Archive for the 'Sexual Ethics and Christian Faith Series' Category

“I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear”: of Scripture, the Spirit, and Christian sexual ethics

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 23, 2008
in Sexual Ethics and Christian Faith Series
. 18 Comments

This is the third post in the Christianity and Sexual Ethics series. Part One is here, part Two here. A fourth post will appear in the next week with suggestions for further reading.

I blog as a self-described evangelical Christian feminist. I blog about my relationship with Christ, and I also blog in favor of same-sex unions and, in this series, in favor of a sexual ethic that is justice-centered more than law-centered. This means that I get lots of email from readers, who worry that I apparently haven’t read my bible. At least once a week, and often more frequently when I’ve posted on one of these subjects, I get an email in this vein:

“I enjoy your blog but I think you need to look at Scripture again. The Bible prohibits sexual immorality. You are a teacher and a youth minister and you ought to be teaching young people about the importance of purity instead of encouraging them to defile themselves with sin. Please look at the attached passages and see the error of your ways.”

Back in the early days of my blogging career, I got into email arguments with these folks. And of course, I got sucked into the disastrous “proof-texting wars.” Proof-texting, for those unfamiliar with the term, is the bad habit of taking a single passage of the Bible out of context and citing it as “proof” that your particular position is the only legitimate one that a believing Christian can hold. Whatever the subject: pacifism; dietary laws; abortion; the role of women; the possibility of free will or sexuality itself, “proof-texters” from across the ideological and theological spectrum can find quotes that they imagine will serve as their “gotcha” lines.

I’m not a theologian, of course, though I do have an academic background in Christian philosophy. (Thanks in particular to Marilyn Adams, who was on my dissertation committee and literally and figuratively held my hand while leading me through Duns Scotus.) In this post, I’m not going to marshall a series of passages from the Bible to support my position that God’s intent for human sexuality allows for genital expression outside of heterosexual marriage. I’d be quoting out of context, doing the exact same thing that my theological opponents are apt to do. It’s a fun game, but frankly, I’m getting too old to play that. I will, however, use a single passage to frame a short discussion of how it is I think we ought to see Scripture. Continue reading ‘“I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear”: of Scripture, the Spirit, and Christian sexual ethics’

“The battery that powers our lives”: more on sex, faith, justice

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 21, 2008
in Sexual Ethics and Christian Faith Series
. 4 Comments

This is part two of a four-part series on Christian sexual ethics. Part One is here.

In that first post, I touched a bit on the subject of justice and the importance of reconciling our Christian obligation to “do justice” with our own understanding and practice of sexuality. I’d like to expand a bit on that here.

We’re all aware that there’s more to justice than the law. Many folks — perhaps, particularly, the poor and the marginalized — are keenly aware that legal systems the world over, even the best ones, are frequently unfair in both theory and practice. (Anecdotally, my mother spent one year in law school, at Boalt Hall. In a first-year torts class, she became so upset by something the professor said that she blurted out, to the entire room, “But that’s not just!” The professor smiled and replied, “Miss Moore, justice has nothing to do with the law.” Many of her classmates — including future California governor Pete Wilson — chuckled. My mom was so incensed she left law school, and went on to earn a Ph.D in political philosophy at Cal.) It’s clear, in any case, from both a religious and a secular perspective, that there’s far more to doing justice than remaining scruplously obedient to the law.

Someone who, for example, observes all tax and traffic regulations cannot be said to be “just” for that reason alone. Justice is less about what one fails to do and more about the positive actions one takes. Similarly, someone who — in keeping with what is still a majority position among traditionalist Christians –waits until marriage to have sex cannot be said to be “doing justice” through their private restriction, no matter how laudable it might seem to others. If justice is giving to others what is truly their due, then perhaps it is a form of justice to be obedient to what you perceive to be God’s commands. But in and of itself, it’s woefully insufficient. What makes a sexual relationship just has less to do with whether a couple is heterosexually wed and more to do with the degree of reverence they have for each other. At its core, sexual justice is linked to the recognition of the inherent dignity and worth of the other. “Good sex”, to repeat what I said in my last post, is worshipful sex: it honors the gift of pleasure, but also the spark of God inside each of us. To make love to (and with) a partner, in other words, is to honor the aspect of God within them. That can happen inside or outside of marriage. Continue reading ‘“The battery that powers our lives”: more on sex, faith, justice’

“Do Me, Do Me Right”: part one (very long) of a four-part series on Christianity and sexual ethics

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 17, 2008
in Christianity, Favorite Posts 2008, Sexual Ethics and Christian Faith Series and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 25 Comments

This is part one of a four-part series this summer on Christianity and sex. Part Two will look more closely at issues of sexuality and global justice, part Three will look at how to reconcile contemporary sexual ethics with Scripture and tradition, and part Four will provide a whole bunch of good readin’ for further study.

