Sojourners on sex

by Bromleigh McCleneghan

Sojourners promised me that if I renewed my subscription, they'd send an issue with the headline “6 Rules* for Shameless Sex.” What can I say? Sex sells.

Keith Graber Miller’s article (free registration required) tries to reclaim the power and joy of human sexuality while avoiding a “naiveté or excessive optimism about our sexual selves” that he sees in the reclamation of sex as a gift of God. He calls for “a counter-cultural way of living, not like the sexually repressive way of previous decades but one with an open, positive view toward sexuality—and a clear witness against the abuses of this remarkable gift of God.”

His guidelines have low and high points. I’m always disappointed to read tired examples, such as Graber Miller's use of this line from Vanilla Sky: “Don’t you know that when you sleep with someone, your body makes a promise whether you do or not?” I first encountered this in Lauren Winner’s Real Sex a few years back and it annoyed me then, too.

Graber Miller tells us that marital sex is good, that Jesus had a body and that “Jesus knew what it was like. . .to be subject to the same sexual desires that we are, and he empathizes with those desires.” I would not want to be the youth group leader trying to share that script with a room full of teenagers. He also claims that hooking up among college students is not the exercise of “sexual freedom” it purports to be. He goes on to criticize the term "safe sex," noting that contraception cannot protect against betrayal, jealousy, grief. Perhaps he thinks these are even more serious hurts than STDs—a case I’d like to see anyone make to one of the 20 percent of young adults infected with herpes (a lifetime companion).

In any case, abstinence won't protect against such emotions, either: they are an inevitable part of becoming an adult and having any sort of relationships, sexual or otherwise. Falling in love, making deep friendships and sharing one’s most intimate self is risky business. The argument for safer sex practices isn’t that they make sex risk-free; it’s that our hearts and souls can often be healed in ways our immune systems can’t. Safer sex practices are about managing risk. Being in relationship always involves risk; it takes faith.

Graber Miller does make some constructive additions to Christian conversation on sexuality. He notes that masturbation is “one of the most common sexual experiences” and that “for many of the young people I come across in various religious settings, the church’s attitude of strict condemnation does more to alienate them from the church’s teaching than it does to deter them from self-gratification.” Other moments stopped me in my tracks: I had no idea that Renaissance painters depicted the infant Jesus’ genitalia to represent his humanity and the true difficulty of a commitment to celibacy. I read in horrified wonder that the U.S. now has more sex shops than McDonald’s restaurants.

The most promising points for furthering discussion come in Graber Miller’s twin conclusions. First, the church has spent 30 years yelling about homosexuality without understanding human sexuality in its fullness or broader context. Second, “we need to recognize that what we really yearn for in life is intimacy rather than the stimulation of genital nerve endings.”

This turn to intimacy is critical: how will we have faithful, engaged, intimate relationships with friends, lovers, family members? How will we negotiate being together, sharing our lives, given the complexities of our hearts and bodies? These are the questions that will lead us forward, and Graber Miller is wise to point us in this direction.

Bromleigh McCleneghan is associate pastor and director of Christian education at Baker Memorial United Methodist Church in St. Charles, Illinois.