THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS IN SEX EDUCATION BY THOMAS WALTON GALLOWAY, Ph.D. Associate Director, Department of Educational Activities, American Social Hygiene Association AMERICAN SOCIAL HYGIENE ASSOCIATION Incorporated 370 SEVENTH AVENUE NEW YORK CITY Publication No. 335 To the Religious Leaders in America: The facts and influence of sex in life are too big to ignore or to misunderstand, with safety. Sex is peculiarly tied up with the development of character, including the sense of beauty, honor, chivalry, self-control, morals, and religion. It may either degrade or ennoble. No single element in human life is more influential upon all that the religious leader is trying to do. Whether the influence proves to be bad or good depends primarily upon education. Few of our present religious leaders have the expert knowledge either of the facts or of suitable methods that will enable them to use sex for constructive character building. To get and to use these aids does not mean more and harder work for the busy clergyman. It means scientific help in lifting the load. It means to meet more effectively and helpfully difficulties he cannot escape. Two steps are now urgent: 1. To induce present busy religious leaders to combine with their religious idealism the facts and methods of science in the sound solution of the sex problems of the community. 2. To give future clergymen adequate preparation for this task in advance. In order to do this, theological seminaries must recognize and assume responsibility for this special preparation of religious leaders, just a,s medical schools and teachers’ colleges must do for the leaders they prepare. The appeals of active clergymen can influence the seminaries to meet this responsibility^. Will you not read this discussion and help us by writing to your seminary? Copyright, 1921, by American Social Hygiene Association, Inc. THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS IN SEX EDUCATION Appeal from Scientists A recent conference of teachers, medical men, and other social workers, held in one of the campaigns against prostitution and the venereal diseases, included the following in a general appeal to our most enlightened leaders : “We urge theological seminaries preparing religious leaders to recognize the tremendous bearing which sex has on every aspect of physical, moral, social, spiritual, and religious The scientists * life and to take the necessary practical steps call to the to enable the future clergy to use this great cler 9V endowment of the human race intelligently and constructively.” In urging this the conference was not asking for new and sep- arate courses in seminaries ; though these in time may prove to be nec- essary. It was not asking that the overburdened clergyman take on new tasks and responsibilities. These sex influences are already among his most serious and difficult problems. The purpose is rather that the minister, the priest, and the rabbi should receive in their preparation a better understanding of the problems which they are compelled to meet and a better hope for solving them. The appeal indicates two things: First, that the average relig- ious leader is not now equipped to solve effectively the difficulties presented by sex; and the second, that science and the scientists alone cannot reach the seat of the trouble. The appeal is for a very funda- mental thing: — that all the idealism of religion be added to the scientific discoveries of the im- portant facts underlying sex, and that both be used by the seminaries in fitting their students so that they shall not be unnecessarily handicapped in dealing with the sex situations in the individual soul and in society. * An address delivered before the Department of Theological Seminaries, Religious Education Association, Pittsburgh convention, 1920. We must have the facts of science united with the spirit of religion [3] b 5*St»4 4 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS Redemption of the Idea of Sex and of Sex Education For most thinkers it is necessary first of all to redeem and enlarge the conception of sex education. If understood, sex cannot be considered as a superficial or negligible adjunct of life; even less as a vulgar and discreditable endowment. It is rather one of the most imperious, as well as one of the most constructive, of all the factors which mould life, thought, emotions, Sex is neither conduct, and our social relations and organiza- negligihle nor tion. If this is true our attitude toward it unworthy should not be left to chance and to crass misrepresentations of sex by those who would profiteer in vice and near-vices. It is clear that sex must and will play as large a role in all education for life as it has in life itself, and yet not be made hurtfully conspicuous. Furthermore, sex education, so long minimized even by con- structive thinkers under the term “sex hygiene,” does not consist of a few biological and physiological facts about the sex organs and their uses and abuses, or the reproductive pro- cesses and their proper conservation, or the pitfalls and perversions of sex, or about the diseases that arise in connection with these. This is “sex hygiene.” Sex education includes, but is much more than, this. No character education can be normal unless it consciously and effectively in- cludes sex at its actual value. Such education recognizes and util- izes the following elements: 1. Our children appear as immature, sexed individuals in whom, by graded steps, are unfolding the sex structures and func- tions which normally organize and profoundly The sex-driven mould and stimulate, first unconsciously but child more and more consciously, their whole physi- cal development, their satisfactions, their per- sonal and social attitudes, and their behavior. Nothing is gained by ignoring the normal power of sex in the individual. 