Thomas A. Langford - "Time Magazine Morality and Mores" (February 2, 1964)

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-	Our hearts and their affections,	0:07
	our bodies and their instincts,	0:10
	our strength and the uses to which it shall be put	0:13
	through Jesus Christ our Lord.	0:17
	Amen.	0:19
	(church organ music faintly in background)	0:22
-	If you have not read the article	0:50
	in last week's Time magazine,	0:51
	"Sex in the United States: Mores & Morality,"	0:55
	you should.	1:00
	I do not say this to be sensational,	1:03
	but the article in Time was not only a valuable analysis	1:08
	of one facet of our social mores.	1:12
	It offers a valid challenge to the Christian pulpit	1:16
	and a challenge which should be accepted.	1:20
	The article has caused much comment.	1:24
	And perhaps for those of us in Durham,	1:27
	it's doubly interest catching.	1:29
	But not only is its content important,	1:32
	but also the cover painting is owned	1:36
	by Dr. and Mrs. James H. Semans.	1:38
	In the course of the analysis	1:42
	of the changing sex mores of American culture,	1:44
	the article correctly points to the fact	1:48
	that Puritan ethics,	1:50
	or perhaps more exactly,	1:52
	the Victorian moral code,	1:55
	is no longer viable,	1:59
	and that insofar as Christian ethics is identified	2:02
	with late 19th-century attitudes,	2:04
	it can no longer claim relevance.	2:08
	By the term Victorian,	2:13
	I mean a prudity towards sex.	2:16
	The idea that desire is as such immoral,	2:20
	especially in women.	2:25
	The body is to be hidden	2:28
	and the subject of sex is taboo.	2:30
	But now these attitudes are passing.	2:35
	I quote from the article,	2:38
	"The Puritan ethic,	2:41
	so long the dominant moral force in the United States,	2:42
	is widely considered to be dying, if not dead,	2:46
	and there are few mourners.	2:51
	The demise of Puritanism,	2:54
	whether permanent or not remains to be seen,	2:56
	is the latest phase	2:59
	in a conflict as old as Christianity itself,	3:01
	between eros and agape,	3:05
	between passionate love named for a pagan god	3:08
	and the spiritual love through which man imitates God.	3:12
	It is a conflict unique to the Christian West."	3:18
	The decline of the Puritan ethic	3:25
	is attributed to three causes.	3:26
	Freudian psychoanalysis with its emphasis	3:29
	on the need for the release of suppressed drives.	3:32
	The new status of women who now demand freedom	3:37
	and the recognition of their privileges and rights.	3:41
	And the cult of romantic passion,	3:45
	which makes sex the one great true thing in life.	3:48
	In spite of the demise of this ethical superstructure,	3:55
	Time claims and I think rightly,	3:58
	that a great majority of Americans	4:01
	still pay lip-service to the Victorian mores,	4:04
	even if they don't live by them.	4:08
	Perhaps hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue,	4:12
	even when one is unsure that the virtue is true virtue.	4:17
	Nonetheless, the foundations of this older morality	4:24
	are eroding,	4:27
	and almost wistfully, the magazine asks for some guidance.	4:28
	The desire for some norm to guide action	4:35
	is often expressed by contemporaries.	4:37
	The attempt to construct new moral codes is evident,	4:40
	even though as Time indicates,	4:44
	these codes so often fail to provide guidance.	4:46
	The article closes with a rather plaintive call	4:51
	for a renaissance of the Christian meaning of sex.	4:54
	And I quote,	4:57
	"The spiritual danger is that eros	5:00
	may leave no room for agape,	5:02
	which lives not by making claims but by giving.	5:05
	The Victorians, who talked a great deal about love,	5:10
	knew little about sex.	5:15
	Perhaps it is time that modern Americans,	5:18
	who know a great deal about sex,	5:21
	once again start talking about love."	5:24
	Time has asked and rightly	5:31
	that the church begin to speak on this matter.	5:33
	This is of course	5:37
	not the first popular announcement of the problem.	5:39
	Look magazine welcomed us back to campus last September	5:43
	with a feature article entitled, "The Morality in the USA,"	5:46
	and raised the question	5:51
	of whether or not our moral standards are disintegrating.	5:52
	These articles only reinforce	5:57
	what the thoughtful observer already knew.	5:59
	We're in the midst of a radical change,	6:02
	a revolution in morals,	6:05
	and the Christian Church is challenged to speak.	6:08
	But we must be careful	6:12
	and not deceive ourselves.	6:14
	There is no period to which we can look to the past	6:18
	in order to find the perfect exemplar	6:22
	of right relationships.	6:26
	We cannot call for a return to a status quo ante.	6:28
	The challenge is to speak to our time,	6:33
	to speak helpfully,	6:36
