Church Responses to the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s

perform Responses to the knowledgeable Revolution of the mid-sixtiesHow did the church building of England respond to the familiar alteration of the 1960s?This subject is warmi altogethery vast in scope and could easily extend wholesome beyond the structural requirements of this dissertation certain parameters penury to be established initially therefore. It seems the about appropriate place to under call back would be to establish what the church service of Englands traditional come acrosss of intimate relationships was after this we should examine the knowledgeable rotary motion of the 1960s before going on to discuss much(prenominal) directly its impact upon the church.At this aim we leave alone look at three of the most vexed, the performs views on the mark of women in hunting lodge and in the clergy,the position of homo internals, and the churchs views on divorce and reconjugation. Finally we ordain strike off some of the most signifi do- nonentityt huge term impacts of the depend onual diversity and of societies changing locatings. There discharge be little doubt that there is more disagreement than ever,over the question of the relevance of the Bible and of Christianity for the taste of human sexual urge. As in so me very(prenominal) an(prenominal) other argonas of Christian practice, the traditional consensus has broken pour down and the issue is non fiercely upsetd. For many mercenary Christians, the Bible re main(prenominal)s the touchs tone for how men and women are to understand and practice their sexuality and how family life, church life and social life are to be conducted. For many others, however, the Bible has little or no authority as it is so obviously old fashion andout of date that its teachings poop non be relevant, credible or useful in modern club. Yet more find themselves positioned someplace mingled with the two caught between feelings of loyalty to the Bible and what it represents, and on the ot her a conviction that people in the modern world simply do not or cannot take the Bible seriously any more,particularly if interpreted literally, as those in the kickoff group would do. Arguably the most exciting recent development in the study of primal Christianity has been the weakening of the traditional departmental divisions between secular and ecclesiastical historiography. As soon as traditional historians started to turn a course from exclusively studying military and political history, towards the study of social history then, Christian texts became such a rich seminal fluid of evidence that they could no longer be ignored. Since the enlightenment, a question mark has been placed against the Christian inheritance scholars who turn their attention to proto(prenominal) Christianity sometimes feel as thought hey are touching a raw nerve and can become tempted to overlay his own prejudices on the subject,instead of maintaining academic distance. In no area is this more t rue than in the study of sexuality our attitude towards our own sexual natures and the moral and ethical problems it gives rise to. The extremely demanding and authoritarian teachings of the church on the subject of union, and the concomitant issue of sexual practice distant of marriage, is a significant part of our Christian heritage that is still very potent today notwithstanding amongst people and communities that outwardly reject it. It is this that provokes denunciation from the judgmentlist and the secular historian resembling Edward gibbon is perfect display case of this The Enumeration on the whimsical laws, which they most circumstantially imposed on the marriage bed, would force as mile from the new-fangled, and a blush from the fair. In both his attitude and his tone, Gibbon has influenced many more recent historians. Robin Lane Fox, for example, devoted the greater part of chapter of his work Pagans and Christians, to proto(prenominal) Christian sexual morality with afullness and relish that more or less make up for a total lack of sympathy. He describes virginity, for example, as goose egg just the most selfish of human ideals. Wolfgang Leech, avocation on from the work of Gibbon, is excessively highly critical stating that asceticism and intolerance are the two main contrisolelyions that Christianity has made to European culture. It is upon this background that the work of Peter Brown has emerged.His essays on early(a) Christian monasticism and his The dust and Society on sexual renunciation in the early church, takes on its full significance. Brown is also one of the aforementioned secular historians that posses no personal loyalty of affiliation to the Christian Church, who impart progressively dominate the study of the subject in the coming years. Browns approach, however, is significantly more insubordinate than that of Gibbon and his successors. He is not dominated by the moral absolutes of the enlightenment with its,of ten open, hostility to traditional Christian morality. For brown,history can be broken down into individuals who had the capacity to make free choices and exercise free will whilst having a complete understanding of the consequences of their actions. For Brown, the Kernel of traditional Christian sexual morality was the concern with single-mindedness, or purity of heart a reorientation of an individuals