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We are a Christian Fellowship meeting in North London with a strong interest in teaching the Bible and understanding our time in
the light of Bible prophecy
The sexual revolution and the assault on Christianity
The girl is 14 years old and, while she is not yet proficient in all her
lessons at school, there is one subject on which she is an expert: sex. All
her friends talk about it. In class she watches a Government-backed video
made especially for children her age in which she is encouraged to
experiment with sexual positions and to consider oral sex if she’s nervous
of going all the way. In her lunch hour she picks up a copy of her
favourite magazine, Sugar, which is running a free condom for every reader
promotion (the magazines target readership is 12 to 17). Back home she
settles down in front of her computer and logs on to likeitis, the sex
website for children set up by the charity Marie Stopes International. In
the section headed first time for girls, she is reassured that sex wont
be perfect the first time but make sure your contraception is sorted so you
wont worry about getting pregnant. (The Teenage Sex Bomb Daily Mail 28/10/03)
What has happened to Great Britain? How is it possible that the Government,
the education system, the sex industry and big business could be allowed to
come together in the wholesale corruption of the younger generation? What
kind of society have we become?
To those who are looking for answers to these questions, I recommend a new
book : Lessons in Depravity Sex education and the sexual revolution by Dr
E S Williams (Belmont House Publishing available from us at £10 inc postage).
Dr Williams was Director of Public Health for Croydon Health Authority for
nine years. The book provides a fascinating (and horrifying) history of the
development of the sexual revolution showing clearly how present day sex
education in schools is a pro-duct of anti-Christian thinkers of the 19th
century like Nietzsche and Freud. Their anti-family views, once the preserve
of a handful of dissident intellectuals, are now being imposed on the whole
population. As they become the new orthodoxy, those who oppose them,
particularly Bible believing Christians, face rejection and ultimately
persecution for questioning the perverse and corrupt values which are now
being forced on our children and which will therefore shape the coming
society.
A summary of some of the main points of Dr Williams book
Today it is almost universally assumed that society needs to be free from
the repressive Victorian attitudes towards sex. Coupled with this is a
presentation of life in the Victorian era by the media which usually shows
it to be full of hypocrites and bigots whose private lives were quite
different from their public pronouncements. Dr Williams shows that the
negative view that the Victorian era was a dark and repressive one from
which we need to be liberated is a re-writing of history worthy of Stalinist
Russia and with a similar end in view.
The 18th century in Britain was an age of moral and spiritual decline. In
1738 Bishop Berkeley declared that morality and religion in Britain had
collapsed to a degree that has never been known in any Christian country.
Our prospect is very terrible and the symptoms grow worse every day. Into
this depressed land George Whitefield and John Wesley began their work of
preaching the Gospel with remarkable effects in the lives of thousands of
people. According to David Edwards in Christian England, as a result
multitudes up and down the land, including many who had once been
drunkards, prostitutes, wife-beaters, bruisers, gamblers, smugglers,
sluggards and thieves, joined in the refrain: My chains fell off, my heart
was free, I rose, went forth and followed Thee, singing from the depths of
a miraculous personal experience. For those who joined his movement Wesley
insisted on chastity among the single and faithfulness to marriage vows.
The revivals under Whitefield and Wesley shaped the values of the 19th
century. In 1859 a further revival began in Britain affecting every county
in Ulster, Scotland, Wales and England adding over a million new converts to
evangelical churches. Dr Williams comments:
A religious census of 1851 showed that half of the population attended
church on the Sunday of the census. Over half of the children aged between
five and fifteen attended or were enrolled with a Sunday school. And Sunday
school was a significant factor in developing the social and moral ethos of
Victorian society. Children were taught respect for society, to obey their
parents and the difference between right and wrong. … Although a few
talented people found Victorian morality oppressive, the fact that
unquestionable standards of right and wrong were generally held to exist was
an immense support to many people.
Such a strong Christian influence upon the nation provoked a strong
reaction. Robert Owen (1771-1858) rejected Christianity in favour of a
rationalist philosophy for improving society. He denounced the institution
of marriage and the existence of private property. He believed that the
human race needed to be liberated from a trinity of monstrous evils
private property, irrational religion and marriage. Owen is generally
accepted as the father of socialism in England, although it needs to be
pointed out that the Labour movement also had roots in Methodism with its
Christian concern for improving the conditions of the poor and
disadvantaged. Owens views found expression in the Marxist socialist
influence, which was to gain influence throughout Europe with the
publication of the Communist Manifesto in 1848.
