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My God and My Neighbor is a “Bible talk show” that looks at religious issues, Christian living and world events in light of the Word of God to give hope. This podcast is a ministry of Tennessee Bible College. TBC offers a bachelor's in Bible studies, a master of theology, and a doctorate of theology in apologetics and Christian evidences. TBC also provides Christian books, audio recordings on the Bible, and free Bible courses in English and Spanish. Tune in to My God and My Neighbor to experience the educational content that TBC has been delivering for nearly five decades!
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Kerry Duke: Hi, I'm Kerry Duke, host of My God and My Neighbor podcast from Tennessee Bible College, where we see the Bible as not just another book, but the Book. Join us in a study of the inspired Word to strengthen your faith and to share what you've learned with others.
In Ecclesiastes chapter one, verse nine, the Bible says, “The thing that has been, it is that which shall be, and that which is done is that which shall be done, and there is no new thing under the sun.” In Second Timothy chapter three, verse 13, the Scriptures say that “evil men and deceivers shall become worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.” And in Judges chapter 21, verse 25, the Bible says that “every man did that which was right in his own eyes.”
And these passages pave the way for our discussion this week. This week, we're looking at the 1950s. Remember, this is not a history lesson. We're not trying to look at the major events of this decade. We've left out many political and cultural stories. Our goal is to see what happened morally and spiritually in America in this period, and to learn how these changes affected the course of the nation.
We're trying to see how we arrived at the place we are at today, and we're hoping to learn from the mistakes that were made, and we firmly believe that we will have more confidence in the Word of God as a result of this study.
The decade of the 1950s was a time of change, just like all the rest. The nation went through its own struggles in those days.
The Second World War ended in 1945 and America had peace again for a time. But war raised its ugly head again in 1950. When the United States entered the Korean War, the words of Ecclesiastes 3:8 hit home again: there is “a time of war and a time of peace.”
But the home also experienced a great deal of change in this decade as we saw in the previous decade. In the 40s the divorce rate soared when the second World War ended and the effects of those broken marriages and homes were not really felt right away, but they began to show in the 1950s. So more homes than ever before in America had been shattered and more mothers were working outside the home. A new generation was entering the scene. The baby boomers and this generation grew up with a different set of values than their parents and their grandparents.
Babysitters replaced some of the time that mothers before the Second World War had spent with young children in those formative years between the ages of one and six. Parents also found another new babysitter: the television. In 1950, less than 20 percent of American families had a television set. But by the end of the decade, 90 percent of American homes had one.
This permanently changed the family. It permanently changed the country. The television set became the guest that could entertain, educate, warn, and advise everyone in the home. It connected the family to the world. It also shaped the attitudes and priorities of everyone in the home. So husbands and wives began to listen more to the television than to each other.
And children did the same. More and more, this new device told the family how to think. Now again, the shows and the commercials were mild in those days compared to our time. But they started a pattern, a trend, that was bound to have some very bad consequences in just a few years. Too many parents in the 1950—not all of them, but too many—had turned away from the Bible and the experience of their parents and their grandparents.
They started listening to so-called experts who told them how to raise their children. For instance, in 1946 a book was released that created a great deal of controversy about how to raise children. It was written by one Dr. Benjamin Spock. The title was Baby and Child Care. One of the things he said was, “I'm not particularly advocating spanking. But I think it is less poisonous than lengthy disapproval because it clears the air for parents and child.” Now some say, in retrospect, that he wasn't against spanking, but this statement certainly doesn't encourage it. And also, Dr. Spock later seemed to have some misgivings about what he said.
You see, he revised the book several times, and the last time that he revised it was in 1989, just before his death. But however you look at it, what he said in 1946 was not good. He said he didn't particularly advocate spanking and used the word poison or poisonous. Well, the Bible says in Proverbs 22, verse 15, that “foolishness is bound in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.”
He may have had some regrets 40 years later when society began falling apart, but that was too little too late. The damage had been done. This book sold millions of copies in the 40s and 50s and 60s. Parents should have been listening to the Bible all along.
But marriage in America also suffered in this period. Even though the divorce rate went down in the 1950s compared to the 1940s after the spike in divorce in 1945 and 1946, perversion, that is, sexual perversion, began to emerge in the 1950s.
