More evangelical couples — once embarrassed and prudish about sex — are now leaving their Christian inhibitions at the bedroom door.
For this growing group of younger, more progressive Christians, guilt is out and pleasure is in.
“We discovered that God’s word is holy and hot & filled with invaluable wisdom for our sexual relationship,” says intimateissues.com, one of the most popular Christian Web sites. It is based on a 1999 book by the same name.
The Christian wife has come a long way, baby, as a variety of sex advice books with titles like “Intimacy Ignited,” “Gift-Wrapped by God” and “Satisfy My Thirsty Soul” are emphasizing the earthly as well as the heavenly side of love.
Pastors are sermonizing and sexologists are offering conferences to help couples overcome their guilt about a once-touchy subject. And, they offer new translations of scripture to give biblical clout to their message.
“People carry a lot of guilt from parents who said sex is bad,” said the Rev. Kerry Shook of the Woodlands Church outside Houston. “We help them to have a healthy sex life. One of the things we cover in scripture is how to meet each other’s needs in bed.”
I will consider posting comments on this article submitted first by email to Kendall’s E-mail: KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.
From JCB:
I have to admit to having mixed feelings about the “Christian sexual revolution” that seems to be taking place–at least when one reads articles like this. There is no doubt in my mind that much of what presents itself as a “traditional” Christian view of sex can lead to an inability to separate those things which are intrinsically immoral from those that are immoral only because they are done outside of marriage.
I am concerned that many people–Christian and secular–who are concerned about young people having sex seem to rely on a reasoning process that says “children are bad (for you) and therefore sex is bad (for you)” which then get’s translated “Children are bad” and therefore “sex is bad if it results in children, otherwise it’s a guilty pleasure.” I have to wonder how much of this has reinforced the increasingly prevalent cultural assumption against children as a good.
What is never quite (or at least rarely) articulated in Christian circles is what is good about sex, and what God’s plan is for our sexuality. As a result our culture deals with sexuality like a rebellious puritan adolescent: we gorge ourselves on sex as a forbidden fruit and the language that is considered “sexy” exemplifies this i.e., bad boy, bad girl, naughty etc… And as this gorging goes on we more and more take on the character of addicts as we desire increasingly diverse and perverse means to reach the same level of sexual fulfillment: hence the amount of sexual “experimentation” in our culture.
The primary question I have is to what extent these movements/ministries (and which ones) are actually helping Christians articulate a positive understanding of sex and sexuality, and how much they may be playing into the sort of sick hyper-sexuality of our culture. I agree with these folks when they say that sex is important within a marriage, but what happens if the sex isn’t good, or there is some health problem? Are we helping to lift sexual fulfillment up as a sort of idol?
What is clear, I believe, is that this is a topic that has to be explored because it is intimately tied to the sexuality debate that is rocking the Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion. Perhaps if we can rediscover a positive Christian sexual ethic we will have more success in explaining why it is that certain lifestyles and behaviors can’t be affirmed.