will so that it would cease to serve the warring impulses of man, and respond, instead, to the will of God. Brown goes on to note that it is hardly surprising that the ideal of purity of heart and of virginity became quickly inseparable, and that the leaders of Christian communities became the purview of a small,celibate, religious elite. These suggestions of early Christian discipline may suggest repentant system that would cast been more dominant and dictatorial than the early Church ever actually developed. The rules of early Christian communities with their broad ranging and unbending condemnation of adultery, fornication and homosexuality, appears to leave little room for flexibility. This inflexibility of the rules can wholly have had the effect that they could often simply not be applied. In any discourse of the position of the Church on any matter, the writings of the New Testament can not be ignored. Our Lords own celibate state is explicit in the Gospels, and is an un-remarked corollary or his prophetic role. Sexual morality receives distinctive and no-nonsense treatment in the dominical forbidding of divorce and the Pauline boost of virginity. The issue remains subordinate one, however, until a century novelr but what was the origin of this concern with sexual purity that so came to purposeise Christianity in general and the pre sexual revolution Church of England? The most everyday answer to this puzzle is to place the blame squarely upon the shoulders of out boldness influences, largely from Hellenism. It is likely that the very first Christians had a thoroughly positive attitude towards sex and marriage, the replacement of this position by something diametrically subscriber lineed to it has to have been as a result of outside influence specifically the dualism of Platonism with disintegration of the dust and bodily pleasures. On this point, Brown notes I have frequently observed that the sharp and dangerous flavour of many Christian notions of sexual renunciation, both in their personal and their social consequences, have been rendered tame and insipid, finished being explained away as no more than inert borrowings from a supposed pagan or Jewish background. To ascribe whatever any given individual dislikes in the historical position of Christianity to outside influences, is so obviously tendentious device for preserving the truth and distinctiveness of Christianity, that it hardly requires and refutation by the historian.The contrast between the sexually positive attitude of early Christian sand the bl eak otherworldly Platonists is no less crude, foolish and absurd than the polar and once popular opposite the contrast between acetic and sexual pleasure hating Christians and the pleasure lovingpagans. It is of considerable interest, as the attitudes seem to haveremained relatively unchanged in the Church of England and the wider Church, to enquire into the attitudes towards sexuality and marriage in the Churches most successful early missions. The surviving source satisfying relates to the aristocracy. The task of attempting to discern the attitudes of the masses on any subject is difficult, but necessary.We must forever and a day be alert of the potential for crude stereotypes between Christian and pagan. Paul Venue argued from epigraphic and literary evidence, however, that the first few centuries of the Christian era saw, not so ofttimes the replacement of Greco-Roman sexual mores objurgate ones as the development inwardly both paganism and Christianity of what he calls t he bourgeois notion of marriage wit hits stringent stress upon fidelity. The reality, as Price notes, is that it is vain to seek to compare the values and attitudes of the fair(a) pagan with the average Christian. The sexual discourse of early Christian writers differed from those of pagans to an extent in the early period. The ethics of telethons and Stoics alike set stress upon self- subdue and upon the rational use of the mind on the dominance of the intellect over the will and , of course, of the subjugation of impulses and somatogenic emotions. In general, however, the discourse of the philosophers on matters of sexuality was limited. We cannot, however, argue that pagans of the period had a signally relaxed attitude to the whole subjectthis would be to misunderstand the distinctive character of the philosophical discourse of the time. This tended to thin so heavily upon the good of the soul that the needs of the body were neglected. The distinctive sexual discourse of early Christianity has its origins, in large part, in the second century and thus post dates the New Testament. It would be a major mistake, however, to think that the debate occurred outside of the scriptures a close reading of the letters of St. Paul presentation that the issue and thus Christian and regulartually Church of England attitudes, were fed by a range of biblical themes. The strengthening of the institution of marriage was also a central tenet of the early Church, as well as of Christianity and and then of the Church of England today however, the stress early writers placed upon virginity precluded a positive forwarding of marriage. But in society,both ancient and modern, where marriage was firmly the norm, the institution could not have been negatively bear upon by the advocacy of celibacy, however enthusiastically argued. Christian writers