OUR MAN IN WASHINGTON

By John Lofton

Number 22, April, 1987

One of the biggest of the many big lies we are being told is the

big lie that the way America is today is the way we always were.

One of the things that is so insidious about this particular big

lie is that it sends a message of despair and hopelessness. And it is

a denial of our history. But what is even more egregious about this

big lie is that it also denies the Biblical truth that with God all

things are possible. Thus, even if we have always been the way we

are, which isn't true, so what? God can change this. And if we seek

and obey Him, He will change what we are, He has promised.

An example of this big lie I am talking about occurred recently

on the Phil Donahue television program.

In a discussion about AIDS,

when a viewer, a woman, called in to ask whatever happened to having

sex solely within marriage, Mr. Donahue grimaced as if this was the

craziest question he had ever heard. He asked his caller,

incredulously, "So, why don't we just behave?" When his female caller

says, well, yes, Mr. Donahue interrupts, saying: "But we never have."

He says the idea of having sex only within marriage "won't work."

At the end of this program, in one of the most sickening

performances I have ever seen on national TV (and I have seen many),

Mr. Donahue throws free packages of condoms into his audience as they

laugh, shriek in delight, and applaud. All of which causes him to say

that we should remember that AIDS is not funny. He says it is a

disease that threatens all of us (another big lie, at least at this

time). And he says AIDS is a human problem "and sexual preference has

nothing to do with this" (another big lie).

Now, in a way, I am glad Mr. Donahue said what he said. Because

what he said forced me to read a book I wanted to read anyway, a book

titled Sex in Middlesex: Popular Mores In A Massachusetts County,

1649-1699 (University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1986) and

written by Roger Thompson, a University Reader in the School of

English and American Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich,

England. And what this book demonstrates, beyond a shadow of a doubt,

is that it is, indeed a very big lie to say that Americans have never

sexually behaved themselves.

First, a little background. Middlesex County covered the area

north and west of Boston and originally included the towns of

Cambridge and Charlestown. Within Middlesex were varied communities:

a seaport, a college town, country villages with and without resident

magistrates, frontier settlements, so called "peaceable kingdoms" and

feud-wracked settlements. The population of Middlesex in 1647 was

about 2,990; by 1699, the population had grown to 12,017. The main

source for Prof. Thompson's study was Middlesex County court records,

buttressed by town, church and genealogical records.

Okay. So, what did Prof. Thompson discover? Did he find an

epidemic of sexually-transmitted diseases in Middlesex? Did he find

homosexuals on the march, vigorously defending their "right" to commit

sodomy? Was wife and child abuse rampant? Were unborn babies being

slaughtered on demand? Were drugs being abused in a massive scale?

Was it a common occurrence for unwed teenage girls to be getting

pregnant? In a word: no, Prof. Thompson did not discover this.

But why? Why weren't any of these things discovered? Well, as

Prof. Thompson explains it: "The churches if Christendom might

slaughter each other in their thousands, but they did agree that there

was only one proper place for sexuality and that was the marriage bed.

Newlyweds should enter it - 'a thing undefiled' - unspotted virgins.

The authority of Biblical, canon, and statute law was reinforced with

emphatic urgency by countless Puritan sermons, oral tracts, and

conduct books. All asserted that the primary agency for enforcing

chastity was the family, buttressed where necessary by the community

and its officials." Thus, comparatively speaking, "the ratios of

bastardy and pre-marital fornication in Middlesex were low."

And illicit sex was punished. In the 1680's a male adulterer was

offered the alternative of 30 stripes or a 20 pound fine. Promiscuous

women could expect similar treatment. During the 1650's punishment

for pre-marital fornication ranged from 40 shillings to 10 pounds and

from six stripes or lashes to 15. Sexual abuse against a woman was

almost always dealt with severely. Men could receive at least 20

stripes, sometimes 30 or 40. Often monetary alternatives were not

offered; when they were, they were often at the stunning amount of 15

or 20 pounds.

Prof. Thompson observes: "The sheer number of people in each town

who were officially responsible for law and order is impressive. Lay

officers included any resident magistrate or associate or commissioner

for small causes; the constable (some larger towns had two); the town

selectmen, who might number seven leading citizens; the grand juryman;

the watch, who patrolled the town after the 9 p.m. curfew; and the

tythingmen, responsible by the act of 1679 for the moral oversight of

10 families.

Among church members, the one or two ministers, the lay

ruling elders, deacons, occasional deaconesses and catechisers

frequently kept the whole community in oversight." All of these

officials were elected or nominated by their constituents.

Quite apart from law enforcement officials, however, all

citizens, especially church members had a duty to maintain a holy

watchfulness over their neighbors. Why? Because, Prof. Thompson

notes: "People understood that condoning breaches of the moral code

would invite God's wrath in the whole community; the person who turned

a blind eye to sin was as bad as the sinnner.... The people of

Middlesex therefore had compelling spiritual and material reasons for

vigilance."

And this system worked. Prof. Thompson says that, on the average

there were only two cases per decade of sexual abuse and harassment by

unmarried males in Middlesex. He says "the evidence in sexual

deviance, abuse, and harassment would seem to support the contention

that in these areas of potential sexual release the typical youth of

the county exercised exemplary self-control.... There were no

reported rapes in the legal definition of that term."

Prof. Thompson says that while the adolescent culture of that

time might have made waves, it did not produce floods, it did not

revolutionize values. He says: "The wide range of adolescents in the

Middlesex records do not come across as brainwashed, willbroken

robots.