2. From the beginning this developing Society bewilder- child is immersed in a complex social environ- ingly full of sex ment built upon sex, itself strenuously, artifi- cially, conscious^, and often perversely sexed, — a veritable sex- jungle to his inexperience. This sex environment inevitably attracts and moulds the child. Sex education much more than facts: character education THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS 5 3. Human society has expected that this child shall come in some mysterious way, under these conditions and without any ade- quate and systematic enlightenment and guidance, to a sound and constructive sex attitude and life. Unreasonable to expect child to come through the jungle clean, without aid 4. The movement for sex education recognizes that we can- not reasonably expect this good result without the most high- spirited and scientifically correct guidance. It proposes that the best brains and the best spirit of humanity shall bring to the aid of the child in a suitably graded way and at every point of his uncertainty and need, whether the need arises from his internal de- velopment or from the puzzling external condi- tions, the best facts, interpretations, and ap- preciations of sex and the sex relations, which the experience of the race has discovered. The purpose is to give the child, through his whole normal development, the best knowledge and the best incentives to guide this wonderful endowment, to control it, and to use it in such ways that it shall both bring him to his highest possible personal growth and give him, as sex can do, the richest individual and social satisfactions known to human beings. Futhermore, this mature help must be supplied democratically, naturally, and in a manner which will give satis- faction to the child in this highest use of his The manner sex impulses. We cannot safely impose it of help arbitrarily, autocratically, dogmatically, and formally in codes, conventions, and obediences which are unconvincing and unsatisfying to the child, and which leave morbid stresses, conflicts, rebellions, evasions, and complexes in personality. The Nature of Sex, and Its Role in Life: Illustrations Perhaps at this point it is necessary that Sex in we justify some of the foundations of this in- Ufe terpretation of sex. What is the biological role of reproduction and sex in life that would make possible such seemingly extreme statements of their place in education? The basal fact of individual life, of course, is nutrition, which leads to self-development, and to growth and activity. It is purely self-concerning, and could never in itself lead to anything beyond 6 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS the individual and his self-aggrandizement and to conflicts between individuals. Reproduction, on the other hand, in even the lowest organisms, is always a sacrificing division of Nutrition the mature organism. It is a complete reversal leads to self- of form, as compared with nutrition, and it is preservation the earliest, most primitive act of unselfishness found in nature. It is sacrifice of the indi- vidual for society, for the ongoing species. Of course, at this earliest level it can have no conscious or moral quality ; but it is none the less the earliest biological starting-point from which have evolved sympathy, care, devotion, and social sense to be found in the human or any other race. Reproduction and sex not self -preservative, but race- preservative Sex, on the contrary, involves a union. It is the opposite to, and the complement of, reproduction. The union of two simple indi- vidual offspring (e. g., the egg-cell and the sperm-cell) makes a more effective individual. In all the higher organisms, including man, re- production and sex, although just as opposite as they are in the lower animals, have become so closely associated that we really and natu- rally think of them as parts of the same proc- ess. We cannot separate fatherhood and motherhood (facts of reproduction) from mating (a fact of sex). Indeed, in that remark- ably valuable human institution, the home, we cannot tell just how much of its worth has arisen from the sex attractions and the love of husband and wife and how much from the devotions of parents and children. They are all related directly to reproduction and sex, and are mutually supportive. Without biological knowledge, we falsely take a good deal for granted about these life forces of ours. We assume that we are merely created male and female as to our bodies, and that some- how male and female spirit and disposition, and the appropriate special male and female powers of reproduction are mysteriously and providentially associated with these bodies. Now, as a matter of fact, one of the most interesting things about How biology the situation is that the individual parental helps us to body is not created male or female at the out- understand set, and does not impart sex to the sex cells it is human sex carrying. Eggs do not come from a female body or sperm-cells from the male body because these bodies are male and female respectively. The fact is almost the THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS 7 very opposite. The sex of the future sex cells of a body is deter- mined at fertilization, when the new individual consists of one cell, formed by the union of egg- and sperm-cells from its parents. Early in the embryonic development of this new individual, before there is anything about the body that gives any clue to its future sex , pri- mordial