and thinkers, then and now, have been keen to uphold monandrous marriage in the face of excesses in the opposite directi on, i.e. sexual indulgence and promiscuity. The early Church, then, evidently located a heavy emphasis upon sexual abstinence and purity of heart. The rules on these matters were unbending, although perhaps, in reality, not always obeyed. Adultery,fornication and homosexuality were expressly forbidden. Given the nature of the question, however, it seems appropriate to now turn our attention more specifically to the Church of England, and its traditional views on sexuality. The traditional views of the Church of England are hardly distinguishable from those highlighted above, although hey have come under fire and indeed under review in recent years. In 2003 the House of Bishopspublished a guide to some aspects of the debate on human sexuality.The base was outfit three years previous to its publication date and is a weighty tome. The report sets out a variety of views of the Church of England on such topics as homosexuality, bisexuality fantasticality, as well as heterosexuali ty. The report and sought to restate Church of England policy on matters of sexuality whilst promoting reflection upon them. Although these issues will be discussed upgrade later, it is chief(prenominal) at this stage to note that the report did not advocate or suggest changes in Current Church policy. Towards the end of the 1960s many people in Britain, particularly women, had come to imagine that a sexual revolution was taking place. Angela Carter wrote, in 1969, that the introduction of more or less100 per cent trenchant methods of birth control, feature with the relaxation of manners that may have derived from this technological innovation or else came from deity knows where, changed, well,everything. Rabble, a contemporary of Carter and fellow novelist,argued similarly stating, in the Guardian We face the certainty of asexual revolution. She goes on to claim again that this is linked inseparably with the development of effective methods of contraception.Not all contempora ries of Carter and Rabble believed that a sexual revolution had occurred, however for example Weeks and Lewis have argued that heterosexual sexual demeanor remained conservative during the late 60s and beyond. The only measurable and record able change occurring in sexual demeanor was the rising incidence of premarital sexual intercourse. On the basis of the ample evidence that the unmarried insisted that they were only having sexual intercourse with their intended spouse, they dismiss the idea of a sexual revolution and claim it was nothing more than the continuation of an existing trend. Indeed, outside of the kernel mannikines (see below), premarital sexual intercourse had almost for sure been a significant part of the courting ritual, reaching a low point around 1900, when abide by records began, but rose back to more normal levels as the century progressed. During the 1960s, however, with the advent of the birth control oral contraceptive pill premarital sexual intercour se became radical sexual behaviour, demandless of the intentions of those participating in it. The sexual revolution of the mid twentieth century appears to have begun in the upper pith cleares. This class can be characterised or defined by their ambiguous relationship with power. They do not feel as though they are influencing events, but they do enjoy sufficient economic, financial and cultural privileges to create a craving to maintain the social system. They were willing participants, therefore,only in a revolution with regard to their private lives. Members of this class can be further characterised as working hard and paying high taxes, but with no accident of moving further up the social ladder exposit them as being of the ideal class for Marcus although these analyses would have to be differentiated in terms of masculine and feminine to include how female freedom and revolt have played a part in the sexual revolution. Before they became merged into the middle class es, the aristocracy had a pre-bourgeois morality. Like the bourgeoisie, the urban and rural working classes had never been under the impression that they were in any way in control of their lives this would seem to be particularly relevant to women. For a long time, the working classes seem to have been highly suspicious of the permissiveness of the liberal morality of the privileged classes. This inevitably brief analysis of the middle classes should give usa basis from which to understand one of the characteristic elements of the sexual revolution the withdrawal from the exterior world into private sphere of family on the one hand and sexual partner(s) on the other. This movement can be seen in the every day life of middle class people subsisting in their homes or flats with their nuclear families,withdrawn into itself. At work, as well as in the daily drudgery of the commute to work, the middle class person (man or woman) of the 1960sand beyond, had hardly any real control ov er their lives to attempt to compensate for this to some degree, by experimenting in his private,family and sexual life. But, in the ever developing consumer society that was coming into existence even in the 1960s, the experiments were limited and resulted in very little real change. We should now return our attention to the issues