The New Commandment: Thou Shalt Not

On Mount Sinai, God was unequivocal: "Thou shalt not commit adultery." Traditionally, most devout Christians have interpreted the Hebraic commandment to extend to all sexual relations outside marriage. Jesus even condemned lustful thoughts, saying that the man who indulged them had "already committed adultery in his heart." But in recent years, pressed both by changing sexual behavior and by liberal theologians, the churches have reluctantly come to grips with a "new morality" that questions whether any "sin"--including adultery or other nonmarital sex --is wrong in all circumstances.

The movement began in the 1960s with a group of writers who championed "contextual" or "situation" ethics. As defined in a widely read book by Episcopalian Joseph Fletcher, situation ethics holds that there are always circumstances in which absolute principles of behavior break down. The only valid ethical test, the argument goes, is what God's love demands in each particular situation.

Moral Tug of War. For the churches, the problem is that the more they try to bring their beliefs in line with this relativistic criterion, the more they run afoul of fundamental traditions and become involved in a moral tug of war with their conservative laymen. The controversy that may face the 10.8 millionmember United" Methodist Church is typical. Last month its Committee on Family Life issued a resolution implicitly condoning sex for single persons, homosexuals, and those living in unspecified "other styles of interpersonal relationship." The resolution cuts directly across the church's venerable Social Creed, which states that "sexual intercourse outside the bonds of matrimony is contrary to the will of God." The decision on whether to adopt the resolution as official teaching will be made by the church's General Conference in Atlanta next April. The conference must FARR,S also consider a new statement of social principles that will be proposed next month to replace the Creed--not only in order to accommodate any possible new line on sex, but also to grapple with developments on such perennial issues as pacifism, pornography, drinking, smoking, gambling, drugs, divorce and abortion.

Three other major Protestant groups last year produced documents that are at odds with traditional teaching on sex, and that have met mixed reactions from church memberships. Items:

THE LUTHERAN CHURCH IN AMERICA is contemplating an 85-page booklet on Sex, Marriage and Family, written by 21 eminent churchmen. "Premarital and extramarital sexual intercourse may well be--and more frequently are than not--acts of sin," says the booklet. But it adds that these acts are sinful not because they are intrinsically wrong, but because they are often engaged in for selfish reasons by men and women who are sinful by nature. A church convention has urged Lutherans to study the booklet, while also passing a statement affirming that "sexual intercourse outside the context of marriage union is morally wrong."

THE UNITED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH is coping with a sex report issued by a twelve-member task force of church professionals. It suggests that the arbitrary requirement of premarital virginity be replaced by a sliding scale of allowable premarital sex, geared to the permanence, depth and maturity of the relationship. The report finds "exceptional circumstances" in which adultery might be justified: for instance, when one spouse suffers permanent mental incapacity. It also says the church should explore the possibility of communal and other sex styles for the unmarried. The church's General Assembly voted to "receive" the report for study after deciding by a narrow margin to insert this amendment: "We reaffirm our adherence to the moral law of God that adultery, prostitution, fornication, and/or the practice of homosexuality is sin."

THE UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST has in hand a statement written by six Christian education executives which maintains that sex is moral if the partners are committed to the "fulfilling of each other's personhood"--pointedly omitting marriage as a prerequisite. The statement, which shows how far some U.C.C. leaders have moved from the sex ethic of their Puritan forefathers, also urges the church to recognize the sexual needs of single persons. The church's synod has not yet discussed the report, and seems unlikely to.

Officially, the Roman Catholic Church hews to its strict teaching that everything from impure desires to adultery is serious sin, but a modest liberalization is going on at two levels. First, increasing numbers of pastors are softening their application of the traditional morality, often on the grounds that people who engage in illicit sex may be so immature that their guilt is not always a serious matter. Second, some theologians are challenging the "natural law" doctrine that lies behind the church's moral standards. According to natural law, an act is wrong if it is "against nature," but the new moralists are skeptical that the church can be certain about what "nature" actually is.

Divine Design. In particular, some Catholic theologians who favor birth control have questioned the traditional view that "nature" requires each sexual act to be open to procreation. But, argues John Giles Milhaven of Brown University, having rejected natural law in order to permit contraception, the theologians have undermined its moral force as a barrier to nonmarital sex. Milhaven himself believes that, instead of laying down dogmatic rules, the church should use the behavioral sciences, particularly psychology, as a guide in counseling individuals with sexual conflicts. Generally, he finds far more reason to condemn adultery than premarital sex. A more cautious new moralist, Catholic University's Charles Curran, concedes that sex outside marriage might be justified, but only in "quite limited" cases.

Despite its growing influence, the new morality is far from established. Many leading university ethicists have argued persuasively against it, and the movement has hardly affected Eastern Orthodoxy or Evangelical Protestantism. To the many laymen who are already making up their own minds about sex, the new approach to ethics may seem irrelevant or at best a trendy attempt by the churches to be "with it'' in a society that is adopting increasingly permissive sexual rules. But ultimately it touches a basic theological issue. Against the traditional concept that God wants men to conform to a fixed divine design, the new morality stakes its case on the idea that God would prefer men to make their own responsible decisions.

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