sex cells, with their male or female characteristics and ten- dencies, are placed aside within the, as yet, sexless body. The important thing about all this is that these primary sex cells, the ancestors of all the sex cells ever to be pro- duced in this body and in the bodies of its de- scendants, have a most profound effect upon the body of the individual person in which they are developing. Developing female cells cause the body in which they are housed to assume female characteristics; male primordial cells produce the body and temperament of the male. The sex cells profoundly in- fluence bodily growth These statements are based on experiments with animals in which the primitive sex cells are destroyed or removed very early in life, without injury to the body that contains them; or even removed and grafted in bodies other than their own. Not merely the gross bodily characteristics of males and females may thus be modified, inhibited, or even in some cases interchanged; but similar changes may come to the temperamental, emotional, and functional qualities and reactions. For example, by grafting ova- rian tissue from female into male animals from which the testes have been removed, we can secure from these male animals active behavior and a growth of structures distinctly female in character. We have, of course, long been roughly familiar with these facts through the effects of castration on our farm animals. We cannot experiment quite so freely with human beings, but there are abundant instances of surgical operations upon men and women which, so far as they go, indicate that we do not differ in this respect from other mammals. In these cases, however, castration cannot be performed until the structures and functions of sex in the body are already quite advanced, and therefore such experiments do not show the full force of sex cells in determining both bodily and mental qualities. These facts are significant because they show how the biologi- cal sex processes within us have helped to produce all those special qualities and interrelations of body and mind which we human beings Changing the sex cells will change the body and the dis- position 8 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS know and admire under the terms “womanly” and “manly.” These distinctive human endowments of the man or woman come to each of us individually, not through some mystical We owe a providential prearrangement, but because of great debt his biological sex inheritance. An enumeration to sex of some of these sex-determined facts of indi- vidual and social life may help us appreciate the debt we owe to our sex. Sex gives us all the innate bodily, mental, and spiritual differences between males and females; all the distinctive sex tastes and tendencies of males and females ; all the mutual attractions that exist between them be- Its gifts cause of these differences; love and courtship; marriage and the love of mates ; fatherhood and motherhood ; sons and daughters, brothers and sisters ; the devo- tions and sacrifices of parents for children and of children for par- ents ; the home and its motives, satisfactions, ideals, and the mental and spiritual associations and refinements connected with the home. Less obviously, but no less really, all the motives, attitudes, and institutions which this home projects into society at large are inspired and modified profoundly by sex and its products. To be sure, other elements enter, but none is more important. Furthermore, sex attraction is biologically the first and most basal form of social attraction. This primary attraction furnished the first forms of appreciations of attractiveness in any species of animal. Such appreciation is the beginning of the esthetic possi- bilities. Hence both the esthetic sense in Sex under- general, and the standards of beauty and at- lies our sense tractiveness in particular, first arose in the of beauty evolution of life about sex relations. As a mat- ter of fact, both the sense of beauty and the standards of beauty still linger very strongly about phenomena in which sex plays a large part. We know, for example, how being in love heightens and stimulates all the esthetic appreciations, as of poetry, art, nature, etc., as well as of the loved object. The higher applications of this sex-derived sense of attraction and of beauty (supplemented, to be sure, at other points) to more abstract and spiritual ideas and relations, — such valuable and inspiring ideas as the beauty of justice, honor, righteousness, moral fineness, — are made possible because of these more simple esthetic beginnings. Similarly, the sympathy that is the necessary basis of human society and of such poor approach as we have made to human THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS 9 brotherhood has its origin in the family and its brotherhood. The first steps and satisfactions in any moral standards of service, sac- rifice, and social consecration arise in these home relations. As we have seen, the home is inspired and enriched by the refinements of sex and reproduction. This is coming very close to the social aspects of religion. This connec- tion between sex and religion is further illus- trated, too, by the fact that religion, histori- cally, has in many stages of human development been very closely intertwined with sexual observances; and, equally, the religious development of every individual is deeply dependent, as one of its roots, upon his personal stage of sexual development. The most inspiring conception we have of God, as head of These elements the universe, is as “Father” ; and his most con- minister greatly structive quality is “love.” Both concepts are to religion natively sex