THE NEW MORALITY IN SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

GILBERT M. JAMES, Ph. D.
(Associate Professor of the Church in Society,
Asbury Theological Seminary)

The task assigned to this presentation is a difficult one indeed, and the final product could well be very disappointing to those who expect a sociological analysis to soundly thrash the new morality movement and to discredit it with both rational and empirical proofs.

Some are saying glibly that the New Morality is simply the old immorality, and that those who would tamper with our sex mores are motivated more by libidinal drives than by a sincere search for truth. This use of sarcasm and cute phrases has been more or less characteristic of conservativism's response to difficult and threatening questions raised by liberal thinkers. I believe, however, we are coming of age and we can now face squarely the crucial questions posed, even when we must admit we do not have all the answers.

The New Morality, as represented by writers such as Robinson, Fletcher, Cox, and Berton cannot be lightly dismissed. They must be treated in a different light than, for example, Hugh Hefner, editor of Playboy. Hefner's reactions to what he considers Victorian prudery is in no way related to the serious concerns of Bishop Robinson and others, about a moral state of affairs that exists. Therefore, the following assumptions are set forth as the point of departure for this paper.

I. Assumptions

First, that the New Morality as treated by Christian advocates is a product of serious concern, no matter how wrong or misguided the proponents may be.

Second, that the New Morality is not a creation of these writers, but rather is a reflection on their part of a disturbing trend to which all Christians must give much more serious and creative attention than they have in the past.

However, the New Morality writers by publicly stating doubts about our traditional morality and by setting forth premature hypotheses about new modes of conduct may be contributing to moral decline.

Third, and this is the sociological assumption-any search for the factors responsible for this movement must be sought in all the major institutions of society, including the church in general, and not overlooking the possible contributions of our conservative Christianity to the obvious erosion of traditional ethics.

As a sociological perspective, this paper has been organized in terms of structural functional analysis, and it will be within this framework that the New Morality will be treated as an instance of social and cultural change. Perhaps a few words of explanation are in order as to what we mean by the methods of functional analysis.

II. Structural Functional Analysis

In the tradition of Emile Durkheim, Radcliffe-Brown, and Robert Merton, the functionalist conceptualizes society as a system of interrelated and interdependent social structures that function in the achievement of the cultural goals which provide for an ongoing society.

The functionalist is primarily concerned with the changes in the inter-relatedness of specific parts of the system resulting from a change or changes in any of the other parts of the system.

III. Objectives

The original outline of this paper proposed to trace the influence of three facts upon the emergence of the New Morality. These were:

1. The withering away of many of the Victorian taboos under the irritating but nonetheless illuminating light of Freudianism, and the advances of medical studies of human sexuality.

2. The efforts of many influential scholars to develop an ethic both personal and social without a supernatural reference.

3. The mass communication explosion that has:

a. Tended to reduce cultural and spiritual values to a common denominator and reflect these attenuated images back to the mass society as the cultural norm.

b. To employ sex symbols and subliminal suggestions both in advertising and entertainment so that a recent researcher could claim that the average American is the object of a sex stimulation every nine minutes of his life.

It became obvious that the first two factors could be only touched on briefly to make room for the third as the main body of the paper.

IV. The Demythologizing of Victorianism

This century in America inherited a structure of attitudes and taboos from the last century that was shot through with such misinformation, distrust and maliciousness about the nature of sex that when the gates of public discussion and inquiry about this sacrosanct domain were opened, a flood of debunking, revision and open rebellion was set loose. The modern youth of that day were amazed to learn that pimples on the adolescent's face was not the shameful retribution for masturbation; nor was there any evidence that this practice in itself would cause mental illness. Bastard children, they learned, were not born with a congenital immorality, and that as far as their genetic inheritance was concerned, they had an equal chance with a similar child born in wedlock. They concluded that the sight of a nude body was not in itself dirty or immoral, that cosmetics were not inextricably bound up with harlotry, and that Victorian fashions of skirts to the floor was not an immutable law of God.

The tragedy was that when the tares were pulled up, so much of the wheat came with it. The conservative church was shocked and cried out against the moral decline, but it had no theology of change that could sort out for her people the basic and immutable scriptural principles from the folklore and the relativistic cultural expresses of Christian living. When Victorianism was demythologized, it came "unstuck" and could no longer hold together. The moral confusion and human tragedy that followed culminated in the roaring twenties and stands today as one of the darkest moral chapters in our history.

