After college and a year of volunteer service in New York City, I enrolled at a mainline Protestant divinity school with the intention of pursuing a divinity degree and ordination in my Lutheran denomination. I knew it would be very different than my experience at my small evangelical college. I intentionally chose the school in order to broaden my theological horizon. My conservative background did little to prepare me for what I encountered. The sexual ethics discussed at seminary were (to me) unabashedly liberal. Classmates mocked “Sunday school” prohibitions against pre-marital sex as unenlightened and judgmental. A student-led discussion group devoted itself to the topics of kink and sexual fantasy. A popular seminar examined queer theology. Traditional Christian teachings were dismissed as outdated or, even worse, bigoted. Arguments in favor of monogamy were dismissed as “heteronormative.” One ethicist I read defended the morality of casual sex, approvingly quoting psychologist Albert Ellis that “personal growth” is “abetted and enhanced by sexual adventuring.”
It was outside the classroom, however, where I discovered the sexual ethos of the school. At a party I attended during my first semester, condoms were available on the kitchen counter. I overheard a faculty member say that since seminarians will spend the rest of their lives in service to others, they should have some fun now. I discovered that hooking up was common among my peers. There was a good chance that you’d wake up next to a classmate over the weekend. (Unless you banged her in a cramped bathroom beforehand.) A classmate from my denomination, referring to our church’s statement that sexual intimacy was reserved for marriage, dismissed it as a pious fantasy from a less enlightened time. As long as you’re not caught fornicating, it shouldn’t impact your candidacy. “You can be smart or you can be celibate,” she quipped.
One classmate put it this way: as “holy” men and women preparing for ministry, some sexual indulgence is permissible because all the good we do outweighs it. That is, committing ourselves to service in the church excuses us from having to follow the rules, at least until ordination. I’ve probably internalized this attitude. There is little consideration of how spirituality informs our sex lives, no connection between the bedroom and the pulpit. I haven’t been able to build a bridge between my religious study and my sexual self.
Lutheran Guilt 