C. Sumner Wemp
Christopher Recordings
Menstruation
Problems of
Growing Boys
Marriage
C. Sumner Wemp
Art Linkletter
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Christian Sex Education LP's
by Bill Geerhart
  The Christian Sex Instruction Album is a rare and antiquated subgenre. An exhaustive search turned up only three records (well, two and a half really), the most recent of which was released in 1971. Lately Christians have opted for the "less is more" strategy of sex education. That is simply telling their youth that abstinence before marriage is the way to go and don't bother us with details. The umbrella title for this philosophy is called "True Love Waits." The "movement" consists of a pop tune ("True Love Waits") extolling the virtues of self-denial, a wallet-sized pledge card (lamination recommended) and a sports hero celebrity spokesman (The Dallas Mavericks' A.C. Green). Abstinence is good. What's to argue? Having listened to the following albums in one sitting, this shift in policy is quite understandable and perhaps even laudable.
Christopher Recordings on Sex Instruction
 The imaginatively titled Christopher Recordings on Sex Instruction (RCA Victor) is the first such LP on our modest pile. Released - judging from Dad's necktie on the cover - sometime in the late 1940s, this is an album heavily influenced by the radio programming of the day. Indeed, if it weren't for the subject matter, one could reasonably expect Fibber McGee and Molly to stroll through the proceedings.
CRSI is divided into four dramedies (How Babies Are Born; Menstruation; Problems of Growing Boys; The Marriage Union) each introduced by a silky-voiced announcer over music and sound effects.
This omniscient narrator also gives us parents helpful guidance on what key points to take from the record and apply in our own Post-War lives. Many of these asides are intended to reinforce God as the unheard extra character here. On the first track, "HOW BABIES ARE BORN," for example:
NARRATOR:
Notice how the father introduces the name of God and the divine plan of reproduction early and this identification with God carries naturally through the discussion.
This first story commences with a father noisily sawing wood when his six-year-old son Billy runs up and implores him to come see the neighbors' new puppies. Not sensing any danger of imminent embarrassment, the father accompanies Billy to view the litter of puppies. Billy is prone to excitement and repeated use of the exclamation "Golly." He also sounds like an adult woman doing an impression of a boy. Apparently audio verité was not foremost on the minds of the Christophers.
On cue, Billy starts asking questions about how and why the puppies were born. Dad gives his stock answer about God planting the seed inside the mother dog, etc. This seems to satisfy until Billy asks the same questions about human beings. Dad issues a similar reply, but adds the detail that "God breathes a soul into the human fetus." The pet cemetary business was never the same.
But then Billy asks the killer question, "How does the baby get out of the mother's body?"
Dad responds nervously that "mommy has an opening between her legs that gets bigger when the baby comes out and then closes back up once the baby is born."
Billy digests this bombshell and then inquires stupidly, "Gosh, does Mom know this?"
Dad awkwardly replies, "yes" and, after a chuckle to himself returns to his sawing. The outro music bubbles up which leads naturally to . . .
Menstruation
Here the narrator cautions the mother to discuss the "natural and spiritual significance of the bodily function before it happens..." "Better a year too early than a week too late," he deadpans.
Another depiction of peacetime bliss opens the scene as daughter Betty arrives home from school to find Mother baking a cake. This, of course, segues to a discussion of periods. Betty went to school a girl and, now, well she's ready for the Talk.
Mother puts her spoon down and gets serious revealing the details of the "wonderful machinery growing inside of you" and how this machinery will "spring into action if God calls you to the married state." The reason for the qualifier is not known, but perhaps Betty has a face for radio.
Once all the facts are on the table, we get this rather brutal exchange:
BETTY:
That's wonderful, mother. Does this happen every month? Even before a girl is married?
MOTHER:
That's right, honey.
BETTY:
So you mean, you sorta bleed?
MOTHER:
Well, not exactly, dear. You see, the blood is simply stored up for a particular purpose and when it is not needed, it just passes off. It's a perfectly natural bodily function. And a Holy one, really, when you consider its part of God's wonderful plan to make new little souls in his image.
BETTY (still not entirely sold on the concept):
When it happens, what'll I do?
MOTHER:
Well, when it does, just come to me and I'll show you how to take care of yourself and your clothes.
Not about to let Betty dwell on this answer, Mother retreats to the God message:
MOTHER (CONT'D):
The thing to remember always is this is a natural thing - a Holy thing. It means that God is preparing your body for the wonderful calling of motherhood - if that is his plan for you.
Again with the qualifier!
Not waiting around for follow-up questions, Mother admonishes Betty to pick up her coat and school books before her father gets home. Mother's work is done. It's Dad's turn again in . . .
The Problems of Growing Boys
This time, instead of sawing wood, Dad is boxing with his 12-to-14-year-old son, Bob. The scene quickly shifts, however, to Bob's room where the two have a chat over a Coke (the only such product placement on the recording).