Annie Besant (1847-1933) was married to a Church of England vicar, but began
to have doubts about the deity of Christ, which led to her having problems
in her marriage and deserting her husband and two children. She was
befriended by Charles Bradlaugh, a radical freethinker, avowed atheist and a
prominent member of the Secular Society. In 1877 Besant and Bradlaugh set up
the Freethought Publishing Company making bitter attacks on Christianity and
promoting sexual liberation. The publication of a book on contraception,
Fruits of Philosophy, by an American doctor Charles Knowlton, was prosecuted
for obscenity, bringing about a sensational trial which created enormous
publicity for their cause. Within three months of the trial over 100,000
copies of the book were sold.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a German philosopher who developed a new
way of thinking which was a direct attack on Christianity. He saw
Christianity as born of weakness and the enemy of reason and honesty, of
the body and sex in particular, and of power, joy and freedom (Encyclopaedia Britannica).
His central idea that God is dead would mean the death of morality and the
death of truth above all the truth of any morality. There would be no good
and evil, no virtue and no vice. There would only be values. And having
degraded virtues into values, Nietzsche proceeded to de-value and
trans-value them, to create a new set of values for his new man.
(Gertrude Himmelfarb, The De-moralization of Society)
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) has had a massive influence on the development of
Western thought through his ideas on psycho-analysis. He was sympathetic to
Nietzsche’s ideas and also saw Darwin’s theory of evolution as something
that holds out hopes of an extraordinary advance in our understanding of
the world. Freud believed that all children were sexual beings with sexual
desires directed towards their parents and that the root of human neurosis
was the repression of sexuality. Be-cause of attractions to either the
father or mother all human beings are basically bisexual according to Freud
s theory and therefore homosexuality is normal. At the heart of his work was
his hostility to the Christian faith:
I find almost intolerable the lie of the salvation of mankind which rears
its head so proudly to heaven.
Dr Williams comments: Freud’s contribution to human thought was to
demoralise sex, to separate it from human love, marriage and reproduction.
His psycho-analytical movement propagated an interpretation of life that
separated sex from morality and relationships. After Freud had pronounced
his theories, people were encouraged to think about sex without moral
restraints the gateway to the sexual revolution was now opened wide.
All of these ideas were gathering momentum by the early 20th century amongst
educated people alienated from Christianity. The Bloomsbury Set were a group
of intellectuals who scoffed at Christianity and practised free love with
promiscuous relationships, frequently homosexual or bisexual. Lytton
Strachey (1880-1932) wrote an influential book Eminent Victorians which
cultivated the idea of Victorian hypocrisy. Strachey’s real targets were
those elements of Christian culture from the recent past that had emerged
from the evangelical faith. He rewrote history in a dishonest manner, making
the moral values of the Victorian era look hypocritical and prudish. Today
his version of history has become the one which is almost universally put
over by the media and the educational system, with any positive contribution
to the life of the people as a result of Christian influence in the 19th
century being written out of the script.
For most of the first part of the 20th century these influences were to be
found amongst a wealthy group of radical intellectuals, while the majority
of the population was still influenced by traditional Christian values of
family life. As we have seen, all the thinkers involved in the sexual
revolution shared a hatred of the Christian faith and a desire to replace it
with a new rationalist world view, which denies the existence of any
absolute values of right and wrong.
By the 1960s the influence of television and the free availability of
contraception caused these ideas to begin to go mainstream. Hugh Greene,
Director General of the BBC from 1960 to 1969, used the most powerful media
the world has ever known to challenge conventional ideas by giving radical
views a platform.
Dr Williams writes: Those who sup-ported sexual permissiveness were given
plenty of airtime, while those who supported conventional morality were
seldom given the opportunity to present their case. The tone of programmes
would invariably be sympathetic to the idea of free love. The BBC believed
it had an obligation towards tolerance and the maximum liberty of
expression authority was to be questioned rather than accepted.
