The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) recently voted to allow gays in "life-long, monogamous" relationships to serve as clergy and professional lay leaders in the church. Although this is good news, it still imposes a “work” on clergy, and by implication on all church members, to be monogamous or in a committed relationship. The only other choice is to be not sexually active or chaste. As John Shuck writes in his blog “Shuck and Jive”
(http://www.shuckandjive.org/2009/08/sexual-ethics-for-rest-of-us.html):
“The inherited (and largely unexamined) ethic (in the church) is that all sexual activity outside of marriage is wrong and sinful. This is hardly an ethic. It is simply a rule. It says nothing of the quality of sexual activity within marriage including issues of power and consent, and it says nothing to the millions of people who are not married but (believe it or not) have sex. There is no guidance for them from the church except be celibate or be silent. The church can and should do better.”
He goes on:
“We need to have discussions about what is good, ethical, just, and life-affirming. As Rev. (Debra) Haffner (director of the Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing [http://www.religiousinstitute.org/]), points out…:
“The Religious Institute has long called for a new sexual ethic to replace the traditional "celibacy until marriage, chastity after." This new ethic is free of double standards based on sexual orientation, sex, gender or marital status. It calls for sexual relationships to be consensual, non-exploitative, honest, pleasurable and protected, whether inside or outside of a covenanted relationship. It insists that intimate relationships be grounded in communication and shared values. And it applies to all adults -- even those of us who are called to ministry.”
So the battle for enlightened sexual ethics and responsible sexual freedom is far from over. I pray that the ELCA will hear the call for these next steps and help us on the road to good sex. Will you join me in my prayers?
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My partner took this at San Simeon on the California coast during a vacation in October 2005
This blog will reflect my interests in the three areas that traditionally are not discussed in polite society: religion, politics, and sex. In religion, I will approach most topics from the point of view of non-realism. My politics are leftist, and my comments will reflect that stance. My comments about sex will reflect my efforts as I became an out gay man. Overall, my blog will be about areas in my life that I’m struggling to make sense of.
A picture of me
My partner took this at San Simeon on the California coast during a vacation in October 2005
About Me
- Pete M
- I am a 77-year old, white, gay man. The main influences that have shaped my life are my physical impairment (I have cerebral palsy on my left side with a hand, arm, foot, and leg that are shorter, smaller, and weaker than those on the right), my homosexuality (I’ve had sexual feelings for men and boys since I was 12), science (I have a Ph.D. in biochemistry and have used my background in various jobs), and religion (I’ve been an active church goer most of my life). So, this a précis of the topics I plan to discuss in my blog. I hope you will read it and respond.
7 comments:
Sex expresses many things, often not thought of as sexual, such as dependency, anger,insecurity, power, and so on. Some are positive,some not. The quality of sex between 2 committed people is not the same as the quality or meaning of sex between casual consenting sexual partners. Many people require both types of sex, and in this way express symbolically feelings or needs that would have no other acceptable outlet. The criteria for acceptability should not be comittment but rather a positive effect on both consenting persons. However, this will be a hard sell to the sin obsessed religious communiy and so probably the hypocrisy will continue. By the way, by denying the symbolic expression of primitive impulses sexually it forces some individuals to act out in non-sexual ways in real life and in this way may truly hurt themselves and others.
Franklyn,
You are, of course, right, but the church has always been dedicated to trying to control and eradicate the primitive sexual impulses you mention. Such attempts are obviously doomed to failure, and the response to failure is either to keep trying or to ignore sex as much as possible. How much better it would be if the church could offer helpful, nonjudgmental guidance to people who find in sex various ways to deal with their issues of “dependency, anger, insecurity, and power.” Expressing symbolically the feelings aroused by such issues in sex is much better than suppressing such feelings and having them expressed in hurtful ways.
