What Does God Really Think About Sex?

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The tenet that sex should be confined to marriage is an age-old one inherited from Judaism. It is under assault because of the pressures of modern reality: the sexual precocity of young Americans, the large number of divorced or unmarried adults who have active sex lives, and the growing strength of the gay-rights movement. The issues are hitting hardest at the moderate and liberal "mainline" Protestant denominations that stress toleration and follow social currents. These groups, which have been steadily losing membership, could face further attrition, even outright schism, over sex.

The churches for years have also been under increasing scholarly pressure to treat traditional understandings of Scripture as cultural expressions, subject to change, rather than as God's eternal strictures. Another important factor is the intellectual influence of feminist groups that see traditional Judeo- Christian morality as an expression of patriarchy. In addition, a trend has been emerging in modern moral theology to base judgments concerning sexuality not on absolute rules but on the relative value of each relationship. This approach was promoted as early as 1966 by Episcopal theologian Joseph Fletcher's Situation Ethics: The New Morality. Among the denominations where the pressures are highest:

PRESBYTERIANS

The 2.9 million-member denomination was the first to face the full implications of the sexual revolution. As far back as 1970, a church panel, echoing Fletcher's approach, declared that "sexual expression . . . cannot be confined to the married and about-to-be-married." Irate traditionalists got that year's assembly to reaffirm the sinfulness of adultery, fornication and homosexual practice, but their motion passed by a paper-thin margin.

Since then the Northern and Southern wings of the church have merged, but liberal-conservative differences have continued to simmer. This year's controversial 200-page morality report, Keeping Body and Soul Together, emanated from an official study committee under the Rev. John Carey, religion chair at Agnes Scott College in Georgia. Two members quit early, and one raised charges that the panel was stacked with liberals.

When the document was released last February, it was read avidly -- more than 42,000 copies have been sold -- and with growing ire. Before the Baltimore assembly, more than half the church's 171 administrative districts and 2,000 local congregations had condemned it. The document helped cause something akin to schism at the second largest congregation in the country: Dallas' Highland Park Presbyterian Church. Already alarmed at liberal trends among the national leadership, Highland Park members voted 2,563 to 2,001 last month to quit the denomination altogether. They fell short of a required two- thirds majority, so the church and its $47 million property remain within the official fold. But 1,000 or more dissenters walked out to start a new congregation. Joining them is physician Grady Crosland, who served on the Body and Soul panel and opposed its work. "The denomination is rotten," he snaps. "No use staying around to shoot a rabid dog."