Christian sexual ethics are much on my mind, on the minds of many of my students and youth group kids, and this summer, very much on the public’s radar as well. Next week, we’ll mark the 40th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s famous Humanae Vitae, the encyclical that declared virtually all forms of contraception to be incompatible with Catholic teaching. In many ways, Humanae Vitae was the first blow struck in the reaction against the liberation movements of the 1960s, and it was the seed for much contemporary conservative thought about the meaning and purpose of our bodies and our lives. From a progressive standpoint, its fortieth anniversary is not cause for celebration. (But in all fairness, if you want to read a fine — but very, very wrong-headed — encomium to Humanae Vitae, visit First Things for this Mary Eberstadt piece.)

And of course, the Anglican Communion is on the verge of major schism this summer over, above all else, the issue of sexuality. A church that survived numerous revisions to the prayer book, a church that bravely embraced contraception way back in the 1930s, a church that largely held together when women began to be ordained in the 1970s, is now at last falling apart over the issue of homosexuality. Tied up in the near-certain schism is the basic disagreement among Christians about what constitutes “ethical sex” in the eyes of God. There seems little chance of a resolution that will both keep the church together and, at the same time, be congruent with how two very different groups of Anglicans see the role of sexuality in our lives.

In any case, I’ve been thinking about (and studying about, and writing about) Christian sexual ethics for many years, since I first took a course on Patristic Theology at Berkeley in 1987. I became a Roman Catholic the following year, and then had a tortuous series of peregrinations that led me to — and through — the Assemblies of God, the Mennonites, and the Episcopalians. (I’m just your average, run of the mill “charismatic Anabaptist Roman Anglican”.) Though I continue to worship at a variety of Christian churches today, I am now involved in the work of the Kabbalah Centre. And of course, I have a Ph.D. in Christian history, though that doctorate focused more on the ethics of war than on the ethics of sex.

I also come to the discussion as a heterosexual man in his forties, four times married, thrice divorced. I come as a college gender studies professor who works closely with Christian and non-Christian students alike, many of whom, I am happy to say, have chosen to see me as their mentor. I come to the discussion as a former Episcopal youth leader, who spent seven years teaching workshops on “Sex, All Saints Style” to high schoolers at the largest Anglican parish west of the Mississippi. So I bring a lot of experience, passion, and yes, baggage, to this subject.

From a theological perspective, though I’ve never been a Methodist, I come to the discussion with a healthy reverence for what’s often known as the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral”: Reason, Experience, Scripture, Tradition. The “Quad” suggests that any understanding of God’s call on our lives needs to rest on those four things. Many Christians from across the theological spectrum have embraced the Quad as a sound method for discerning right thought, right speech, and right action.

So after all that build-up, what am I ready to say about Christianity and sex?

If there’s one core principle I derive from using the “Quad”, it’s this: in the end, God cares more about the content of our sexuality than he does about its form. Traditional Christian sexual ethics are often discussed in the context of what Christians can and can’t do. Modern conservatives will often say things like “the only form of genital contact sanctioned by God is that which happens in a marriage between one husband and one wife.” The implication is clear: if you get the “form” (heterosexual marriage) right, then the sex that follows is licit. If you haven’t got the form right, then sorry, Mabel, sorry, Ernest, you’ve “fallen short of the mark.”

But “form-based” sexual ethics clearly have their problems. For example, it ignores entirely the great likelihood that coercion, disrespect, and force can take place within marriage. The Catholic church did not start condemning marital rape — or even acknowledging that such a concept was possible — until the second half of the twentieth century. Is a situation in which a husband demands sex from his wife against her will somehow more congruent with the spirit of Christ than a situation in which two unmarried people make love with mutual enthusiasm? If you’re a stickler for “form-based ethics”, you bet. For the most traditional of theologians, marital rape is less of a serious sin than homosexuality or pre-marital sex, because form matters more than content. (And when was the last time you heard Focus on the Family put out a series of messages against intra-marital coercion?) Continue reading ‘“Do Me, Do Me Right”: part one (very long) of a four-part series on Christianity and sexual ethics’