V. The Secular Ethic

Emile Durkheim, a brilliant and productive sociologist, built his whole system of society around the social cement of religious faith. Although an atheist, he held religion as a universal quality of human societies. But in his book Moral Education, he called for a new kind of mortar - a secular ethic. He wrote:

All that we needed was to substitute for the conception of a supernatural being, the empirical idea of a directly observable being which is society. Just as the faithful see in the loftier part of conscience a reflection of divinity, we have seen here an element and a reflection of the collectivity. (1)

Will Durant in 1927 wrote:

For these are the critical days of the secularization of moral sanctions: the theological navel string binding men to 'good behavior' has snapped. Suppose we let people know quite simply that moral codes are born not in heaven, but in social needs. (2)

The writer recently picked up an ethics book which is used in a holiness college. The teacher's emphasis was marked in the margin with these words underlined as "important:"

To be moral is to observe the facts and the principles of personal and social welfare as they are progressively discovered through man's search for a more satisfying life. (3)

In this same widely used ethics book were these words:

... religion has always given support to the moral standards and the moral ideals that have been recognized by the group. (4)

The writer continued:

The presence of religious practices and of theological belief which are out of harmony with current moral standards may do much harm to the growth of religion and the respect with which it is regarded. (5)

The development of the so-called secular ethic is undoubtedly one of the most demoralizing factors in our national life. For the bloom of ethical values will fade when it is cut from the stem of a living faith in a transcendent God.

Gordon Aliport senses this and says,

We cannot yet conclude that we are merely squandering the capital accumulated by our parents and grandparents. New religious sentiments are maturing all the time, producing fresh moral zeal and engendering consistency upon men's purposes. (6)

With the widespread efforts in some religious circles to develop an existential ethic without a supernatural reference, and the deteriorating moral standards of our nation, which had its roots in biblical soil, one can only ask with Renan: "Through how many generations can we continue to live on the perfume of an empty vase?"

VI. Mass Culture

The most obvious and significant characteristic of our age is the massive and swift changes that are occurring in every institution of our culture. Beginning with the industrial revolution of the last century, there has been an ever increasing rate of technological development that can only be described as revolutionary. The increase in the production of goods, the development of massive communication and transportation networks, and the resulting need for great concentrations of work forces within limited geographic areas have conditioned, reordered, and in some cases destroyed many of the traditional ways of American life. And the two social institutions which perhaps have been most shaken by these changes are the home and the church. Significantly, these have been the principal agencies of socializing the child and the means whereby the values of the society are inculcated into each succeeding generation in traditional America.

Today, nearly every home in America is invaded by mass communication media, and both children and adults are bombarded by the subtle techniques provided by motivational research in an effort to dispose of an ever increasing industrial production, by creating needs in the audience which are neither utilitarian nor wholesome. Entertainment and the cultural values are reduced to the lowest common denominator in order to appeal to the largest possible audience.

The raw realities of the lowest expressions of moral standards are gleaned from our national life, and fed back to the public as the norm. Just a year or so ago a noted New York drama critic pointed out that of the five top-rated plays on Broadway at the time, four were focused upon the glorification of harlotry.

Commercial advertising in both periodicals and television are uninhibited in the use of sex symbols and identification, to enhance the appeal for new cars, after-shave lotion, and cigarettes.

The movie screen, and to only a slightly lesser degree, the television, daily encourages our teenagers to engage in heavy petting and sex excitation. Romantic themes often emphasize the helplessness of "falling in love," even when it is with someone else's wife or husband.

The hero, who dispatched the villain, is rewarded in the closing scenes as he walks away with his arm around the girl, on their way to the nearest hotel room.

The crimes of the mass media, however, are not the portrayal of sex behavior, but rather the subtle suggestions that reduces this divinely ordained means for the most fulfilling and wholesome of human relationships to the level of a purely biological act. Ironically, D. H. Lawrence, author of Lady Chatterly's Lover, (7) has pointed out the iniquity of sex films that provide sex repressed youth with glamorous females as the sex objects for this release through masturbation, and other forms of inadequate expression. Caught between the vestigial remains of sex taboos inculcated in the home, and the mass cultural coercion toward sex freedom, a great number of middle class young people, especially on college campuses, are engaging in petting techniques that bring them to an orgasm without actually engaging in coitus. Psychological evidence would lead us to suspect that this inadequate release is far more damaging to the emotional lives of these young people than would probably occur in throwing off the restraints and entering into the experience without reservation.

This is in no way to be interpreted as an approval of pre-marital relations, but rather to suggest the fearful consequences done to those who because of distorted training are less reluctant and less guilty about a completed but inadequate sex release.

