SEX - BURDEN OR JOY?
What makes good sex good? It sounds like a racy headline from a back number of Truth, but it was a serious question raised by Christian ethicist Dr Marvin Ellison.
“A major overhaul of the Christian teaching of sex is overdue,” the American academic told an audience at St Andrew’s when delivering the first of the 2011 Geering Lectures.
“If by good sex we mean sex that is pleasurable and powerful to the senses, that deepens our sense of well-being and profoundly connects us to others, then the Christian tradition will disappoint.
“That’s because the church has promulgated a highly restrictive and often punitive moral code. This warns incessantly about the dangers of illicit pleasures. It places severe limits on almost all sexual expression.
“If by good sex we also mean sex that is not only pleasurable but also ethically principled, then there will be even more disappointment. That’s because over the centuries, the church has never produced a reliable tradition of ethical wisdom about gender and sexual justice
“Christian theology has taught that the best sex is no sex. The second best situation is to have sex in marriage – but only for procreation.”
Dr Ellison is an ordained Presbyterian minister and professor of Christian ethics at Bangor Theological College in Maine. This is the state tucked in the top of the north east of the US against the border with Canada.
He was invited to Wellington to lead a series of discussions on the theme: Ethics for the sexually perplexed: A 21st Century Christian response. His Spirited Conversation topic at Thistle Inn was titled – Why do we have to keep talking about sex all the time?
It was a question he sought to answer by teasing apart the way Christianity has tried to handle sex across the ages, leading to the present “moral hierarchy of the religious right.”
Sexual mores, the conventional patterns of the day, are confused with genuine morals or critically reflective ethical insight, he said. Married evangelists see themselves as higher than the rest of society and feel they can pronounce on other people’s behaviour.
For those seeking guidance from the Bible there’s little that’s positive. British author and former nun Karen Armstrong had written that Christianity has a more negative view of heterosexual love than almost any other major faith.
Much blame can be laid with Paul the Apostle. His comments included the famous line in Corinthians (7:8-9):
‘Now I say to the unmarried persons and the widows, it is well for them that they remain even as I am. But if they do not have self-control, let them marry, for it is better to marry than to be inflamed (with passion).’
“Hardly a ringing endorsement for marriage,” Dr Ellison noted wryly.
This led to sex being treated with suspicion and an excess of significance. St Augustine didn’t help the cause of sex as joyful and a gift to be celebrated.
Despite a loose love life as a young man (he had a lover for 13 years) the fifth century philosopher had a major impact on Christian theology, particularly by developing the idea of original sin.
“Augustine agreed with Paul that marriage was good, though always tainted by sin,” Dr Ellison said.
“Augustine encourages the Christian husband and wife, once their youthful passions have dissipated, to cease their sexual activity and live together as Christian brother and sister in a properly chaste, that is celibate, marriage.
The Protestant Reformation did not reverse the Christian tradition’s longstanding sex-negativity, nor challenge the second difficulty - that Christian sex has also been patriarchal sex.
“Sex is authorized only within a power structure of gendered inequality in which the husband is in control and the wife submits,” he said.
“Within the marital zone, husband and wife were regarded as spiritual equals. Accordingly Protestantism has celebrated a companionate model of marriage in which the unitive or bonding purpose of marital sex is affirmed in addition to its procreative purpose.
“However, spiritual equality did not translate into social equality between men and women.”
In 1991 Dr Ellison helped prepare a Presbyterian study document called Keeping Body and Soul Together: Sexuality, Spirituality, and Social Justice.
This took a pro-sex, feminist, and gay-affirming stance, offering a radically different ethical framework about sex and sexuality. It was rejected – 640 votes to 37, but was published and sold 40,000 copies.
“It provided an alternative perspective by mapping out a progressive Christian ethic of sexuality grounded in the central affirmation that a gracious God delights in our sexuality and calls us to wholeness in community,” he said.
“The report asserts that the fundamental ethical division in the church has never been between men and women or between heterosexual and homosexual persons.
“Rather, the great divide is between justice and injustice. A reformed Christian ethic of sexuality will not condemn, out of hand, any sexual relations in which there are genuine equality and respect.
“What is ruled out, from the start, are relations in which persons are abused, exploited, and violated.” Duncan Graham
(Dr Ellison’s commentaries will be published by St Andrew’s Trust for the Study of Religion and Society.)
(Panel)
BOOKS BY MARVIN ELLISON
Sexuality and the Sacred: Sources for Theological Reflection, second edition, edited with Kelly Brown Douglas (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010)
Heterosexism in Contemporary World Religion: Problem and Prospect, edited with Judith Plaskow (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 2007)
Same-Sex Marriage? A Christian Ethical Analysis (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 2004).
Body and Soul: Rethinking Sexuality as Justice-Love, edited with Sylvia Thorson-Smith (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 2003)
Erotic Justice: A Liberating Ethic of Sexuality (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996)
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