Dance of Dichotomies

Remember those cartoons with the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other vying for supremacy?

That’s me.

“Single ministers in the church are expected to live a chaste life, holy in body and spirit, honoring the single life, and working for the good of all.”

I’ve publicly affirmed this statement before the church. My early theological training conditioned me to support it. My church expects me to abide by it if I serve in ministry.

But there’s another voice whispering in my ear.

Guess which voice is winning?

An escort with a Pentecostal upbringing said this was what she learned about sex growing up: “You’re not allowed to do it.” I essentially learned the same thing (i.e. “True Love Waits®”). I internalized this attitude. Religion was set against forbidden sexuality. My religious values incorporated the warnings and restrictions on sexual behavior I received. Sexual desire, understood to be dirty and impure, was experienced with guilt and shame. Beyond reaffirming traditional prohibitions, the church was silent about sex.

As an adolescent, I struggled with my sexual desires because they didn’t harmonize with my beliefs. I was expected to maintain sexual purity. As sexual exploration beckoned, I strove to live up to the stringent biblical doctrine I was taught. Bodily pleasures were opposed to the fruits of the Spirit. My purity card was a covenant that I was convinced I could not break. Lusting after a woman in my heart, which I believed was a sin, brought guilt. I suppressed my sexuality.

Until I couldn’t any longer.

“The moment I knew sin, I fucked.” And once I fucked, I couldn’t stop fucking.

I tried to stop. I intensified my religious practice, enrolled in divinity school and entered ministry. I strove to be “good” and maintain my religious identity. If anything, my transgressions became more egregious. I began to splinter into two compartmentalized selves: the religious self and the sexual self. A double life had been created. The thrill of sex, especially forbidden sex, was too much to resist.

I’d repent. A session with a call girl or a hookup with a classmate would induce guilt and shame. I’d vow never to do it again, beseeching mercy. I’d remain chaste for a (very) short period of time. Then I’d sin again and reenact the process. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The expectation to remain chaste still presses upon me, while my personal desire to have sex remains undiminished. The conflict caused by the collision of my sexual desires and the demands of my faith eludes any tidy resolution. I’m slowly coming to accept that my life is a dance of dichotomies. (I borrowed the term from a “courtesan” who spent Sunday mornings on her knees at Catholic mass after spending Saturday nights on her knees, well, you know.) I am both saint and sinner. Luther described the Christian as simul justus et peccator. Paradox defines me.

My religious self and my sexual self inhabit mutually exclusive spheres. Sex is divided from the soul. I separate my sexuality from my Christianity, compartmentalizing my experiences in order to live out both.

It’s not easy. The parishioners at my church see me as an ideal student, teacher and minister. The pressure to maintain this facade is enormous. Exposure of my sex life would result in my removal from ministry. I have to lie and cover up a great many things. It’s impossible to live a life of integrity without an integrated personality.

A woman preparing for ordination in the Unitarian Universalist church professes to have integrated her spiritual and sexual selves:

The way we as a culture understand the world separates the sacred–the religious, the pious, the God-fearing– from the profane–the sexual, the dirty, the visceral–and there is no contact between the two. Being both is supposed to be rife with pain and conflict.

There is no conflict between my calling and my coming. My religiosity and my ministry do not preclude me from fully experiencing my sexuality. I love God and I love fucking…. I’m interested in sex as a particular way of knowing; in fucking as both pleasurable experience and a way of deepening my connection to the world….

What I am saying is that there does not need to be any conflict between religion and sex.

Those conflicts are the product of someone else’s imagination and do not have to be your reality. There is no need to close yourself to one for the sake of the other.

You can love God and fucking.

There is an effort to construct a “sex positive” ethics that affirms sexuality and defines ethical behavior within a paradigm of consent. I’ve studied some progressive Christian perspectives on sexuality. Marvin Ellison, critiquing the Christian tradition dating to Augustine as “sex negative” and rules-based, maintains that a sex positive approach is essential when addressing sex in contemporary society. I’m not so sure this is viable. Anthony Grey comes closer to the truth when he writes, “I do not see how the traditional Christian theology of sex can be significantly changed without tearing up its Biblical and historical roots – and, if this happened, it would almost certainly wither away entirely….” Besides, even a liberal Christian sexual ethics couldn’t sanction all behaviors. I’m caught in a matrix of sin. Unlike this lusty Unitarian lady, religion and sex cannot seamlessly coexist for me. The imprint of the culture in which I was reared is too deeply ingrained in me. Perhaps my sexual adventurism is a sublimated rebellion against a conservative morality that I nevertheless cannot disavow.