to give way to something different in the years ahead. . . The old idea of one man for one woman, totally and exclusively, is, I believe, basically rooted in insecurity and possessiveness. And for many it is unsatisfying.”
Jonathan West (a pseudonym) took such teachings to heart. Born and raised a Catholic, West was an alter boy at his church and “always very spiritual.” As a high school student in Baltimore in the early sixties he found “the whole atmosphere of male-female relationships so stifling” that he and a group of friends created their own “mini Christian counterculture.” They organised civil rights protests, drug crisis interventions, and Bible study meetings. But this was a rather unusual Christian fellowship, because the students firmly opposed monogamy. “We did not want any part of the exploitative and oppressive relationships that were the norm around us. Among other things, we emphasised not having exclusive relationships.”
West and his friends believed the Bible’s sexual tenets had been misinterpreted by Christian clergy throughout the ages. “There is no intellectual support for monogamy or marriage in radical Christianity, and by ‘radical’ I mean going back to the root. It is quite explicit in the original Gospels that most of the apostles, except for St. Paul, had multiple lady friends. Paul made a big deal about how he was one of the only ones who didn’t. And the thing that he opposed the most was marriage, because when you’re married, you get tied down and can’t preach the Gospels. . . Nowhere does Paul say ‘Don’t screw around on the side.'”
West used his knowledge of early Church history and ancient Greek to challenge other Catholic dogma. “Wherever the Bible says ‘fornication’ the word does not refer to sex. ‘Fornication’ refers to having sex with temple prostitutes, which was a form of worshiping a pagan god. . . . Nowhere does the Bible say ‘Don’t screw around with the girl down the street.’ It only says, ‘Don’t have sex with pagan prostitutes in the Holy Temple.'”
From Make Love, Not War: the sexual revolution, an unfettered history David Allyn, Little, Brown and Company New York, 2000.
Tomorrow David Allyn takes a brief look at Humanae Vitae, the Papal encyclical of July 30, 1968, banning all forms of artificial contraception.