It's Time To Embrace a Sex-Positive Christianity
Why, after ten years of writing and thinking about religion and sexuality, I embraced sex-positivity.
If you want to see people get uncomfortable really quickly, bring up religion and sexuality. I’ve devoted the last decade of my life to writing, researching, and teachings about both Christianity and queer sexuality and gender identity, and since then my life has been a non-stop series of awkward and uncomfortable encounters, broken up by stories of gratitude and liberation for those who have come to integrate and reconcile their religious path and their sexual expression.
On one hand, I receive the ire of conservative religious folks who claim I am just manipulating religion to suit my sexual desires. This has always been the conservative Christian message to LGBTQ+ Christians: “You’re just trying to have both- but you must choose. Either follow Christ an repress your sex and sexuality or embrace your sex and sexuality and reject Christ.” Anyone who doesn’t fit into their patriarchal, archaic, and puritanistic worldview- even though there has always been much debate about what sort of sexual expression was proper within Christianity- you cannot be a faithful Christian. Many Christian leaders take this so far that they will relentlessly pry into the sex lives of their congregants to determine whether they are worthy of fellowship. Just a few years ago, I had a shockingly unconformable text exchange with a prominent anti-LGBTQ+ Christian televangelist who was seeking to “convict me” of my sin by asking repeated questions about whether I was sexually active with my boyfriend at the time. I had to repeatedly tell him that this line of questioning was inappropriate and none of his business and should have no bearing on whether or not I believed in and followed Christ.
On the other hand, I often hear from LGBTQ+ people who are triggered by me, an openly gay Christian minister, who embraces sex positivity and is not afraid to explore and express my own sexuality. From their perspective, there must be something wrong with who I am and what I am doing because the only religion they have experienced is rooted in shame and fear in relation to sex. I remember an awkward conversation I had when I actively pastoring a church- an LGBTQ+ member of my community asked to meet me for coffee. When I sat down, he looked at me sternly and said, “I know you’re on Grindr. My Pastor shouldn’t be on Grindr. I expect my Pastor to be further along than me with this stuff.” This individual was reacting out of a sense of shame and an adherence to a set of religious values that neither I nor our church ascribed to. I was a single, gay man, who also happened to be a Pastor, and who believed sex was a gift, something to be explored and expressed with joy. But for this individual, it was hard to wrap their mind around an openly gay minister with this new sex positive perspective until they confronted their own shame related to sex and their queer sexuality.
No matter from what perspective you look at it, sex and religion are incredibly sticky and uncomfortable topics to broach for almost everyone. But if I’ve learned anything over the past decade of doing this work, it’s that there perhaps has never been a more vital moment to articulate a sex-positive spirituality. We’re at a cultural tipping point, a moment where the religious right is seeking to double down on their puritanistic values related to sex and sexuality, enforcing them on our country with renewed zeal. Unfortunately, progressive people of faith have generally done a pretty bad job marketing our much more robust, nuanced, and wholistic version of faith that embraces sex and sexuality as fundamentally good, and thus, only the rigid, conservative narrative has been heard by the vast majority of people in our country. So today I want to add my brief contribution to the debate, articulating in one thousand words, the sex-positive spirituality I’ve come to embrace and promote after a decade of research, study, and personal exploration.
To begin with, I define a sex positive spirituality as a perspective that views human sexuality as fundamentally good and natural, a gift from the Divine for our pleasure, connection, and procreation, and thus should be expressed freely so long as it is done consensually, authentically, between adults. The “spirituality” part comes in because I believe that sexual expression is wholistic- that sex is a channel through which we can experience joy, explore subconscious and repressed parts of ourselves, and experience the Divine through sexual interaction with other humans. I also believe that sexual expression should be done in a way that honors commitments we’ve made- for instance, if we’ve committed to a monogamous marriage, then sex outside of that partnership is wrong unless discussed and consented to by all parties in the marriage- and should be refined through self-control- meaning that every sexual desire and urge does not and should not be acted upon, and that we should develop our own paradigm for healthy sexual expression based on our own needs, desires, wounds, and commitments.