Pete
I'm struck by the extent to which the position of most relatively liberal writing on Christian sexual ethics over the last thirty years still starts with the notion that sexual activity requires some "higher" justification. Where once sex was justified by procreation, now it's justified as a means to relationship. Which of course, frequently it is, sometimes joyously, blessedly. But it's also sheer celebration; self-discovery; the working out of intrapsychic issues; sheer fact of our animal nature (my God, you mean we're actually creatures, just like everything else that swaps its DNA??)--any or all of these, and more. The notion that a real ethics of sex doesn't have to face up to that is utterly specious.
Our animal nature: yes, this is what Christians forever have been trying to eliminate. It’s what St. Paul calls our sinful flesh. He urges us always to live “in the Spirit.” This is where the plague of the spiritual comes from, or, as W.S. Gilbert has it in “Patience” caricaturing Oscar Wilde, our Vegetable Love. Even though we Christians say we trust that there will be the Resurrection of the body, we have a very uneasy relationship with our fleshy bodies and would rather that our souls ascend to heaven, unencumbered by anything bodily. Of course, the emphasis on heaven says that this world is bad, where our bodies struggle. We need to recover the sheer exuberance of being alive in this great world – in our bodies with their appetites for food, drink, and sex. We must come to the realization that these appetites are the very meaning of being alive as animals, and we need to be pleased to be animals. To be not only animals, but conscious, thinking animals is even more wonderful. We humans have added and wonderful benefits that our nonhuman cousins don’t have, at least to the extent that we do. We need to confront the baleful legacy of St. Paul consciously, and leave his anti-flesh stance behind. This will be a monumental undertaking.
Tillich talks about Spirit emerging as the universe comes to consciousness. When you write, "To be not only animals, but conscious, thinking animals is even more wonderful", that seems to get at the same issue, and it suggests to me a way forward in rethinking Christian sexual ethics: what would it mean to understand the human experience of sex not as something that transcends our animal nature, but that adds to it, raises it to consciousness and so allows us to lay it with full awareness before the Divine?
Rarely a cheerleader for St. Paul, I'm still forced to admit that his insights were sometimes profound. And in any case, we're stuck listening to him week after week in church, so if it comes to that, better to coopt him. I would like to believe that his flesh/spirit dichotomy can be understood not as a pitting of body against impassive mind, but as a distinction between lower self and higher self, or between self turned away from
God and self turned toward God. If so, the body (including the erotic body) can be the vehicle of spirit; and some very disembodied behaviours (like creating theological rationalizations for homophobia) could count as what he refers to as flesh.
Tillich talks about Spirit emerging as the universe comes to consciousness. When you write, "To be not only animals, but conscious, thinking animals is even more wonderful", that seems to get at the same issue, and it suggests to me a way forward in rethinking Christian sexual ethics: what would it mean to understand the human experience of sex not as something that transcends our animal nature, but that adds to it, raises it to consciousness and so allows us to lay it with full awareness before the Divine?
Rarely a cheerleader for St. Paul, I'm still forced to admit that his insights were sometimes profound. And in any case, we're stuck listening to him week after week in church, so if it comes to that, better to coopt him. I would like to believe that his flesh/spirit dichotomy can be understood not as a pitting of body against impassive mind, but as a distinction between lower self and higher self, or between self turned away from
God and self turned toward God. If so, the body (including the erotic body) can be the vehicle of spirit; and some very disembodied behaviours (like creating theological rationalizations for homophobia) could count as what he refers to as flesh.
David,
Thanks for your comment. I think you’re right when you suggest that Paul uses the spirit/flesh dichotomy as a metaphor for our turning toward God through the prompting of the Spirit or our turning away from God to follow our own way that is in opposition to God. Unfortunately, the church has interpreted most sex as being in opposition to God. Too bad, because many have found themselves and, in the process, God through sex. The problem is the church has no sex ethic; it has, as John Shuck has written, only a rule. This leaves many (most?) outside the church’s good graces. If the church is interested in ministering to people, it has to begin to develop an actual sex ethic, not just an automatic “No.”
Pete
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