At the same time the Family Planning Association was introducing the idea
that contraception should be available on demand as a world wide right for
all people regardless of age or marital status. The International Planned
Parenthood Federation issued a Youth Manifesto declaring that young people
must have education on sexuality and the best possible sexual health
services including contraception which must be confidential, accessible and
free from judgement. Young people must be supported by laws which allow them
to act freely in the way they choose to live their lives. Society must
recognise the right of all young people to enjoy sex and express their
sexuality in the way that they choose. The 1967 Abortion Act added abortion
to contraception as another option for avoiding unwanted pregnancies while
allowing sexual freedom. In 1974 the British Government became responsible
for supplying contraceptives to children on the National Health Service
without the knowledge or consent of their parents. Henceforth, a child of 14
or 15, or for that matter of as young as 11 or 12, could go to a NHS or
Brook clinic to receive a free supply of contraceptives. Yet few parents
were aware of this major change in social policy, and even today, few
parents understand that children are given contraceptives without their
knowledge or consent.
Meanwhile the Church began to shift its ground with the publication of
Honest to God by Bishop John Robinson in 1963. In a chapter entitled The
New Morality he warned against the danger of identifying Christianity with
the old traditional morality. He approved of the revolution in ethics
which he saw taking shape in society around him which rejected absolute,
objective moral values. He said that times were changing and Christianity
must rethink its position on morals and adopt the view that nothing can of
itself be labelled as wrong. In the USA Joseph Fletcher, professor of
ethics at the Episcopal Theological Seminary explained the essence of the
new morality:
It all depends on the situation. In certain circumstances unmarried love
could be infinitely more normal than married love. Lying could be more
Christian than telling the truth. Stealing could be better than respecting
private property. … Whether any form of sex (hetero, homo or auto) is good
or evil depends on whether love is fully served. (Situation Ethics 1966)
By now the floodgates were opened and we began to move into the situation we
have today whereby biblical morality is being swept away from public life,
the media, the education system and even much of the professing church. An
amoral world view which reduces sex to an animal act with no moral or
spiritual content is being forced on the population backed by powerful
forces intent on destroying traditional moral values and the family. This
leads to the kind of sex education now being taught in our schools, which Dr
Williams describes in the most shocking chapter in his book. What under-pins
all of this is the basic world view that there is no absolute right and wrong
and that therefore moral values have to be determined on what is right for you.
In a paper entitled Developing sex education in schools; a practical guide
produced by the Family Planning Association (1994) we read:
People of all ages are caught in a moral dilemma … Perhaps they believe
that everyone should wait to have sex until they are married or perhaps they
want to celebrate the fact that they are lesbian or gay. But in the real
world these values are not universally shared. So whose morals should
teachers and governors be basing their framework on? Which values do the
schools actively wish to promote? … There are many situations in life where
what is right or wrong is not universally believed.
The quest for a universally acceptable values system is known as values
clarification in the jargon of sex education. This involves group
discussion lessons in which children’s opinions are drawn out by the
teacher. Dr Williams describes how this works. The teacher places a card
with agree on one side of the room and another with disagree on the
other side. The children are then presented with a moral statement, such as
sex before marriage is wrong, and asked to move to the position between
agree and disagree which is nearest the opinion with which they are most
comfortable. Children then discuss the issue with someone with a similar
view and then with someone of the opposite view. They are then asked if they
want to change their position.
The fundamental assumption behind values clarification is not a neutral
point of view, but rather a view known as moral relativism. Everything the
child has been taught about morality is dissected, shaken and then
clarified sexual conduct, family, religious beliefs, feelings and attitudes.
The values which parents have passed on to their children must be clarified.
They are not acceptable as they are because you did the unforgivable you
decided for your child, because of your God-given responsibility and right
what values you want him or her to hold. Those imposed values, which he did
not choose freely must be clarified. He must decide, immature and unwise
though he may be, whether he wishes to keep, modify or discard what you have
taught him.
Under peer pressure many children who wish to hold on to traditional moral
values may be made to feel weak, old-fashioned or stupid and held up to
ridicule by the class, often with encouragement from teachers who are
pushing relativistic moral values.
The effect of values clarification is to drive a wedge between parent and
child, child and authority and between child and religious beliefs. It is a
powerful vehicle for chaos and alienation. Without exaggeration it sets up a
battle between you and the school for the very soul of your child.
(Barbara Morris Why are you losing your children?)
A booklet produced by the Family Planning Association, Learning to Live with
Sex explains that girls :
may be worried about having sex if they are not married…If you belong to a
church and have definite religious beliefs there is no doubt that it will
upset you a great deal if you do things which are against your conscience.