terms, and their richest present meanings derive from sex. It is not too much to say that all forms of human affection started biologically in reproduction and sex, and have been enriched from the same source at many later stages. Sympathy and companionship first arose about reproduction and sex The Corollaries for the Clergyman The clergyman meets the sex problem at every turn The above considerations touch in a practical way every worth- while human emotion and relation that the religious leader must meet and conserve in his work for spiritual as against material, and social as against selfish, values. He cannot dodge these sex-inspired issues if he would. There is no way whereby he can meet them effectively except by adequate knowledge of the biology and psychology of sex, as applied to individual and social development and relations. The minister must therefore understand the meaning of sex in human life. This is not to him academic. It is most practical. It is not an added task ; it is rather an aid to him in his inevitable task of character building. He must help in positive sex education of humanity because sex is one of the chief springs of character. By sex education we mean the sci- entific and sympathetic use, for the guidance of our youth, of all we have discovered of our best human goals and Sex education will make the clergyman’s task easier 10 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS of the contributions which sex and the motives associated with it may make to our success and happiness in reaching these goals. We mean that all we know shall be brought to our youth in such a way that his native impulses, tendencies, and appetites, and his acquired habits, desires, ideas, satisfactions, What does sex standards, ideals, attitudes, motives, and pur- education mean ? poses shall be wisely nurtured from birth; that his normal sex choices and behavior shall adjust him to the best social needs and shall equally minister to his own poise and happiness. It is not enough that his sex attitude should lead him unhappily to such practices as will advance society, nor, on the other hand, with pleasure to reactions which are socially disastrous. The highest function of social and moral pedagogy is to adjust, convincingly to the individual, these two partially con- flicting goals of individual and social good. There is no point where the task is so difficult as in sex adjustments. The Concern of the Religious Leader Religious educators owe it to their position of peculiar advan- tage to fit themselves to approach this task in a scientific spirit. Their concern rests not primarily in the danger, through sex per- versions, to the society we believe in and to personality that we are culturing, although this is of great moment. It is rather in the fact, developed above, that we are dealing here with one of the most fundamental, pervasive, powerful, and moulding emotions in all life. Sex in human life is very much more a question of health than of disease; more a matter of psychology than of biology; and much more a question of emotional than of intellectual psychology. Religious teachers have rightly insisted that religion also is very largely a matter of emo- tional culture; that it should be thought of even more as a matter of the “heart” than of the “head.” While these facts again connect sex and religion in education, it is necessary to remember that emo- tions, while complex, long neglected by scientists, and ill under- stood, are not supernatural nor lawless elements in personality either in sex or religion. They are capable of being analyzed, of being modified, of being educated. For example, the Freudian psychologists have, by very keen and ingenious experiments, made clear to us how certain unwholesome internal sex emotions, attitudes, and behavior have been fixed in Emotional elements in sex and in religion THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS 11 individuals through apparently commonplace early relations and emotional experiences in the home and elsewhere. Indeed, these students claim that our whole mature approach to the sex life of the child is so unscientific that we regularly and normally produce thereby unsound, perverse, and even pathological emotional stresses in personality, which humanly speaking are The emotions much more serious than the venereal diseases. can he educated We may not agree with this, but it is a sober- ing suggestion. There are two most hopeful results of the psychoanalytic studies of Freud and his followers : (1) that the emotional life is capable, even by way of its morbid states, of scientific analysis and detailed study, and (2) that these emotional states which are the springs of choice are highly modi- fiable by natural external influences ; that is to say, they can be educated. The religious leader is greatly interested in this emotional parallelism between sex and religion because we must depend in great measure on the powerful motives and emotions Religion and of religion, themselves in part sublimations of the sublimation sex motives, to aid the individual to deal of sex wisely with his sex emotions and conduct. Rightly used, the religious motive is of great value here. Wrongly used, religion can be as harmfully and crimi- nally employed against the growing child as any other misused social and emotional instrument. The psychology of repression, substitution, and sublimation of desires and satisfactions, which for reasons of space cannot be treated here, must be in the possession of one who would intelli- gently and constructively develop the full emotional religious life of young people with sex as an ally and not an enemy. We need to find how to get the positive contributions of both religion and sex without their very numerous and real possible perversions. The Role of Childhood and Youth in Sex Education John Fiske and others have called our attention to the great significance of infancy, home, and parental care, in the evolution of human society and of social sentiments. Many have emphasized, possibly overestimated the degree to which youth is unformed and plastic. There is still another factor in connection with the sex development of youth and the social, esthetic, and spiritual offshoots of it, which seems to furnish a peculiar educational opportunity. 