For instance, in 1953, the Kinsey Report on Female Sexuality was released. And in that same year, Hugh Hefner started his magazine that helped to destroy marriages and shatter homes. Now, of course, pornography had been around a long time before him, but his magazine made it easier for men to buy. So pornography became popular and even glamorous through the Playboy publication. And this also paved the way for other publications. And as with all sin, after it started, it became worse and worse.
They became more and more shocking and more and more perverse. Now God had warned about this thousands of years ago. In Job chapter 31, verse 1, the Bible says, “I have made a covenant with my eyes, why then should I think upon a maid?” In Proverbs chapter 6, verse 25, the Bible says, “Do not lust after her beauty in your heart.” In Matthew chapter 5, verse 27 and 28, Jesus said, “You have heard that it has been said by them of old time, You shall not commit adultery. But I say unto you that whosoever shall look upon a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.”
Now, again, I'm not saying that the family in America fell apart in the 1950s. I am saying that seeds were sown, that precedents were set in this period, and that the moral direction was downhill from this point. Each decade from this period on took what was done and made it even worse. Sex outside of marriage, divorce, and juvenile delinquency continued to rise in the decades following this one.
We've already seen that the moral landscape of the country had begun to change. In the 1950s, the values of Americans were beginning to change even more and more. And they were beginning to drift further away from the Bible. Now, there was a pushback from God-fearing people to be sure. But Satan just kept promoting sin, and it worked.
Any kind of calming effect of conservative ethics turned out to be the calm before the storm. Another one of Satan's plans came in the form of a political agenda. The U. S. and Russia were in an escalating Cold War in the 1950s, but that struggle was not so much just about nuclear weapons as it was about ideology.
Nazism was viewed as the greatest threat to the world in the 1930s and the first half of the 1940s. But the movement that came to be feared in the 1950s was communism. The political theory known as Marxism or communism is not just about politics. It is anti-God. Atheism is a central tenet of communism.
This form of government rests on a philosophy called dialectical materialism. This means that there is no God, no soul, and no hereafter. It also means that moral values come from man, which means that there are no absolutes about right and wrong. In communism, God doesn't determine right and wrong. Instead, might makes right. So the spread of this ideology was not just a threat to liberty. It was an attack on the highest law of all, that is, the law of God.
To see the moral implications of communism on the family, on the church, and on the nation, let's go back to 1958. That was the year that former FBI agent Cleon Skousen released a book called The Naked Communist.
In that volume he uncovered the details of the communist ideology. And while it may be redundant to read some of these goals since they're being displayed, they are so serious that they deserve special consideration. This book was written, again, in 1958 and these goals were entered into the Congressional Record on January the 10th, 1963.
There are 45 of these communist goals and I'll be reading from some of these selections. Number 13 is “Do away with all loyalty oaths.” Number 15: “Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.” Number 16: “Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.”
Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers associations.” Number 18: “Gain control of all student newspapers.” Notice number 19: “Use student riots to foment public protests.”
Number 20. “Infiltrate the press. Get control of book review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.” Number 21: “Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.” Number 22: “Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression.” Number 23: “Control art critics and directors of art museums…our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless, and racist.” Number 24: “Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them censorship and a violation of free speech and free press.” Number 25: “Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.”
“Present homosexuality, degeneracy, and promiscuity as quote normal, natural, healthy.” Number 27: “Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion—that is, a religion that is based on a revelation from God, which Christianity is—Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with social religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which does not need a religious crutch.” Number 28: “Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of separation of church and state.” Now again, we're looking at communist goals going back to the 1950s.
“Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis. Number 30: “Discredit the American founding fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the common man.”
“Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the big picture. Give more emphasis to Russian history since the communists took over.” Number 32: “Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture, education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.” Number 35: “Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.” Number 36: “Infiltrate and gain control of more unions, etc.” Number 37: “Infiltrate and gain control of big business.” Number 38: “Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can control, can understand or treat.” Number 39: “Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose communist goals.” Number 40: “Discredit the family as an institution.
Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.” Number 41: “Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks, and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.” Number 42: “Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition, that students and special interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political, or social problems.”