Many people don’t go along with those beliefs any more, but if your parents
still believe them and think you should too, you may have rather a difficult
time trying to sort out what is the right thing for you to do. If possible
try to talk these over with someone outside your family. If you don’t know
anyone you can trust, try one of the organisations listed at the back.
The listed organisations include abortion, contraception and homosexual
counselling agencies.
Dr Williams concludes from the evidence considered in Lesson in Depravity
that :
sex education is, in reality, no more than the propaganda arm of the sexual
revolution. In my opinion, the real objective of sex education is, and
always has been, to promote the ideology of the sexual revolution. In this
it has been remarkably successful.
Conclusions in the light of the Bible
All this is actually very reminiscent of the Soviet education system.
Classroom situations were set up whereby Christian children became
identifiable and were then held up to ridicule and exposure with attempts to
cut them off from the influence of their parents and their faith. If they
held on to these beliefs they were old-fashioned and out of step with the
rest of society. In today’s society this is being done with talk of
tolerance, but what is really happening is the imposition of a single
world view which denies the existence of God and the need for any absolute
moral values. Its effect is to degrade Gods precious gift of sexuality
which is meant for a loving relationship between a married man and woman to
the level of an animal act with no physical, moral or spiritual consequences.
However this flies in the face of clearly observable facts. The sexual
revolution has not brought freedom and joy, but fear, betrayal, a terrifying
epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases, broken relationships, abandoned
children and the spiraling breakdown of the structures which have held
society together for millennia. The pathetic attempts of the clergy to go
with the flow and accept the relativistic values of contemporary society do
not make Christianity more acceptable to people. They hold it up to ridicule
and drive to despair many people who may not be Christians, but who are
looking for a way out of the hopeless mess our society has got into. The
message of the Bible is clear. Every sexual act outside of the married
relation-ship, whether homosexual or heterosexual, is sinful. But it is
equally clear that every person who repents and believes the good news that
Jesus is the Messiah and Lord who died on the cross as a sacrifice for our
sins and rose again from the dead, can be forgiven and receive His gift of
eternal life.
The sexual revolution is an assault on the human body, on Gods order for
society and on the revelation He has given us in the Bible. It ties in
exactly with the circumstances the Bible says will exist on the earth in the
last days of this age, when Jesus said in Luke 17.26, 28 that it will be as
in the days of Noah (days of great violence) and as in the days of Lot
(days of great sexual immorality, especially aggressive homosexuality
imposing itself on the rest of society). Paul wrote that Evil men and
seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived (2 Timothy
3.13) causing people to be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters,
proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving,
unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good,
traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God
(2 Timothy 3.2-4).
The spirit of our age is a spirit of lawlessness as Gods laws are trampled
underfoot. This will give rise to the lawless one, the coming Antichrist:
For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who restrains
will do so, until he is taken out of the way, and then the lawless one will
be revealed whom the Lord will consume with the breath of his mouth and the
brightness of his coming. The coming of the lawless one is according to the
working of Satan with all power, signs and lying wonders, and with all
unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive
the love of the truth that they might be saved (2 Thessalonians 2.7-10).
Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany in a generation demoralised by the
First World War and by the sexual corruption of the Weimar era in the 1920s.
Germany had a church which was compromised by the Higher Critical Movement
which undermined faith in the Bible and left the clergy with no clear Gospel
message to give to the people and no resistance to the demonic influence of
Nazi ideology. People were looking for a strong leader, a father figure, to lead
them out of the morass into which Germany was sinking and they chose Hitler.
Today we have a generation adrift from moral values, trapped in a swamp of
sexual depravity, which is creating havoc in society. We have a weak
compromised church which for the most part has no Gospel message to give to
society and is even endorsing the sexual chaos of our time. People are
looking for a strong leader, a father figure, to come and lead us out of the
morass we are sinking into. We can turn to Jesus, the true Messiah, who will
give us new life under Gods control. He will empower us by the Holy Spirit
to overcome the evil influences around us and inherit eternal life in His
glorious kingdom. Or we can follow the philosophies of this world, whose
author is Satan. His counterfeit Messiah, the Antichrist, will soon appear
on the world stage and lead the way to the Great Tribulation and Armageddon.
The choice is ours.
