Sex and Christianity

In this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared debunks the myth that Christianity doesn’t have anything worthwhile to say about sex. You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1, WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am. The transcript of the episode is below, or you can listen to the audio at the bottom of the post. This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. Earlier, in the heights of debates surrounding questions like divorce or same-sex marriage, a common refrain on the left was that we should get out of people’s bedrooms. That is, whatever happened between consenting adults is their own business. It’s not the business of the government and, for many people, it’s not the business of the church either. I think a lot of this frustration was because of people’s experience with Christian messages surrounding sex and sexuality which seemed far removed from the actual lived experience of this part of the human life. So much of it seemed to be based upon fear and control… And so people increasingly just stopped paying attention to what the church said. And so, though I might regret it, today I’d like to bust the myth of the idea Christianity doesn’t have anything important to say about sex… because I think it does. It’s probably just not what you’ve heard. Let’s start by clearing up just a few things. First, sex is not bad or dirty or evil. What sex is… is powerful. That means we need to think carefully about what it is, and the role sex has in our lives. Because, as former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams says, sex can be an experience of the body’s grace. That is, your experience of having your beloved delight in you fully can be a profound experience of the grace one body can give another. Sex is powerful. It can do tremendous harm when used destructively and not with deep care and respect for those involved. Part of the problem is that for too long Christians have thought about sex in terms of a list of rules, list of things that are not okay. So, no sex before marriage. No sex among people of the same gender. And, in some traditions, no sex unless you’re trying to make a baby. The problem with only thinking about sex in terms of rules is that it doesn’t force you to have some difficult conversations with yourself (and your partner) about the moral implications, the lived implications, of choices you make. It’s either OK or not, according to the rules. The other problem is that some of those rules are based upon ancient conceptualizations of sexuality that we would no longer hold in the 21st century. So, for example, one of the reasons that homosexual relationships were rejected by Paul was because they were “unnatural.” Of course, we now know that homosexuality is a naturally occurring phenomenon in both humans and animals. Also, Paul believed it was debasing for a man to take the place of the woman in the sexual act… which is a pretty patriarchal understanding of gender roles and sex, one that we would hopefully reject at this point. Contrary to what Paul’s experience in the ancient world, in my own experience as an Episcopal priest, the marriages of our gay and lesbian members of my church tend to be the very strongest in the community, the ones which most manifest the fruits of the Spirit. So, I think Christians do need to stop saying some of the things ...