Doesn't this sound exactly like what people in America today are doing and saying? In fact, isn't this what we've seen taking place for decades? Now, again, this book was written in 1958, and these goals were entered into the Congressional Record in 1963.
Now, whether you believe that this is actual communist thinking or just conspiracy theory, you have to admit that this was a prediction of what could happen nnd as it turns out, what did happen in America. Regardless of what man or group of men come up with a plan like this, we know who's really behind it—Satan.
In second Corinthians chapter four, verse four, the Bible says that he is the God of this world who has blinded the minds of those who believe not. The devil is behind this war against morality. He uses any means that he can, and he never stops. And did you notice how many of the items that we just read are about destroying the home?
That is Satan's plan. Destroy marriages, turn husbands and wives away from each other, and turn the children against the parents. Break up homes, because the home is the foundation of society. There's an old saying, as the home goes, so goes the nation. And it is very true. If homes are stable, so is the nation.
If homes are unstable, then the nation itself will be unstable. If the homes are godly, then the nation will be godly. If people in the home are unbelieving then the nation will be unbelieving. If people in the home are respectful, then people in the nation will be respectful of each other. If people in the home are rebellious then the nation will be rebellious.
If people in the home are taught to be generous then the nation will be generous. And if people in the home are selfish then the country or the nation will be selfish. You can't have a strong nation And you can't have strong families with individuals who have no character. Now, this is why the Bible stresses the importance of the home from the very start.
In Genesis 2 24, the Bible says, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one,” or one flesh. In the Ten Commandments, we find these words, “Honor your father and your mother, that it may go well with you in the land which the Lord your God is giving you [verse 12]. Verse 14 says, “Do not commit adultery.” Now the devil knows all this and that's why he declared unending war on the home from the very beginning. And that's why it is so important to teach the Creator's plan for the home. When the Jewish scholars of Jesus day asked Him about divorce, He took them back to the very beginning of the Bible.
And that's where we need to go today. That's how we need to respond to people today. Oftentimes, we need to point people back to the very beginning of the Scriptures. In Matthew, chapter 19, verse 3, the Bible says that the “Pharisees also came to Him testing Him and saying to Him, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?”
Now this was a controversial issue. The scribes and the Pharisees knew that this had been a hotly debated issue for many years. When they asked the question—is it lawful to do this?—they're not talking about the civil law. They're not talking about the legal code here that might come up in a court. In other words, when they say, is it lawful to divorce? they're not talking about the law of man.
They're talking about the law of God, they're talking about the scriptures, they're asking the question, is it scriptural to do this? And they realized that there were different opinions among the rabbis. There was the more conservative school of thought from the school of one rabbi named Shammai.
Now, Shammai taught that the only reason that you could divorce your wife was for the cause of adultery. On the other extreme, you had a rabbi named Hillel. He taught his students that you could divorce your wife even if she burned the evening meal. Now, that sounds like a joke, but he actually taught that and they believed it.
And so there were these different opinions and different extremes about the issue of divorce. And now they want to know what Jesus thinks about it. So, in verse 4, Jesus begins to answer. Let's look at how Jesus dealt with this controversial issue. In verse four, the Bible says, “And he answered and said to them, Have you not read that he who made them at the beginning made them male and female?”
The first thing that He asked these people, who supposedly knew a lot about the Bible—these were the so-called experts and the Bible scholars of the day. And the first thing that Jesus points out is: Haven't you read this? Haven't you read what God said in the very beginning? And that is oftentimes the very question that we need to raise today. Have you read, or have you never even read, what the Bible says about this?
Sadly, oftentimes, people don't know. They never have read. And even sadder is the fact that there are people who have gone to churches who have never heard that verse of Scripture. They've never heard it read in a sermon, and they certainly have never heard it preached on in a sermon.
Jesus takes them back to Genesis chapter 1, verse 27, which says this, “So God created man in his own image. In the image of God created he him. Male and female created he them.” The Lord made male and female. That is not some kind of accident of evolution. God created the sexes. That is His plan, that is His idea, and He did that for a reason.
And we find that in verse 5 Jesus continues and said, “For this reason—that is the reason that He just gave in verse 4: that God made male and female for that reason—"shall a man leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.”