	realistically,	6:38
	and Christianly.	6:40
	I do not pretend to be able to give you	6:44
	all of the answers in the sermon today.	6:45
	For very much needs to be said in this pulpit and in others	6:48
	so that serious reflection can begin	6:51
	and creative endeavors may be undertaken.	6:53
	However today I would like to indicate	6:56
	some of the Christian doctrines which bear upon the issue	6:58
	and which should be a part	7:01
	of every Christian's consideration of his activity	7:02
	and responsibility.	7:06
	First, there must be a clear stress upon the claim	7:09
	found in the creation account of the Old Testament	7:15
	that the world is created good	7:18
	and that a part of the good creation is man,	7:22
	which includes man as a physical being.	7:25
	We must be clear about this	7:30
	and move beyond the perversions	7:31
	of the Victorian era at this point.	7:33
	The Bible is free of the Greek notion	7:37
	that the body or the material realm is evil	7:39
	and that the physical must be overcome or set aside	7:42
	if man's spiritual life is to prosper.	7:46
	In the Old Testament, there is no depreciation of the flesh.	7:50
	The relation between man and woman,	7:54
	including the physical relation,	7:56
	is a part of the goodness of God's creation.	7:58
	There is no celibacy in the Old Testament.	8:02
	No self-mutilation or asceticism.	8:04
	The body is of God's making.	8:08
	Now the body, which is created for good,	8:13
	may be misused.	8:16
	And I speak in biblical categories.	8:18
	It can become a means for man's self-seeking.	8:21
	It can be used to aggrandize	8:25
	or affirm the self over against other persons.	8:27
	For this reason,	8:31
	concupiscence always has an imperialistic character.	8:33
	Concupiscence is the unlimited desire	8:37
	to draw everything to itself.	8:39
	This is distorted love,	8:43
	love which seeks one's own pleasure	8:45
	through the other person.	8:48
	Thus Paul is quite realistic when he says	8:51
	that though the flesh is not evil,	8:54
	it is always one of the most vulnerable points	8:57
	by which evil can attack man.	9:00
	It is precisely in our sexuality	9:04
	that we are most open to the thrust of the tempter,	9:06
	who leads us to both crude and sophisticated ways	9:09
	of self-seeking.	9:13
	But more of a positive character must be said about the body	9:18
	from the New Testament perspective.	9:21
	And this is not said often enough.	9:23
	Namely,	9:27
	the Incarnation is God's way	9:28
	of affirming the full humanity of man.	9:31
	In coming in the form of man,	9:35
	God places an inestimable value	9:38
	on a human person in all of his concreteness.	9:41
	We can no longer speak in abstracted unreal terms.	9:45
	God has met us in the flesh,	9:50
	and our physical being as a part of our genuine manhood	9:53
	is affirmed.	9:57
	We in nominal Protestantism	10:00
	have long been in danger of committing the heresy	10:01
	of refusing to accept the full humanity of Jesus.	10:05
	Now we are discovering that the result is,	10:09
	we have trouble accepting our own full humanity	10:13
	as a creature of God.	10:16
	For our discussion today, this has a particular implication.	10:19
	Sex is compartmentalized.	10:24
	Compartmentalized in such a way	10:28
	that we refuse to recognize the extent of its dimensions	10:29
	or the inclusiveness of its implications.	10:33
	For many,	10:38
	sex is reduced to a natural, physical act.	10:40
	Worried by Freudian folklore,	10:45
	we are fearful that any repression of drives	10:48
	leads to frustrated personalities,	10:50
	and so we renounce our control over these forces	10:53
	and make sex a brutish striving for personal satisfaction.	10:57
	To live at this level is to recognize our physicality.	11:03
	It is to recognize that man is flesh.	11:07
	And this insofar as it goes is good.	11:10
	But to see man only as flesh	11:15
	sunders him from the most distinctively humane dimension	11:18
	of his being,	11:22
	namely, his ability to set goals or values	11:24
	towards which he will direct his energies	11:28
	and around which he will orient his life.	11:30
	To be victimized by our desires	11:34
	is to reverse the order of life,	11:37
	to make our minds and wills mistress to our physical drive.	11:39
	When sex is abstracted	11:48
	and made the central fact of isolated episodes of life,	11:49
	an unreal world is created.	11:54
	Following the Playboy philosophy,	11:57
	there's a tendency to separate sex	11:59
	from the actual world of birth and death,	12:01
	of suffering and common joy,	12:04
	of family love and faithful sharing of life.	12:06
	Sex is romanticized	12:10
	and removed from the larger context of life.	12:12
	When this happens, the other person is not met as a totality	12:15
	or as a whole being.	12:19
