ABSTRACT "TAMING THE SEXUAL TEMPEST": SEXUAL EDUCATION PROGRAMS IN PROTESTANT YOUTH GROUPS, 1960-1980 By Jaime Lynn McLeanMy dissertation makes a contribution to four fields of historical scholarship: the history of youth ministry, baby boom generation, the social and cultural history of the 1960s and 1970s, and the history of the sexual revolution. Set in the context of the 1960s and 1970s, I examine the formal and informal sexual education literature and programming designed and used by two Protestant youth groups during this period: Liberal Religious Youth, a youth run denominational group supported by the Unitarian Universalist Association and Youth For Christ an evangelical para-church organization for high school students. Protestant religious groups, evangelicals in particular, were at the center of debates over comprehensive sexual education in American high schools in the 1960s. However what often gets lost in the discussion of liberal support for and evangelical objections to sex education in schools are the alternative and/or supplemental programs designed and utilized by those working within the youth ministry. The content and the tone of these programs changed significantly between 1960 and 1980, coinciding with changes in youth culture happening among three cohorts of baby boomers. However, the strategies the groups used to reach teenagers were remarkably similar. The history of sexual education in YFC and LRY during the 1960s and 1970s indicates both conservative and liberal religious adults moved away from impersonal and overt efforts to control and monitor teen sexuality to a strategy which allowed them to manage teen sexuality by teaching teens to monitor themselves. I argue that the changing sexual culture in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s prompted Youth for Christ and Liberal Religious Youth to employ similar strategies to deliver very different messages about gender, love, relationships, and sexuality. Both groups employed three separate strategies over the course of these two decades each targeted at a specific wave of the baby boomer generation. I divide these strategies/cohorts into three rough periods. The first period encompasses 1960-1966. The second period runs from 1967-1972. The third period is from 1973 to 1980. I have divided the baby boomers into these cohorts because of the nature of the high school experience. Typically, scholarship focusing on youth culture privileges college students. In my study, I focus on high school students who have a much shorter and more contained youth experience.
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