Christianity and the demoralisation of sex

One of the great triumphs of the early church was its witness in the arena of sexual conduct, marriage and the family.

The surrounding pagan culture, which was deeply immoral, was profoundly influenced by the sexual purity of the Christians. It became widely known that chastity was the quintessential Christian virtue that flowed from the holiness of God. Young women, trained in the meaning and purpose of chastity by older women, strove to keep themselves pure for their future husband. Young men learned the virtue of self-control. Christian men were taught to treat women with honour and respect, to love their wives and to be faithful to their marriage.

The Christian virtues

Most people in society came to understand that Christian sexual conduct is expressed in the four virtues — modesty, chivalry, chastity and fidelity. While each virtue applies to an aspect of sexual behaviour, together they form a coherent inner belief system that expresses the biblical attitude to sex, marriage and the family. Sexual purity is the foundation on which these virtues are built, 1 Thessalonians 4.1-8. In his great wisdom God has instituted moral laws around human sexual conduct that preserve marriage, secure the family and protect children. When God’s people live by these virtues they have a profound impact on the moral condition of society.

Sadly, in our time, the teaching of God’s plan for sexual conduct has become the lost message of the Bible. Unlike the early church, the modern church appears to have lost its saltiness and is no longer influencing the surrounding pagan culture, but coming to an accommodation with its amoral teachings.

Rampant sexual immorality

It is now common knowledge that British society is plagued by rampant sexual immorality. A recent parliamentary Select Committee identified what it called a crisis in the sexual health of the nation. Increasing numbers of children are becoming sexually active. Latest figures show that about 17% of girls aged 15 (that is, 55,000) attend family planning clinics for their supply of contraceptives, as do 6% of girls aged 13-14. Furthermore each year about 27,000 girls under 16 are dispensed emergency contraception at family planning clinics, often without their parents’ knowledge. The rate of unwanted teenage pregnancies is the highest in Western Europe (half are terminated by abortion), and there is an epidemic of sexually transmitted disease among young people. These appalling statistics follow three decades of intensive sex education aimed at schoolchildren.

Sex education and the sexual revolution

During my ten years as a Director of Public Health, I came face to face with the realities of the government’s policy that provides contraception to under-age children without their parents’ knowledge or consent. When I left my post I determined to understand the ideology that was driving the government’s policy. After three years of research, it became clear that sex education had evolved out of an ideology that was vehemently opposed to biblical moral standards. This ideological assault, commonly referred to as the sexual revolution, was led by a group of secular humanists, which included Fredrick Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Marie Stopes, Margaret Sanger and Alfred Kinsey, who were profoundly hostile to what they regarded as repressive traditional morality. They wanted a society that was liberated from the restrictive moral code of the Christian faith. They understood that, for their revolution to succeed, marriage and the family, which they correctly identified as the bastions of moral teaching, needed to be destroyed.

It is my contention, documented in my book Lessons in Depravity, that we can only understand the motivation behind sex education if we grasp the essential point that it has evolved out of the ideas of the sexual revolution.

Demoralising sexual conduct

The strategy of the sexual revolutionaries, in a nutshell, is to demoralise sex. They demand the right to teach other people’s children about sex without reference to any moral standard. In other words, they promote an amoral approach to sexual conduct. Non-judgemental sex education means that no form of sexual conduct can be described as wrong or immoral. Phrases such as, ‘don’t impose your moral views on other people’ and ‘don’t moralise’ express the new orthodoxy. Children, freed from the restraints of traditional morality, are encouraged to develop their own standards of behaviour, to decide what they feel is right in their own eyes. Any attempt to introduce a moral dimension into sex education is portrayed as unhelpful or even harmful. The ‘moralisers’ are dismissed as bigots who threaten children by their strict, judgemental and unreasonable rules. Consequently, the model of sex education being promoted in our schools takes no account of the moral teaching of the Bible.

Christian compromise

As we survey the scene of sexual devastation that is being visited on the children of our nation, what is the Christian response? Who cares that biblical morality is being traduced in the eyes of our children? Who cares that our children are being trained to accept an amoral view of sexual conduct? In my view, the Christian witness has been ineffective because of the widespread reluctance to use biblical truth to expose and oppose the amoral ideology that drives sex education. We now have the situation in the UK where few Christians are prepared to tackle without compromise the moral evils associated with sex education. On the contrary, most Christians accept, without any biblical justification, the view that children need sex education — and so the challenge is to find a sensitive ‘Christian’ version.

My research has shown that many evangelical Christian organisations are teaching about sexual matters in a way that is little different from the secular sex educators. The so-called ‘Christian’ versions of sex education are inconsistent with biblical morality. Some of the materials used in the name of the Christian faith are deeply shocking. One video contains smutty, foul language and uses the agony aunt of the salacious magazine Just 17 to advise children on sexual behaviour (Make Love Last). A teaching manual for churches encourages Christian parents to construct a chart of rude/offensive words. This sex education manual provides ground rules for Christian parents that are based on non-judgementalism, simply another word for moral relativism. Most Christian sex education programmes accept that children need to be taught about contraception. One programme provides education about condom use in accordance with the World Health Organisation’s position, which is ‘abstinence and fidelity between uninfected partners and safer sex can prevent the transmission of HIV. Safer sex includes non-penetrative sex and sex using condoms.’

Abstinence and chastity

One of the subtlest ways of demoralising sexual conduct is to substitute the notion of sexual abstinence for the biblical virtue of chastity. Yet many Christians are deceived into believing that abstinence is consistent with biblical morality. But this is not the case. Abstinence is a lifestyle choice to refrain from certain, unspecified sexual activities for an unspecified period. The abstinence message is fundamentally amoral and does recognise the concept of sexual immorality.

Chastity, which is based on purity of the heart and mind, is a way of life that seeks after God’s holiness in every aspect of behaviour. As a Christian doctrine, it encompasses every aspect of our life, the way we think, the way we speak, the way we act. Chastity is a moral decision to obey God’s will in the realm of sexual conduct. Purity and holiness are our calling in Christ.

ABC approach to sex

A number of Christian organisations are committed to the promotion of abstinence as a key component of comprehensive sex education. Consequently, there is now a concerted campaign to develop a consensus between Christians and secular humanists around the so-called ABC approach to sex education (A for abstain, B for be faithful and C for use condoms). Some even claim that ABC is consistent with biblical principles and are campaigning for churches to work constructively with UNAIDS and the World Health Organisation in tackling the global HIV crisis. Churches are being encouraged to use the resources available on-line from the website of the Joint United Nations HIV/AIDS Programme, despite the amoral nature of much of the material.

Those who are trying to promote a ‘Christian’ version of sex education have failed to grasp that it is a weapon of the sexual revolution. In my view it is imperative to oppose sex education on moral grounds — the reason sex education is wrong is because it is contrary to the moral teaching of the Bible. As Christians we need to repent of our indifference to the moral ruin of our nation’s children. The Church needs to regain the lost message of the Bible with regard to the divine plan for sexual conduct. The Christian position is for parents to instruct their children about sexual conduct within the framework of God’s moral law, and this includes teaching the biblical view of marriage and the virtues of modesty, chivalry, chastity and fidelity.