12 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS Individual sex interest and knowledge outrun actual sex development Because of the fact that society is a relation in which sex has so large an organizing part, and the home into which the child is born is frankly and peculiarly animated by sex; and because the child’s intellectual curi- osity and his ability of at least partial under- standing develop more rapidly than his own biological sex nature, we have a precocious stage of emotional and intellectual sex develop- ment, interest, and opportunity, a period in which the child’s mental states are ahead of the physical. On one hand this situation stimulates to premature sex experiment and perversion, and is responsible for the power and volume of the stream of crude sex-guesses and incitements which pass continu- ously and vulgarly from older to younger Hence , possi- children. Of course, this is complicated fur- bilities of ther by the more conscious vulgarities of older perversions and often subnormal and degenerate people who mislead and pervert children. So preva- lent is this that the chances are very slight for boys and girls to come to maturity without these perversely sophisticated interpre- tations of sex marring their lives. The other side, much less consciously appreciated by us, is this: This precocious interest, both intellectual and emotional, fur- nishes the very best possible opportunity to Also makes anticipate each actual need coming to the child possible moral with the gradual onset of sex. Because of the prophylaxis mental forwardness, we are able to give emo- tional motives and intellectual appreciations in advance of the appetite, both in time and quality, and thus, con- tinually and pedagogically, to establish attitudes which will tend to preempt the ground and fortify for the need ahead of its coming. This is one of the most hopeful elements in our problem. It fur- nishes the very machinery for substitution of the higher for the lower sex motives, and for refining the ideals and attitudes toward the whole matter of sex satisfactions. It is essentially an ideal opportunity for prophylactic and tonic treat- ment to give constructive immunity through mastery, rather than to rely upon curative treatment during or after the onset of the sex urge. It contributes the very essence of our opportunity to bring our best social discoveries to the youth as This is the heart of character education THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS 13 incentives for individual mastery by giving such a satisfying and convincing forward look as will remove from self-control its morbid tensions. It furnishes the one hope of a really democratic transfer of social experience and ideals about sex. Sex education chiefly in schools thus far The Sex Education Movement Those who have followed the movement for sex education know that up to very recent times, except for much sporadic individual writing and speaking, only three fields have been cultivated with any degree of system. These are (1) the students of college and uni- versity grade, originally largely through the influence of the two Christian Associations ; (£) some high schools, through the instrumentality of teachers of biology or kindred subjects. (Latterly this work in high schools is being fostered by the United States Public Health Service and by state boards of health, largely in a campaign to limit venereal dis- eases and prostitution. This is being made more constructive by positive emphasis on health, physical fitness and in some degree on moral ideals.) ; and (3) emergency educational work for the Ameri- can soldiers during the war. These steps have all been taken because these were the lines of least resistance and of immediate promise. In very large degree this work has been temporary, exotic, and superficial; and has been so recognized by those engaged in it. It has been done chiefly by outside lecturers who have tried, in a visit of a few days only, to give the information, interpretation, and in- spiration which must be joined in such work. In relatively few institutions has it been taken over and consistently developed as an integral part of the all-school duty. This was a preliminary and an inevitable condition; but it cannot furnish the permanent solution. Furthermore, when the colleges take care of this work from the inside, as they must, this will help only a small part of our popu- lation; and this instruction comes too late for the students to do more than to reorient their lives to the problem. Its chief value looks toward their own later service as parents and leaders. Similarly, even if the high school comes to give adequate sex instruction to its pupils, it must be remembered that not more than fifteen per cent of Must become an integral part of school task Even more needed by em- ployed young people 14 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS the young people of high-school age are in high school. This age, furthermore, is one of peculiarly strong sex activity and sex tempta- tions, which, coupled with poor or vicious