A Greensboro pastor last week took a secret vote of his congregation to discover what its members believed to be the greatest sin of Greensboro. More than half the ballots were marked “immorality.” Of course, literally that means nothing at all. By its very definition all sin is immoral, so that on the face of the returns what the congregation said was that the greatest sin of Greensboro is sin. Which is an unassailable position.
Still, nobody is in doubt as to what the voters had in mind. They meant fornication and adultery. Just why there should be such violent prejudice against the use of Plain English words, when there is no prejudice against mentioning the crimes which they describe, it is a mystery that we must leave for explanation to students of American prudery. The object of the vote was to enable the pastor to preach a sermon against what his charges consider the most heinous sin of the community; but we submit that if it is correct to preach a sermon against any sin whatever, it is correct to call that offense by its right name.
The clergyman was as good as his word. He preached a sermon against sexual irregularity of all sorts, taking the incident of David and Bathsheba for his Scripture lesson. Furthermore, he pointed out the peculiarity of this offence, namely, that it is the one breach of the moral law that is most likely to carry its own punishment with it. That, of course, somewhat weakens the impressiveness of the demonstration, for if this is the one sin practically certain to react to the infinite damage of the sinner, why worry so much about it? why not rather concentrate attention on some of the other immoralities mentioned, which are by no means so certain to carry their own punishment?
Some of the members of the congregation must have reasoned so, for they voted for branding publicly Sabbath desecration, lying, avarice, idleness and profanity, and one mentioned whiskey. These things may store up wrath against the day of wrath, but, with the exception of whiskey, none of them is especially likely to work ante-mortem ruin of the sinner. No doubt one reason for the intense interest in this particular crime is our habit of swaddling its essential ugliness in soft and colorful euphemism. The army has, we believe, a provision forbidding the trial of an officer on a charge of being under the influence of intoxicating liquor while on duty, or any similar phrase. The church must be “drunk on duty”—no more, no less. Perhaps there is a suggestion in that. Perhaps if “Immorality” were handled less delicately, it might be made less morbidly interesting.
--Greensboro News
From the front page of the Lincoln County News, Lincolnton, N.C., Monday, June 2, 1924
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