ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, February 15, 1997 TAG: 9702190046
SECTION: RELIGION PAGE: B-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID BRIGGS ASSOCIATED PRESS
A campaign for teen abstinence is coming out of the churches and into the schools.
On Valentine's Day, a coalition of more than 40 church groups, encouraged by the success of its True Love Waits program, asked young people at secondary schools and college campuses around the country to proclaim their intention to remain chaste until marriage.
``Kids in the world are actually buying into the abstinence idea,'' said the Rev. Glen Whatley, a consultant to the Nashville, Tenn.-based True Love Waits program. ``It's not the nerds anymore. It's the popular thing.''
Since its humble beginnings four years ago, when 59 teens took vows of chastity in a Southern Baptist church in Nashville, the True Love Waits campaign has inspired youths around the world to pledge to abstain from premarital sex.
At the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting in 1994, there was a huge display of 100,000 cards from youths pledging chastity. Last year, more than 340,000 pledge cards, signed by youths of 75 nations, were displayed at a rally at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.
The campaign has even inspired its own True Love Waits Bible, featuring passages such as one from Chapter 4 of 1 Thessalonians that says in part:
``For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from fornication; that each one of you know how to control your own body in holiness and honor, not with lustful passion.''
Instead of concentrating on one major gathering, program organizers this year decided to take their message directly to the nation's schools. Students in Christian student clubs were asked to promote among their peers the idea of pledging ``to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future mate and my future children to be sexually abstinent from this day until the day I enter a biblical marriage relationship.''
``The difference is we're trying to move it out of the church and into the world,'' Whatley said. ``Peer pressure is a big deal to kids, and this is positive pressure.''
Their goal was to have commitment cards displayed in every secondary school, but campaign officials said they will not know how many student groups participated in the program until reports come in later this month.
However, according to one new poll, religious groups would be advised not to take the program completely out of the churches.
In a national survey of more than 1,000 U.S. adults taken by Yankelovich Partners for the Lutheran Brotherhood, 34 percent said that other than a parent, a clergy member is the person to whom a teen-ager should turn for advice about such issues as drug use, sex or violence.
The next best choices, according to the survey, would be a relative or a teacher.
In a separate question, other than the presence of a parent, religious faith was named by 35 percent as the most positive influence on a child's likelihood of growing up well-adjusted and productive.
After religious faith, respondents cited good schools (22 percent) and choosing the right kind of friends (21 percent). Only 4 percent chose family income.
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