Dad lights up his pipe and starts talking about nocturnal emissions.
DAD:
One of these nights before too long you may find some of it (semen) passes off in your sleep . . .
BOB:
(worriedly) But Dad, that's wrong, isn't it?
DAD:
No, son, it's not wrong . . . No, it's true that to waste the seed deliberately - to do anything knowingly to make it come is a very grave sin. Because God designed that secretion in a man for one purpose. That is to be, well, like one of his raw materials in the creation of a new life . . . Wet dreams are different. Sometimes the supply of semen becomes too great before a man is married and these dreams are sort of a safety valve . . .
BOB:
But Dad, why do fellas get these feelings before they get married?
Dad responds with a metaphor popular in the softcore films of Zalmon King. That is to say that God made sex as necessary as food for survival. Dad adds that sometimes this procreative desire inconveniently appears before the wedding vows are taken and the bloodtests are registered with the county seat.
Dad helpfully offers these words of advice in combating those nagging premarital feelings:
Don't let those thoughts worry you. When they come - and they will every so often - remember that you can always knock them down with a simple one-two punch: a quick little prayer and then some work. Any work or sport just as long as it is hard. Which reminds me - how about going out back and seeing if you can sneak that curve ball past me . . .
Playful music rises as the guys go out back to work off some of those pesky desires Dad stirred up with his special talk.
Meanwhile, on the other side of town on track four,
The Marriage Union
Dad, Mom and Kitten (that's right, Kitten) are having a discussion of their own. Kitten, who sounds an awful lot like Billy from track one, has returned home from school and has some questions that need to be resolved. It seems Kitten has overheard some of the older girls gossiping about sex in the cafeteria. Like most teenage girls Kitten turns to both her parents for the straight dope.
"It's quite a beautiful story, really, " begins Mom.
The parents then launch into cryptic descriptions of sex as a "spiritual joy - beyond words to describe" and "God's plan" and a whole lot of similar phraseology from the preceding three featurettes.
Suitably calmed, Kitten concludes the album by declaring wondrously, "That's so different from what the girls were saying at school."
Amen.
Love, Courtship, Romance and Sex
Jumping light years ahead to 1971 is Love, Courtship, Romance and Sex by C. Sumner Wemp (Prestige Recordings). Our instructor, C. Sumner Wemp, has a pinched Southern accent and that rare quality of inspiring immediate annoyance. This album should satisfy the curiosity of anyone who ever wondered how the topic of sex would have been addressed on The Andy Griffith Show.
In producing this record, Wemp, a former president of Samford University and a graduate of the Dallas Theological Seminary, apparently sat down in a recording studio and read aloud his standard stump speech. This is most obvious when he attempts a self-deprecating joke and silence follows. Then again, perhaps this is a live performance on an off night. Whatever the case, it sounds like a leftover Ross Perot campaign infomercial.
Like Perot, Wemp has a fondness for simplistic charts - two of which adorn the back of the record jacket. One is called "The Love Cycle." Another is called "The Sex Gap." He refers to these charts at disjointed moments between supposedly instructive anecdotes and scripture quotations.
The LP's liner notes promise the listener these revelatory epiphanies:
1. You will hear the four supreme secrets which every man needs to make his wife the responsive, loving wife he craves and which a woman needs to know to make her husband the attentive, thoughtful husband she desires. You will discover the greatest neglect of married couples which leads to problems broken homes with the key to its remedy.
2. How to attract a boy, how far should romance go in dating and why are timely questions answered. The philosophy and cause of premarital sex are explained with the secrets for avoiding it clearly presented.
But what we really get are Wemp's peculiar rantings about miniskirts and the media's fascination with liberated women. We also hear his scriptural citations for wifely submission.
The desires in the home are natural and must be responded to as it says in Proverbs 5:18 and 19: "Let her breast satisfy thee at all times and be thou ravished always with her love."
In First Corinthians verse four, God says, "The wife has not authority over her own body, but the husband has."
Judging from his photograph on the dust jacket, it would seem Wemp must have frequently relied on the above citations in receiving his matrimonial servicing.
Art Linkletter's Where Did You Come From?
Honorable mention must go out to casual Christian Art Linkletter's landmark 1963 sex ed album Where Did You Come From? (20th Century Fox Records). This is the record in which Art likens every human sex function to that of a cute animal. Clocking in at just over 18 minutes, however, this can hardly be called a Long Play album.
The preceding albums are, of course, incredibly archaic in terms of format, background detail and tone. However, they still properly reflect the substance of sex education being offered to Christian teens.
In a humble effort to appease our Christian brethren and to keep these records from ever being foisted on our kids again, I have taken the True Love Waits pledge. Won't you join me?
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