They chose to conform as they entered the adult world." And,

he notes, everyone in Middlesex was required to live in a family.

Most would live in at least three families during their lifetime:

their family of birth or orientation; the family where they were put

out as servants to be trained; and the family of marriage or

procreation. Some young people served in more than one of these

families.

But it is the crucial role played by the Christian faith that

comes through over and over again in Prof. Thompson's excellent book.

And what he has to say deserves quotation at length. Rejecting the

idea that it was tyrannical fathers that made people behave

themselves, he writes: "If not patriarchal despotism, what then

produced such comparatively high moral standards? A major factor,

encountered time and again in this study, was popular piety.

The great majority of men and women encountered in the court records were,

quite literally, God-fearing. Their threatening and unpredictable

world was theocentric: God controlled their uncertain destinies. A

young man faced with death at sea makes a vow to God to mend his ways

if He will save him. Another, meeting resistance to his advances,

desists because "God smote him with a trembling." A threatened woman

tells her abuser that "God sees, if nobody (else) sees, for God sees

in the dark."

Confessors describe how "God withdrew His protection"

or "Our great and crying sin cries aloud in the ears of God for

vengeance."

A woman who successfully resisted attack explained that "'it

pleased God to keep in me a resolution not to yield." And the phrases

"as God is my witness" and "as in the presence of God" and "before God

and man" reinforced solemn assertions or denials; they were not empty

phrases. A suspected liar is told "God and his conscience did know

how far he was guilty."

Prof. Thompson points out that the devil and hellfire were just

as real as God to the people of Middlesex. He says: "Indictments in

the superior court conventionally spoke of the accused as "not having

the fear of God before his eyes and being instigated by the Devil."

Individuals referred to "this beast he tare (God's commands) in

pieces" or to "Satan's temptations in persuading me to deny it."

Those who swore by the devil were liable to prosecution. The

invisible world was real enough to such people.

Prof. Thompson says this spiritual world was real even to those

apparent subversives, seducers and harrassers who violated God's law.

On more than one occasion such transgressors spoke of their crimes

saying that what they had done "was no evil" or "it was a small sin

and might be repented of." Indeed, "there is little evidence in

Middlesex of a thriving counter-culture to Puritan values," he writes.

Prof. Thompson also reports that the ordinary men and women in

the pews were not mere passive listeners to a "speaking aristocracy."

Far from it. He says that there was no chasm between ministers and

their congregations. Instead, the rhetoric of clerics was intrinsic

to a collective mentality they shared with ordinary people.

Religiosity pervade everyday life in fact as well as prescription.

The servants, farmers and housewives.... were in part the makers of

their own faith.... The plebian of Middlesex saw themselves as

conscience-armed against the wiles of the devil."

The only riot in Middlesex was in favor of the status quo,

against a hated symbol of English folk culture, the maypole. Says

Prof. Thompson: "Without this social cohesion, the magistrates' task

would have been impossible. As it was, their burden was lightened by

the pervasiveness of informal community control. Middlesex was well-

stocked with moral monitors who did not miss much in the goldfish-bowl

existence of daily life.

The very use of the word 'uncivil' to

describe immoral behavior suggests it was regarded as an offense not

only against God but also against civic standards. A court

appearance, then, was often a last resort for the intractable."

And few people went to jail more than once. Prof. Thompson

writes: "Examples of recidivism were rare. Many convicted young women

went on to marry; many convicted youths later served their communities

in elected or appointed offices. Even such an unspeakable young rogue

as Jerathmeel Bowes eventually became a representative in the General

Court.

Where the object of justice was not simply punishment or

protecting society from criminal behavior, but also the reform of the

criminal in which society had a vested interest, breaches of the moral

law would be reduced, and the growth of criminal class deterred.

Prof. Thompson says certain crimes actually declined over time,

notably domestic violence, and after the 1680's marital infidelity.

He says the social "odiom," the "scandal and reproach," and "the lash

of the law" were feared and felt in new communities as much as the

old, and in the 1690's just as strong as in the 1650's. And he says

the statistics of criminality show that New Englanders in general, and

Middlesex people in particular, were markedly more law-abiding than

people in the old country from which they came.

In conclusion, noting that "the silent majority behaved

themselves and sustained the New England Way," Prof. Thompson writes

that "far from being a brutal, suspicious, intolerant, and bigoted

crew, most of the people of Middlesex were concerned, considerate, and

cooperative. Consensus and common sense helped to make it a law-

abiding place."

He says: "The remarkably high standards of popular mores in this

Massachusetts county in the second half of the 17th Century owed far

less to oppressive patriarchalism than we have been led to believe.

This conclusion coincides with the findings of other recent studies on

both sides of the Atlantic. Modern relationships and group dynamics

would be far less alien to our early modern ancestors than has been

suggested. The provocative and challenging theses of the 1970's

(which have disputed this - J.L.) simply do not stand up under

detailed testing and examination."

Amen! So put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Donahue!

God works, Mr.Donahue! His righteousness does exalt a nation,

Mr. Donahue!

Indeed, there was a time when Americans behaved themselves, Mr.

Donahue! All things do work together for good to those who love God,

to those who are the called according to God's purposes, Mr.Donahue!

To God be the glory for all good things! And I pray that, once again,

God will make us a good, well-behaved people.

Chalcedon

P.O. Box 158

Vallecito, CA 95251

Electronic reprint courtesy of Genesis 1.28 (206) 361-0751


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