information, make it extremely difficult for the boy to come through safely. Only ideals and attitudes formed before this period can effectively satisfy him and guide him during its stresses. No one, therefore, who analyzes the whole situation with thor- oughness and with a bias toward education can escape the conclu- sion that the crucial educational work must be done before the strong sex urges and opportunities of the high-school period. Of course all our social efforts to help boys and High school girls must be continued and even redoubled too late through this whole high-school and college period; but the effectiveness of even these efforts will be determined very largely by the attitudes already gained through education before that time. Sex Education as a Community Task Futher analysis must convince us, even if the high school should do its duty thoroughly for its own pupils, that sex education for the pre-school age, the pre-adolescent school Sex guidance period, the pubertal period of the late grades, of youth is a and for youth of high-school age in industry, community is an all-community task. These are the great responsibility bulk of our immature population. This means that the brains and the spirit, the science and idealism of each community must give themselves to the task of preparing and coordinating every agency in the community to the end that it will make its proper contribution soundly, intelligently, elastically, pedagogically in such a way as to get these right emo- tional states and ideas and attitudes and behavior in and from all normal young people. This involves the preparation of parents, and homes, kindergartens, grade schools, Sunday schools and churches, all workers in organizations for boys and girls, lodges, physicians, women’s clubs, — indeed, of all groups concerned with children in any way, — to make their full contribution, whether This means of information or of attitude, in the most up- cooperation of building fashion. It is essential that these all agencies instrumentalities shall be coordinated as to their ideas and objectives, and not work at cross-purposes for partial and even contradictory objects. THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS 15 Material Health and Efficiency Plus Moral Ideals There is no question that the fight being organized by scientific medical men against the venereal diseases must be pushed with splendid energy. This is going to be coupled Movement with inspiring pleas for health of mind and against diseases body for the sake of efficiency. In spots there will be emphasis upon the social, moral, emo- tional, and character side of the matter. The movement is going to succeed within its limits. It would, however, be a most humiliat- ing thing to all religious idealists, if, in this twentieth century such a movement should be allowed to be limited to a mere campaign for material health and efficiency. It is going to be the privilege of the church of the next twenty years to determine whether this shall really be a characterful movement, in- Must be a move- formed with even religious objectives. This ment for char - cannot be done by merely pious well-wishers acter as well and moralizers in the church or out. It can be done only when the clergyman and other moral and religious teachers shall have a mastery of the biological, psycho- logical, pedagogical, and sociological facts of sex and their interpre- tation, as a background of their equipment for normal moral and religious education of youth; and equally by insuring that our sci- entific physicians shall really assimilate and apply the moral and social implications of their science. These two groups of human workers can, by a full combination of their magnified fields and a full use of all other so- cial agencies, and working with the method of the true teacher, guide humanity in the solu- tion of its sex education. Neither science alone nor the idealism of religion alone can possibly solve the problem. The Consequent Duty Resting on Professional Schools It is quite obvious that a busy physician or a busy clergyman cannot readily pick up these necessary parts of his equipment for this task, merely as an incident in the day’s Preparation work. Each will be inclined rather to shun his responsibility. The too obvious handicaps of both are due largely to an inadequate point of view in the teaching in the professional schools. For example, when he leaves the medi- Combine ideals of religion the facts of science, and the method of the teacher 16 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS cal school the ordinary physician has not merely not been fitted to use his unique opportunity of leadership to present the big human aspects of sex to youth, but ordinarily he is Medical schools made particularly unfit to do so by the very signally failing manner and matter of instruction which he re- ceives there. For the most part he has been instructed only in the anatomy, physiology, and pathology of the subject, and with a levity and neglect of the whole biology and psy- chology of it that is utterly and dangerously unscientific and well- nigh destroys his rightful opportunity of social service and leadership. In exactly analogous ignorance and perhaps in even greater degree, the average young clergyman goes to his peculiarly strategic position entirely unfitted to make his spiritual and ideal aspirations on this subject effective in the practical training of the young people of his church and community. He can Vital omission be prepared to do more easily the thing he now in seminaries tries to ignore or does with great difficulty. Here again much of the fault lies with his training schools. The school both selects