	They're looked upon as a play partner	12:22
	in the game of romantic intrigue.	12:23
	We even reduce the other person	12:26
	to one part of their physical body	12:28
	or idealize their appearance,	12:29
	and our common language reflects this fact.	12:32
	And often,	12:36
	all of this takes place	12:38
	under the aegis of being happy.	12:41
	There is a hedonistic basis	12:45
	to much of our activity.	12:48
	The changing moral standards have given vent	12:51
	to our desire to be happy,	12:53
	to find fulfillment,	12:56
	and to satisfy our needs.	12:59
	But what does happiness mean?	13:04
	What is fulfillment?	13:07
	And here we come to the crux of the problem.	13:11
	In the last analysis,	13:14
	the problem of sexual morality is not to be understood	13:16
	outside the more basic decision about the values one holds,	13:19
	the goals one seeks,	13:24
	and the commitments one make.	13:26
	Sex cannot be isolated from the totality of life	13:30
	and certainly not from the fundamental orientation of life.	13:32
	Therefore, from the Christian perspective,	13:37
	it must be said that the problem	13:40
	of establishing a sexual morality	13:42
	is a spiritual problem.	13:45
	It is the problem of becoming clear	13:48
	about the fundamental direction of one's life	13:50
	and then about integrating the totality of life	13:53
	around this established focal point.	13:57
	From this perspective, let us look back once again	14:03
	to the problem of Puritan ethics.	14:05
	I have agreed with Time that this ethical code is decaying.	14:08
	But in its decay, we can see taking place	14:13
	a movement which is characteristic of history.	14:15
	The Puritan ethic originally grew	14:19
	out of a deep sense of gratitude	14:21
	for the grace of God which had called men from an old way	14:24
	and had set their feet upon a new way	14:28
	and had given purpose and a meaning.	14:32
	However, there developed,	14:37
	as all of you who have studied American Puritanism know,	14:38
	a subtle switch by which the reason for the ethic	14:42
	was replaced by rigid rules for the ordering of life.	14:46
	And soon the rules for living, including the sexual mores,	14:51
	were almost entirely separated from the source	14:56
	from which they had originally come.	14:58
	What had once been a way of living which reflected purpose	15:02
	had become an end in itself.	15:07
	Any social structure,	15:11
	which has lost its roots,	15:13
	can survive by the very power of social momentum	15:16
	for some time,	15:19
	but its lifespan is limited.	15:21
	And so the death of the Victorian mores was inevitable.	15:23
	I am not calling for a return to a Victorian social code.	15:30
	This is impossible.	15:34
	But there is a basic need for us to return to the foundation	15:37
	upon which every Christian ordering of life has been built.	15:40
	The Puritan code had validity for its originators,	15:44
	and for some of its successive followers,	15:49
	because it represented an integration of life	15:52
	around that dominant commitment.	15:54
	When the spiritual center was lost,	15:57
	the code was devoid of meaning.	16:00
	So once again, our problem with sexual morality	16:03
	is basically a spiritual problem.	16:06
	The reason that we have questions about the meaning of sex	16:09
	is that we have fundamental questions	16:12
	about the values which control our lives.	16:13
	Sexual mores can genuinely give order to the life,	16:17
	only if they represent an attempt to realize some goal	16:21
	which is accepted as a primary value.	16:25
	It is the disintegration of the center of life,	16:30
	which issues in the disintegration	16:33
	of every other aspect of life.	16:35
	The crisis of sexual morality	16:38
	only points to a more fundamental crisis.	16:40
	Our culture and our personal existence	16:44
	are not being threatened	16:47
	by the change in mores or public morality.	16:48
	They are threatened by the lack of a spiritual center.	16:51
	Now to put the issue in this way	16:57
	is not to answer directly all of the practical problems,	16:58
	such as premarital relations or extramarital relations.	17:01
	And it does not establish a new and explicit code,	17:06
	which one must follow.	17:08
	But this is just the point.	17:11
	The first thing we need is not a new code.	17:14
	The primary need is to find a new ground	17:17
	upon which any code may be built.	17:19
	When we ask,	17:24
	"Should I?" or "Shouldn't I?"	17:25
	everything depends upon who this "I" is.	17:28
	Who we are.	17:32
	Our self image is always a reflected image.	17:35
	We either look in a mirror	17:39
	or we see ourselves in the light of another vision,	17:42
	some person or value or goal	17:46
	which we hold to be of prime significance.	17:49
	When we attempt to make ourselves the center of everything,	17:53