Notice a man shall be joined to his wife. A man shall leave father and mother. There are two genders, folks. It has always been that way. God built that into nature, and nature will not change. So the answer in verse 6 to their question is this: “So then, they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together”—that’s marriage—let not man separate” [that's divorce].
So that's Jesus’ basic, general reply. That is, don't do it. Their question in verse 3 is about divorce. Jesus gives the answer in verse 6 and basically says don't do it. But they press the issue. And in verse 7 they said to him, “Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce and to put her away?”
So they knew their Bible well enough to be able to refer to another passage. That passage was Deuteronomy chapter 24 verses 1 through 4. That's where Moses wrote about the certificate of divorce that was in the Bible. But Jesus explained that the bill of divorce in the Old Testament was not God's ideal plan from the beginning.
It was only temporary. In verse 8, “He said to them, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.” So there is a contrast. From the beginning, but from the beginning, he says, it was not so. It was not like that. And then he clarifies, he gives what His law is in verse nine.
He said, “And I say unto you.” You see in verse eight it is Moses. Now, in verse nine:”I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except it be for fornication,” the King James says. Now, there are other translations which actually weaken and water down the meaning. They generalize the meaning of that word which is in the original, the word porneia.
And so the King James uses the word fornication. The new King James uses the words sexual immorality. That's too general. The NIV uses the words marital unfaithfulness. Well, sexual immorality and marital unfaithfulness can include a whole lot more than the idea of fornication because fornication comes from that word in the original porneia, which means unlawful sexual union in general.
In some passages, it might be premarital sex. In others, it might be adultery. In others, it might be homosexuality or incest or pedophilia. It is a general word. Now, the Bible says in this passage, I say to you that whoever divorces his wife, unless it is for this reason, except it is for this particular reason, and marries another, commits adultery.
And he goes on to say, “and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.” Now the exception he gave was the sin of fornication on the part of a spouse. Now to see how strong and how powerful that word is, notice the word except, or unless. In John chapter 3 verse 5, the Bible says, “Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”
That means unless you're born of water and the Spirit, you cannot get into the kingdom. In Luke chapter 13, verse 3, the Bible says, “Except you repent, you shall all likewise perish.” That is, unless a person repents, he will perish. In Matthew chapter 18, verse 3, in the chapter just before this, Jesus said, “Except or unless you be converted and become as little children, you shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
So this is a very serious teaching that Jesus is giving. Now why is the penalty for breaking this law so serious? Because marriage is serious. The marriage vow is just that serious. But the Bible also tells couples what to do to prevent this sin. In 1 Corinthians, chapter 7, beginning in verse 1, Paul said, “Now concerning the things of which you wrote to me, it is good for a man not to touch a woman.”
In verse 2, he says, “Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality” [the new King James says; but the King James says fornication]—because of the problem or the sin of fornication, “let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority or power over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.”
In verse five, he says—"Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time—He said, “in order that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer”, and then he says, “come together again.”
Resume this intimate side of the relationship. Why? So that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self control. Now, these are only two of the many passages in the Bible that teach us God's way of marriage. Remember that God created marriage. So we need to listen to God instead of listening to people as they talk about and teach about marriage.
Now, we're talking in this segment about the moral changes and the moral conditions that occurred in the 1950s. And I want to take you back to that overall context of people looking to and respecting and fearing God as evidenced in some things like the Pledge of Allegiance that goes back actually to 1892.
The original pledge said, “I pledge allegiance to my flag and the republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all.” That was revised in 1923 to say, “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all.”
It was on June the 14th, 1954 [and June the 14th is Flag Day in America], in 1954, the pledge was revised to say these words, “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
Another development was in 1957. That is the year that the words “In God we trust” were added to our currency. So, the situation in the 1950s was not one-sided on the part of the devil. This warfare continued throughout this decade. There were God fearing-people that stood up, and there was an element of godliness and righteousness in the nation.
Nationwide church membership grew at a faster rate than the population itself from 57% of the United States population in 1950 to 63.3% in 1960. So the decade of the 1950s was a time of war, and God was watching the whole time.
Thank you for listening to my God and my neighbor. Stay connected with our podcast on our website and on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever find podcasts are distributed. Tennessee Bible College, providing Christian education since 1975 in Cookeville, Tennessee, offers undergraduate and graduate programs.
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