the subjects to which he shall give his thought during his course, and even more it gives the bias and sense of values which will largely determine his emphasis in community leadership ; and in it all, this mainspring of human character is given the most casual or no attention. There are whole courses common to theological seminaries which for fundamental Christian and social ends could better be omitted than the study and training which would fit the minister for sound leadership in the right education of the two great native impulses of greed for pos- sessions and sex , in the young people of his community. The wrong use of these two impulses presents the greatest barrier both to democracy and to Christianity which we now know. In most cases the needed help could be given without any serious omissions and without extensive new courses. Most schools have several courses which could be enlarged so as to meet the conditions. Sex Problems Which Should be Considered in Seminary Courses In conclusion may I merely mention, with no discussion, some of the more acute questions demanding intelligent answer in the inter- est of the future of human society, with the general significance of which the modern minister must be familiar if he is to be a moral and religious leader for his community, or even lead his own church THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS 17 and Sunday school to contribute anything to their solution. The seminary is the institution which can best serve him in this connec- tion. These questions only illustrate the field. They by no means exhaust it. In proposing them there is no pur- pose to imply that any one now has complete or final answers to them. The implication is again that the answers cannot be found by materially-minded men of science alone. Un- less idealistic and socially-minded people actu- ally help to find scientific answers to them we are in danger of an abdication of interest which may easily be fatal for all time to a moral solution of the sex impulse in human society. Some of these problems are: Solutions of the sex problem must not be left to materialists Some conditions and questions of vital importance to the religious leader The biological place of appetites in life as a basis for understanding their relation to morals. The normal instincts and impulses connected with these. The place of pleasure and satisfactions in these organic adaptations. The effects of hu- man consciousness, memory, and imagination upon sex, and other basal appetites. Biological foun- dations for social ethics and morals. The main steps in the normal biological development of sex in the boy and girl. Some of the more frequent and limiting congenital ab- normalities of physical sex development, and the results of these in char- acter and conduct. The ages at which the various phases of physical sex development show their influence upon the emotional and desire life of the child; and the normal and abnormal forms which these emo- tional aspects take at different periods, — as auto-eroticism, homosexual- ity, heterosexuality. The practical bearing of these upon all character education of youth. The modification which our highly artificial, mature social organi- zation and conventions, customs, and taboos work in these natural emo- tional states of the young. Particularly how the home life and connec- tions influence the inner sex and emotional life of the child, through the unconscious images and complexes that are built up. The perversions of juvenile sex life and thought; their causes, prevention, and remedy. The natural and the artificial connections between the sex impulses and the other desirable and undesirable impulses of life. The normal goals that we should consciously strive for in the sex development of the youth at the principal periods of his life. That is, what should be accomplished in the way of information and in the emo- tional attitude before the child starts to school? In the pre-adolescent age? Early adolescent age? 18 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS What types of knowledge are most serviceable to the child in respect to sex, etc.? How graded to meet the development of the child? Rela- tive value of knowledge and other educative factors in influencing sex y growth and sex choices. Kind of motives most favorable for use at the various stages of personal development in securing convinced and satis- fying control and guidance of the sex impulses for constructive service t to personality, — rather than the too probable, but unnecessary, opposites of lack of control on the one hand, or grudging and unsatisfactory re- pression on the other. The necessary changes in our method as youth progresses, in devel- oping and emphasizing those motives that secure control. That is, how in respect to method can we best get the appropriate motives into healthy operation in youth at different ages? And of different temperament? When repression is necessary; and how can we secure repression of desires into unconsciousness in such a way as to injure personality least? How may we best substitute other motives and interests for those of sex? What limitations are there on this process? How can we best sublimate the sex desires and satisfactions from their cruder to their more social and constructively emotional forms? How can we make most healthful use of the social and moral stand- ard which the race has found pragmatic and has adopted, in such a way as to help the youth without hurtful repressions? In other words, how ^ can we transfer our racial experience and thought so democratically and convincingly that the youth will build up within himself a personal mechanism that knows, desires, has