of the sexual revolution. As mentioned earlier, the development of the contraceptive pill was a significant contributory factor in the changing moral position, particularly among women but even before the arrival of the pill, increasing use of contraception and new attitudes to sexuality were combining with anxiety close to rising illegitimacy figures, to provoke comment from some elements of society on the existence of premarital sex and the denial of contraception to unmarried women. We can also place premarital sexual relationships within the context of other sexual activity that was occurring outside marriage in the late 1950s.The 1957 report, pu blished by the Wolfed commission on homosexual offences and prostitution, recommended that behaviour that took place in private between consenting adults should be decriminalised but that legal penalties for public displays of sexual behaviour should be strengthened. Essentially, although it was never actually illegal,that was the already existing position as regards women and premarital intercourse. Premarital sexual intercourse was carried out in private between consenting adults. The sanctions imposed by the society of the late 50s were severe enough to date that it had to be covert and concealed, but it was certainly never illegal. If the women became pregnant as a result of her sexual activity, the judgemental of society was heavy she would have been, basically, a social outcast. Having the child was also the only outcome of pregnancy as abortion was illegal at the time. Having an illegitimate child was highly stigmatised and something that was avoided at all costs, it was treated almost like having a criminal record. A combination of the almost50,000 illegitimate children born a year at the very protrudening of the60s, and the introduction of the birth control pill that removed the most obvious side effects of promiscuity a new openness was forced upon an unwilling populace, and by the end of the 1960s this had resulted in general public acceptance of the hitherto private and hidden sexual activity. The Wolfed report, mentioned above, placed a great emphasis upon self control and self restraint important values in the 50s and earlier. With supreme irony, any publicity given to the report, and any public discussion of sexual behaviour that it may have generated were seen as examples of a lack of restraint by many people. Suchmainstream cerebration was, however, of decreasing effect by the end of the 50s, increasing numbers of people were discussing such matters and tangle no stigmatism for doing so. A number of historians have discussed the debat es of the time and they need not concern us too greatly herebut what these historians accounts lack is any sense of how the discussion changed throughout the 60s. As the decade wore on, it became increasingly permissible to discuss sex and sexual behaviour in public. An resplendent example of this is given by an examination of the British Medical Associations one-year magazine, Family Doctor produced supplement entitled get Married. The 1959 edition of this publication contained two binds that caused great offence at the time The first by a Dr. Wilmington containing a seemingly lighthearted question are you a bride and are you pregnant too? summons to the rising rate of pregnancies occurring outside of marriage. The second article, by a Proof. Chess er, suggested that using contraception, like the pertly developed pill, successfully removed the problems that arose from sexual activity outside of marriage he wen ton to argue that people should have the right to choose between b eing chaste and unchaste as long as society doest suffer. Chess erso pinions were strongly disapproved of in many watchwordpapers of the day,for example the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, the People, the WomenMirror and the Sunday Graphic. These newspapers had a very considerable combined circulation, and thus very wide reach. The Daily Express alone had a readership of over four meg in the early 60s.The story was not only taken up by the internal press, but by the provincial press too, and also, of course, by the religious newspapers needless to say the coverage was almost universally negative. The publishers, the British Medical Association, with displace the issue with its offending article from circulation after only 2 days.The article was later reprinted twice, first of all in the New Statesman and then by Chess er himself. Even after republishing the article, Chess er himself evidently felt compelled to note that he wa snot condoning or advocating promiscuity or premarital sexual activityeven in the early 60s a medical professional could not openly argue for such things. An excellent indication of the sexual morals of the time is given by an incident in 1960. Penguin Books were prosecuted under the grubby Publications Act for the first full and unabridged version of Lancaster Lover by D. H. Lawrence. The prosecution ultimately failed but Ralph, who later edited a transcript of the endeavor, later wrote that quite quickly the prosecution became about the open and adulterous behaviour of the eponymous character. Ralph reported that thirteen episodes of physical sexual activity wee described in detail in the book using four letter words. The defence succeeded in arguing that, although the sexual relations noted above