Woodstock sinks into sexual ethics in America

Back in 1969, the same year as Woodstock, Gallup Poll researchers asked Americans this moral question: "Do you think it is wrong for a man and a woman to have sexual relations before marriage, or not?" "Yes, wrong," responded 68 percent of those polled, while 21 percent said, "No, not wrong."

By 1973, the traditionalist camp affirming that premarital sex was wrong was down to 47 percent and the minority of those disagreeing rose to 43 percent. In 1991, only 40 percent considered premarital sex immoral, with 54 percent disagreeing.

Anyone paying attention to the moral math could see the trend. By 2001 the number of Americans who took the conservative stance was leveling off at 38 percent, but the percentage of those embracing the liberal, progressive position was up to 60 percent. The numbers were relatively flat in 2011, with 60 percent accepting premarital sex and 36 percent continuing to call it immoral.

"Things have been pretty steady recently among the Americans who are religiously active," noted Ed Stetzer, the president of LifeWay Research, which is linked to the 16 million-member Southern Baptist Convention. "The real action has been on the other side of the spectrum, among the people who are atheists, or agnostics, or who have no affiliation with any particular religious group.

"Then you have the people that I call the 'mushy middle,' who remain connected to some religious faith, sort of, but not active in any real sense of the word. ... That's where we're seeing people changing their minds on sexuality."

The results of a recent LifeWay survey suggest that Americans who have, in recent decades, embraced premarital sex as a moral norm are continuing to edit their beliefs to go with the flow of the Sexual Revolution.

The hot-button issue at the moment, of course, is same-sex marriage. This is a political and cultural puzzle that -- for believers in a various world religions -- is closely connected to a number of ancient doctrines linked to sexual morality.

According to a November 2012 survey by LifeWay, only 37 percent of adults in the United States affirmed traditional teachings that homosexual behavior is sinful. This finding was significant since 44 percent took that stance in another survey -- asking the same question -- only 14 months earlier. The number of respondents saying, "I don't know" also rose 4 percent, to 17 percent.

What happened in between? The researchers were very aware, said Stetzer, that -- halfway between these two surveys -- President Barack Obama announced a long-expected change of heart and openly endorsed same-sex marriage.

While the president's words may have helped move some of the numbers, the change among African-Americans appeared to be minimal, with 36 percent saying homosexual acts were sinful in the first survey and 34 percent in the survey 14 months later. That shift was within the survey's margin of error.

As would be expected, Americans identifying as "born-again, evangelical or fundamentalist" Christians were -- at 73 percent -- most likely to call homosexual behavior a sin. Only 33 percent of Catholics in this survey agreed.

A clear "pew gap" also emerged, as usual, with 87 percent of those who said they attend worship services once a week or more affirming the traditional doctrinal stance. On the other side, only 17 percent of those who said they "never" attend worship services said that homosexual behavior is a sin.

In light of these trends, it's easy to see why the Rev. Louie Giglio, an evangelical leader in campaigns against human trafficking, was accused of anti-gay rhetoric and forced to withdraw from giving the benediction at the second Obama inauguration rite.

In a sermon recorded 15 years earlier, Giglio had said: "If you look at the counsel of the word of God -- Old Testament, New Testament -- you come quickly to the conclusion that homosexuality is not an alternate lifestyle. ... Homosexuality is sin. It is sin in the eyes of God, and it is sin according to the word of God."

Clearly, these words are highly offensive to defenders of the Sexual Revolution. Indeed, times have changed.

Giglio's words, said Stetzer, were "simply mainstream evangelical expressions of what traditional Christians have believed for 2,000 years. ... But what we are learning is that a growing majority of Americans no longer feel comfortable with words like 'sin.'"

God and Caesar, 2009

There is nothing new about Christians deciding that, when political push comes to legal shove, they cannot render unto Caesar what they truly believe belongs to God. Nevertheless, it still makes news when believers vow to act on this conviction.

"Through the centuries, Christianity has taught that civil disobedience is not only permitted, but sometimes required," proclaimed a coalition of Catholic, Orthodox and evangelical Protestants on Nov. 20, in their 4,700-word "Manhattan Declaration."

"There is no more eloquent defense of the rights and duties of religious conscience than the one offered by Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. ... King's willingness to go to jail, rather than comply with legal injustice, was exemplary and inspiring."

Thus, the declaration's authors vowed to reject "any edict that purports to compel our institutions" to compromise on centuries of doctrine about marriage, human sexuality and the sanctity of human life. The text was written by evangelical activist Charles Colson, church historian Timothy George of the evangelical Beeson Divinity School and the Catholic scholar Robert George of Princeton University.

The Los Angeles Times offered an especially brutal evaluation of the text, claiming that it offered a "specious invocation of King" and that its logic was ultimately "irresponsible and dangerous."

But the editorial board reserved its strongest words for the Catholics bishops who signed, asking if they considered "how their endorsement of lawbreaking in a higher cause might embolden the antiabortion terrorists they claim to condemn? Did they stop to think that, by reserving the right to resist laws they don't like, they forfeit the authority to intervene in the enactment of those laws, as they have done in the congressional debate over healthcare reform?"

So far, 19 Catholic bishops and archbishops have signed, including New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia, Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., and the Catholic shepherds in Detroit, Denver, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Phoenix and Pittsburgh, among other cities.

At mid-week, the project (ManhattanDeclaration.org) had attracted about 230,000 endorsements, including those of famous evangelicals such as Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, National Association of Evangelicals President Leith Anderson, Evangelicals for Social Action Director Ron Sider and Bishop Henry Jackson, Jr., a Pentecostal leader in the Washington, D.C., area. Orthodox leaders who have signed include Metropolitan Jonah Paffhausen of the Orthodox Church in America and Wichita (Kan.) Bishop Basil Essey of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese.

Responding to claims that the declaration is merely a partisan attack on President Barack Obama, Colson noted that it states that in the Roe v. Wade era, "elected officials and appointees of both major political parties have been complicit in giving legal sanction to the 'Culture of Death.' "

On sexuality, the document stresses that some people are "disposed towards homosexual and polyamorous conduct and relationships, just as there are those who are disposed towards other forms of immoral conduct. ... We, no less than they, are sinners who have fallen short of God's intention for our lives. We, no less than they, are in constant need of God's patience, love and forgiveness."

While nothing in the Manhattan Declaration is truly new, arguments about its call for civil disobedience will help draw sharper lines between traditional believers and the powers that be in an increasingly diverse and secular America, said Dr. H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., senior editor of the Christian Bioethics journal at Oxford University. He is professor emeritus at the Baylor College of Medicine and a philosophy professor at Rice University.

"This document is the product of a political coalition, but it's not political in the same sense that the tax code is political," said Engelhardt, who is advising several Eastern Orthodox leaders who are studying the text. "This is political in the sense that these Christians are working together on certain issues that have moral and public implications."

The reality is that its authors believe there are "certain God-ordained truths" that continue to have authority and weight in American life, he said. The big question: Are they right or wrong?

"You could make a case," concluded Engelhardt, "that anyone who recites the Nicene Creed, or anyone who believes that God has established any requirements for how we are supposed to live our lives can now be called a Fundamentalist in the context of this secular culture. ... That is what this debate is actually about."