the habit of, and is satisfied with, sound behavior, rather than obey or revolt against an ancient morality imposed autocratically and externally. Is it a concern of the church to secure such internal, vital morality rather than obedience to conven- tions, regulations, commandments, and taboos? How can we really put its machinery back of such improved methods? In this task of giving our boys and girls a fair chance with their sex development, — not merely in conduct but in internal greatness, — what can we do for the monogamous home, to make it more effective and comfortable and educative psychologically, as it is satisfying biolog- ically? Is the future of the home assured? On what grounds is it failing? Is it the best possible social solution of the sex relation? If so, on what grounds? Isn’t it necessary to make these grounds even more effective? Isn’t it both possible and morally encumbent upon us to provide saner preparatory education for both boys and girls in the interest of better homes? Where is this to be done accurately and in the finest spirit? * What are the fundamental grounds for a single standard of sex morals for both men and women? Is definite education for this a church concern? What are the most effective motives to use at the various ^ THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS 19 stages of a boy’s life to develop a permanently right attitude on the question? How best can the sex development and satisfaction of those men and women who never marry be met? Have we no general social obligation to such people? What is the role of the literature of life, — biography, fiction, poetry, etc.,— in establishing right ideals and attitudes with respect to sex? Do the solution and application of this question of literature to sex belong to the schools alone? What are the moral and religious springs in character most closely connected with sex development? What positive use of the sex nature and impulses can effectively be made to advance morals and religion at the various periods? Conversely, what moral and religious incentives can be used to advantage and how, at the different ages, to guide and refine sex desires, attitudes, and ideals without unwholesome reaction either to sex choices or to the religious nature? What part ought we to expect the church and its Sunday schools to take directly in organizing and guiding intelligently its children and youth in respect to sex attitudes and behavior? What are their best approaches to the subject? What topics can they best use? What can the church and Sunday schools do to prepare present parents to do < for their own children in this field what parents alone can do? If communities should move to take adequate care of sex education, what part should ministers and churches take in such a community move- ment ? Conclusion x The conventional answer of many religious people to all such pleas for knowledge and science is a series of generalized statements that beg the whole question and get us nowhere. They run some- thing like this : “If the minister preaches the gospel, these things will all fall into their proper places”; or, “Nothing can solve these human problems but a new spiritual birth”; or “Belief in and ac- ceptance of Christ will make unnecessary special knowledge of the biology or pedagogy of sex”; or “We need grace rather than pedagogy.” In the super- ficial way in which many teachers of religion use such expressions, they are mere sleight-of- heart efforts to get something for nothing. Those using them in this spirit give little evi- dence of having solved the essential problems of sex or of any of the other powerful impulses that furnish the raw material for character. To be sure, we may read into such expressions our whole knowl- Pious religious generalities will not solve the problems of sex in life 3 0112 061892037 20 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS edge and appreciation of these fundamental and vital special prob- lems, — all that is asked in this paper. But if we have no such exact knowledge, then these formulae are merely an empty cover- ing to our ignorance. They are the essence of quackery. Let us not use them as a shoddy substitute for truth and understanding. That way lies ruin no less than in following blindly the material scientist. These have no more value than any other catch-words. They may include the sex impulses, relations, and problems, as the whole includes the parts. But our knowledge of the meanings of any such whole can be no greater than the sum of our exact appre- ciations of all the parts. We merely cheat ourselves when we think we get anywhere by such easy generalizations. The pedagogy and sound use of the sex impulses and of the personal and social derivatives from them are a part of this moral and religious task and process. Only sound training of ideas, desires, emotions, attitudes, and ideals in respect to sex as an integral part of the total religious relation can bring religion and sex into mutu- ally constructive support. Unless then the seminaries can make in their course of instruc- tion a synthesis of science and religion for the benefit of the min- isters, and furthermore give them an abiding confidence that such a synthesis is important in every phase of mod- ern moral and religious advance, the busy in- dividual minister has little chance to acquire the necessary attitude and knowledge in his active service; and unless he does get it he is greatly hindered as a community leader in re- spect to the most imperious group of impulses which human beings have, and to the most influential factor both for good and ill in individual and social life. The welding of science and religion hy the the seminaries