did occur outside of marriage, Lawrence presented them as pure and holy. The trial received extensive news coverage, and sales of the Penguin edition were suitably boosted. Evidence, such as that presented above from novels and marria ge manuals show us that, by 1960, those who were the most forward thinking and sexually progressive in society accepted Lawrencepresentation of sex, even adulterous sex, as justified by love. Along with the success of Lawrences novel in the Penguin edition, the Sunday Pictorial serialised a sequel called Lady Chastelys young ladywhich, because of its popularity, went on to be published as a novel. The idea that sexual relations outside of or marriage could be validated by love was not a new one however, the idea that the presentation of the suggestion that new and different approaches to sex should not be vilified in the national news media, was new. Briggs comments that what distinguished the decade of the early 60sfrom others in the history of broadcasting was that the BBC as an institution- with Hugh Greene as its coach General -considered it necessary to align itself with change. An example of this can be base in the BBCs annual Rebirth Lectures series of 1962 in this year the devils were given by Professor G. M. Car stairs, a headhunter and academic, he was asked to present a series of lectures on the subject of the state of the nation, in the light of changes, which have come about in the community and private life since the beginning of the century. The most notable lecture for an understanding of the BBCs role in changing sexual morality was the third Corsairs that pre-marital licence has been found to be quite compatible with stable married life. The BBC had a very wide audience, although largely middle class, the press coverage that this produced reached a much wider audience. Mary White house initially began her crusade of impedance to changing sexual morals as a result of this new direction from the BBC. The changes in the attitude of the BBC, and of society in general,did not escape the attentions of the Church of England. Some controversial Anglican theologians, such as the Bishop of Woodlice,revealed that the newly developing sexual st andards and beliefs were being seriously debated within the Church of England. In 1963 he wrotenothing can of itself be labeled wrong. One cannot, for instance,start from the position sex relations before marriage or divorceare wrong or sinful in themselves. They may be in 99 cases or even 100cases out of 100, but they are not inalienableally so, for they only intrinsic evil is lack of love. The Church of England appears to have had little or no relevance to the sexual revolution that was occurring in the late 50s and early 60s however, the Mass-Observation surveysof the 1940s did indicate that even a nominal adherence to Christianity correlated very closely with larger families and a more repressive approach to sexual behaviour. It is probably true that the position of and statements from the Church of England reached and were listened to be a greater correspondence of the population than is usually thought to be the case. Church of Englands Reaction to the Sexual Revolution. T he 60s undoubtedly saw an erosion of moral authority, not just of Christian morality, but also of a consensus based morality, generally seen by the mainstream of society as correct and upheld by society as aw hole. This was a morality that ensured single women should not obtain contraception without any need to legislate that this should be the case. The aromatise affair in 1963 in which he was revealed to have been engaging in sexual intercourse with an reckon gave a huge push to the belief in the growing hypocrisy of the establishment and the need for afresh morality. Probably the first substantial change in the theoretical construction of the morality of sexuality came in Alex Comforts Sex in Society,first published in 1950 but only achieving success with its republishing in 1963. The impact of the book was no doubt aided by the authors way on a BBC discussion program defending premarital sex. Several prominent and traditionally conservative Anglican Bishops responded, amon g them Canon Bentley, to what was becoming known as the new morality. In 1965 Bentley described Comfortviews as follows When your son brings a girlfriend on a visit, will you say to your mother in law, Do take a tray of lemonade into the garden for Charles and Mary theyAve been playing tennis all day, and next morning imprecisely the same tones, Do leave a tray down the passage for Charles and Mary theyAve been playing sex all night? This looks like Dr .Comforts hope because he tells us we ought to know that sex is the healthiest and most important human sport. Comfort probably made a greater contribution to the development of the new debate on sexual morality than anyone had done since Lawrence.The major difference between the two was that Comfort did not accept that love, in the form of a monogamous sexual relationship, legitimised sex. Comfort argued that sex was a physical pleasure, not too dissimilar to eating. He went on to argue that people should indulge as much as they wished, as long as they were considerate of the feeling sand morality of others, and that they took the necessary precautions to ensure no children wee conceived. Canon Bentley responded to this position of