	the question "Should I?" becomes the question	17:56
	"Will it make me happy?"	17:59
	When the final reference of life is one's self,	18:02
	then everything and everyone must serve this self-esteem.	18:06
	But when some goal is accepted	18:11
	and some value is embraced in seriousness,	18:13
	then everything and everyone	18:16
	is seen in the light of this end,	18:19
	this telos.	18:22
	Dietrich Bonhoeffer has written,	18:25
	"The essence of chastity	18:27
	is not the suppression of lust,	18:30
	but the total orientation of life toward a goal.	18:32
	Without such a goal,	18:37
	chastity is bound to become ridiculous."	18:40
	This is not to claim	18:45
	that immediately upon establishing such a goal,	18:46
	immediately upon finding some center,	18:50
	all of the practical problems are summarily answered.	18:52
	They are not.	18:55
	But the context in which they can be answered is set.	18:57
	The right questions about our decisions may now be asked.	19:00
	And their strength to do what one knows he should.	19:04
	To find a center around which life becomes oriented	19:09
	is to become a disciplined person.	19:13
	Indeed, the word "disciple"	19:16
	comes from the same root as discipline.	19:17
	Self-discipline is needed precisely in this area of sex.	19:21
	But such order never comes easily	19:26
	and it never comes in its fullness unless one is clear	19:29
	about that which evokes disciplined living.	19:32
	If you want easy answers to the problem of sex,	19:36
	you might as well stop looking,	19:40
	because you won't find them.	19:43
	For sex is a powerful drive	19:46
	and it's only controlled by a more powerful movement of life	19:48
	towards some goal.	19:52
	But when the center is found,	19:55
	freedom is also found.	19:58
	If one is led purposelessly by his desires and drives,	20:00
	he soon finds that he's not free,	20:05
	but only subject to these pressures.	20:08
	Genuine freedom comes with the release of our abilities	20:11
	for the achievement of some worthy goal.	20:14
	The secret of freedom is found only through discipline.	20:18
	Here is freedom.	20:23
	And here also is maturity.	20:25
	For maturity is	20:28
	the increasing ordering of life around some center.	20:30
	And marks of maturity	20:34
	are a realistic appraisal of the power of sex,	20:37
	the clarification of our goal,	20:40
	and a knowledge of what our liberty does and does not allow.	20:42
	Commitment demands a new ordering of life.	20:47
	For the one who's been captured by the grace of God,	20:51
	orientation of life around this fact	20:53
	becomes the dominant concern,	20:55
	and all of life is brought under this aegis.	20:58
	All of life must be lived before God.	21:01
	Every relationship must be directed to him,	21:05
	even our physical relation.	21:08
	And when these relationships express genuine love	21:11
	for the other and for God,	21:13
	they are pronounced good.	21:16
	I do not present you therefore today with a new moral code	21:21
	or with an image which can reorder your own being.	21:25
	The Word became flesh	21:30
	and our flesh was given new meaning.	21:33
	God affirmed man	21:37
	as a total man	21:39
	in order that man,	21:41
	as a total man,	21:43
	might affirm God.	21:45
	In the singularity of Jesus's sense of sonship,	21:48
	in the singularity of his referencing all of life to God,	21:52
	we have the exemplar of our own ordering of life,	21:57
	the example of what our own manner of living should be.	22:03
	In the name of the Father	22:09
	and of the Son	22:10
	and of the Holy Spirit,	22:12
	amen.	22:14
	O God, who has created us and recreated us in thine image,	22:26
	and made us capable of discerning	22:31
	and striving after truth and goodness,	22:33
	honor and loyalty,	22:38
	unselfishness and purity,	22:40
	grant that by the presence of thy indwelling spirit,	22:43
	we may learn to prize these virtues	22:47
	and thereby show our love for thee.	22:51
	And now may the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit	22:55
	be with you	22:58
	always.	22:59

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Title:

Thomas A. Langford - "Time Magazine Morality and Mores" (February 2, 1964)

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4t43p45h

Date:

February 2, 1964

Speaker:

Langford, Thomas A.

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Duke University. Chapel

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UA.17.01.0003 RR-0254
ref5713_0z3
uachapelsermaud
duke:628649
dcrau002258
ark:/87924/r4t43p45h
ec2dd76e-4927-488e-b835-0970bf187bc7

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Thomas A. Langford - "Time Magazine Morality and Mores" (February 2, 1964)

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