Now the natural question many folks would ask me next, as a Christian theologian, is how that squares with my Christian faith. Well for me, the answer is incredibly simple: there is nowhere in the Bible where sex is defined as an act only for a heterosexual marriage relationship. What is clearly condemned, time and time again, is breaking of commitments to another and sexual exploitation and excess. Really. There’s not a verse that clearly says, “sex outside of marriage is sinful” or that “intimate relationships must only be between one man and one woman.” What that Bible is clear about is the singular principle that should guide everything we do: love. Jesus said that the entire Bible could be summed up in the statement “love God and love your neighbor as yourself.” Everything else is up for debate. So, in every interaction we have, we must ask, “is this an expression of love (which I defined as “care for the good of”) my “neighbor” and myself?” If anything is not- meaning its harming or dehumanizing myself or my partner- then we should refrain from doing it. Anything that is furthering “the good” of myself or my partners is to be encouraged.
Now, admittedly, this perspective is new. Christianity has a long history of demonizing sex and sexuality, and there are millions of books and articles and decrees from denominations that articulate the “traditional” Christian sexual ethic. But I do not believe that the Spirit of God stopped speaking 2,000 years ago, and I believe that Christianity has gotten many big things wrong throughout the ages. When we have new sources of truth- science, reason, psychology, etc.- we should embrace them and adapt our theology and spiritual practice to align with them. And from everything I have read about human sexuality, the consensus among experts seems to be that sexuality and sexual expression is good, natural, and ever evolving, and that overall, there are many benefits to regular sexual exploration and expression both within committed relationships and outside of them.
In fact, the central event of Christian history is the incarnation- God becoming a human being in the person of Jesus- which has long been understood by Christians as a fundamental validation of the human body. Our bodies are good, or even divine. Our bodily functions and desires are good, so good, in fact, that even God experienced them in the person of Jesus. While we have no record of Jesus having sex or engaging his sexuality, there is certainly no reason why he couldn’t have. Every aspect of Christ’s human body became divinized in the incarnation, including his sexual organs and their natural drives and desires. If Jesus ever did explore his sexuality, it would have been just as holy and good as when any of us explore our own. Unfortunately, no one followed Jesus around keeping a record of his day-to-day life (despite the popular misconception otherwise) and thus, Jesus’ relationship to his own sex and sexuality will forever remain a mystery.
All of this is simply to say that from a Christian perspective, there is no reason to shame or repress one’s sexuality, sexual desire, or sexual expression. In the mythology of our tradition, sex pre-dates the “fall” of humanity in the Book of Genesis and thus is something that God declared to be “very good”. Instead, we should embrace our sexuality as a gift from God, recognizing the beauty and complexity of sexuality and sex, and be open to celebrating and exploring our sexuality in authentic, healthy, consensual ways. At the same time, because we know that sexuality is unique to each individual, we should respect one another’s sexual choices- if someone desires only to explore their sexuality in a monogamous, committed relationship, we should validate that. If someone explores their sexuality through multiple sexual partners without seeking commitment, we should validate that as well. I thank God that we live in a day where so many resources exist to ensure our sexual health, regardless of how we choose to express it, from condoms to birth control to Prep. The only guard rail I believe we should all keep in mind is best summed up by the Apostle Paul when he wrote:
“I have the right to do anything” you say- but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”- but I will not be mastered by anything.” (1 Cor. 6:12)
We should always ask if what we are doing is “beneficial”- for our good and the good of our partners- and if everything is done out of freedom rather than impulse. (Which is what Paul means by being “mastered” by something) If our sexual expression is both beneficial and done out of freedom rather impulse or coercion, I believe it is good.
One final word- remember that all of our sexualities will take time to understand. You will make mistakes and you will change your mind about what you desire and like- that’s perfectly natural and okay. Our sexual desire is ever evolving and will change throughout our lives, which is why it’s important to have grace for ourselves and feel freedom to reassess our desires and boundaries often. What’s most important is that we keep love at the center- love for ourselves, love for our partners, and gratitude to God for endowing us with this tremendously beautiful, powerful, and profound gift of sexuality.