Comfort by asking can we actualise these hopes in the1960s? Alas no for the key to realising this ideal is a wholly foolproof form of contraception. manifestly the Canon did not see the birth control pill in this light, many others, however, did including Comfort himself. Thus, by even the mid 60s there were debates raging on sexual mores both within the Church of England, and in the general population. These debates whilst in many ways theoretical, presented people with very real choices and possibilities, with regard to how they were to live their lives. One of the major effects of these debates caused in no small way by the Church of England, combined with extensive media coverage of the birth control pill was that, for a great number of young women, the idea of the pill wa s just as important as its reality. This can be seen by In gram, a journalist and author, who went back in the late 70s to visit with her 11 increase class girls who were in their late teens in the early 60s, about growing up in that decade. She describes the publicity given o the pill as our generation was growing up with the knowledge that somewhere out there existed a contraceptive which promised you would be able to get away with it, in the way only men had before. There were, obviously, alternative models to that advocated by the Church of England, and young women were increasingly aware of their choices this is not to say, however, that they would exercise their choices, they may well have agreed with the Churches teachings on the subject. It should be noted that the sample was of grammar schoolgirls, not typical among the population as a whole. As more educated women they were, perhaps quite naturally, aware of their choices and women in this social group wee the first unmar ried women to be taking the contraceptive pill. This theory supports the assertion made earlier in this dissertation that the sexual revolution occurred primarily, or at least initially, among the middle classes. The refusal to prescribe the pill to young women such as these, created an issue around which debates on sexuality and sexual morals could conducted. In the early 60s there was increasing awareness, through books,television, plays, newspapers and so on of the distress and depression that unwanted pregnancy generally has on women. It was believed that unmarried mothers had personality problems or character disorders and were treated accordingly. Adoption caused many women, then and now,lasting grief and was thus not desirable from the point of view of the mother. Illegal abortions became increasingly popular, with women attempting to self terminate with increasing frequency to avoid the social stigma attach to being an unmarried mother. The only acceptable response to b ecoming pregnant whilst unmarried was to marry as soon as possible, certainly before the child was born. This would certainly have been the wish of the Church and indeed of mainstream society too. Many such marriages simply did not last however. The Rise of Feminist Theology and the Church of Englands Reaction. It is impossible to separate Christian theology from the social aspects of the Church of England in the era in which the theology is produced. It should also be recognised that while the Bible will always be the closing and permanent authority within the Church of Englandtheology, like the very Church itself, is in constant need of reform and renewal the sexual revolution was such an era of reform,particularly with regards to the role of women in society and in the Church. The Churchs teachings on the relationship between men and women could be argued to have historically owed more to the social nature of the Church, rather than to any biblical references. Many observers have noted that traditionally, the Church of England has taught compare of the souls in the afterlife, but in comparison of the sexes in this world,and certainly within the church. Throughout almost all of its history, the Church of England has been a patriarchal institution based upon defining the male as superior to the female. Through its sexually distinguished doctrine of man the church has, for centuries legitimised laws and structures in society which secured male rule and demanded female subservientness and obedience. Within the Church of England, however, there have been an increasing number of women and men who have discovered the seeds of equality within the pages of the Bible and have come to believe in the equality of the positions of women and men as being intrinsic to the Bible.Many Christian women had, until relatively recently, felt a discrepancy between the gospel from which they drew strength and inspiration and the church which severely restricted their life and prevented then from joining the ministry. Feminist theology, therefore, has essentially existed as long as there have been women who have drawn their faith from the Bible in ways that were counter cultural to the prevailing attitudes of Church of England. Modern feminist theology did not begin within the Church of England,but in the USA at the end of the 1960s. It has its roots, primarily in the experiences of Christian women living under the pressure of ideology and structures, claimed by the patriarchal leaders of the church to be the eternal will of god as seen in the gospels. This modern feminist movement has created a far better c