Harvey Cox in The Secular City describes this as a "border skirt" approach that inhibits the girl's chances for a successful marriage. He quotes a psychologist who specializes in the study of sex behavior as saying: "If Americans had consciously set out to think up a system that would produce maximal marital and pre-marital strife for both sexes, we could scarcely have invented a sexually more sabotaging set of dating procedures than we have today." (8)

This statement is probably shocking to moralists who feel that although heavy petting is not desirable, they would prefer this to knowing that their sons and daughters were going all the way. As a believer, we are persuaded that this is a dangerous attitude and wholly unscriptural. Jesus' words about the look of lust and the cutting off of the offending organ is probably directed to this very problem. To have intercourse in the imagination or in a limited physical sense is indeed the most degrading of sex activity, for it omits the sacred nature of responsibility and mutual fulfillment.

As Christians, we believe that adultery and fornication in the scriptural sense are of the most damaging of sins both against the person and against society. But these categories are not defined entirely by the dichotomy of marriage license and no marriage license. The human and divine implications are far deeper and if our youth are to be saved from these errors, we must do more than build in to them a set of sex taboos. There must be communications of positive appreciation of the lofty place in human life and society which sexual intercourse must hold.

We cannot teach our children that sex is dirty and nasty until they are about to be married, and then suddenly try to convey to them that now that they are of age, sex is a beautiful experience. The training from childhood should emphasize the sacredness and positive value of sex experience. It should be taught with such appreciation and understanding of its fulfillment that the child will have an ideal that will make clandestine back seat experiences seem coarse and unattractive.

Attention must be given to the fact that youth are arriving at puberty at an earlier age than ever before and that society is urging the postponement of marriage in deference to education.

Young people are urged not to marry till the ages of 21 years for boys and 18 years for girls. They also are taught that pre-marital intercourse is sinful and must be forbidden. These young people have burning in them the fires of human passion for a period of seven to eight years with no hope of relief except by breaking the rule or else engaging in halfway measures that can lead to emotional damage that may cripple their future fulfillment in marriage.

We may not approve of the so-called New Morality's answers to this real and serious situation, but the Christian is obligated to see the seriousness of this matter and seek scriptural solutions. The legal form that marriage takes is by no means a fixed biblical principle. Polygamy, monogamy, purely legal marriages, and religious marriages, have at one time or another been recognized by the Church as consistent with the Bible. What is desperately needed is not merely the preservation of the structure of marriage as we know it today, but a means whereby the scriptural sacredness of the sex union is both dramatized and kept alive; where the structure of marriage is adapted to a changing biology and a changing social system that will enhance the young person's probability of sexual integrity without permanent damage to his emotional life.

If continency is offered as a solution, it must be remembered that conservative Protestantism has always criticized Roman Catholic celibacy as "unnatural" and open to temptation. Yet, a young man who is trying to resist temptation and live a moral life reaches the highest level of sexual urge at eighteen years of age-three years prior to probable marriage. If celibacy is so "unnatural" for the priest, why is it less dangerous for the Christian youth who is at his sexual peak?

To make even more clear that our conservative Christian sex ethic is inadequate, we might note the disturbing lack of sexual integrity within marriage itself. The counselor's casebooks reveal that the prevalence of women controlling their husbands by giving and withholding sex privileges is appallingly widespread. Counselors have over and over again found this form of prostitution even within church families. On the other hand, wives often complain about the loveless sex attacks made upon them by their husbands. He knows his rights and can quote the scripture about defrauding one another.

The answers suggested by the so-called New Morality movement are not Christian answers, but merely holding a firm grip on the past is also inadequate. As committed Christians, we can not avoid the questions that have been raised. The Word of God has fundamental principles for us that can be applied in a meaningful way to this contemporary world. But exegesis is not enough. We must understand the social and cultural implications of our age and then bring the Word of God into the situation, or as some prefer to put it, find the Word in these situations. This is the only sense in which we can legitimately use the phrase, "situational ethic," where we find the underlying principles of divine purpose in a redemptive sense in the problems of our time.

Documentations

1. Durkheim, Emile. Moral Educaiton: a Study in the Theory and Application of the Sociology of Education (The Free Press of Glencoe, Inc., 1961) p. xxvi.

2. Durant, Will. Philosophy and the Social Problem (Cleveland, Ohio: The World Publishing Co., 1927), pp. 30-31

3. Titus, Harold H. Ethics for Today, 2nd ed. (New York: American Book Co., 1957), p. 186.

4. Ibid., p. 636.

5. Ibid., p. 536

6. Allport, Gordon W. The Individual and His Religion (New York: The Macmillan Co., Macmillan paperbacks, 1950), p. 67.

7. The reference to D.H. Lawrence, author of Lady Chatterley's Lover is to be found in Neill, A.S., "Sex Attitudes" in The Family and the Sexual Revolution, edited by Edwin M. Schur (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964), p. 177.

8. Cox, Harvey. The Secular City (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1965), p. 207.