Yet more thoughts on the relationship between sex and secularism….

“I used to be a born-again Christian.”

“You were?”

“But I gave that up a long time ago.”

“What happened?”

“I wanted to have sex.”

– A 46-year old woman on her loss of faith

In his essay on Georges Bataille, Michel Foucault associates our cultural obsession with sex with the “death of God” and the decline of traditional religious belief. Personal liberation is sought not through participation in religious institutions but through sexual experience. In his book Faith No More: Why People Reject Religion, Phil Zuckerman wrote a chapter entitled “Sex and Secularity.” Based on numerous interviews he conducted, Zuckerman determined that sex (or rather the traditional religious strictures surrounding sex) makes “apostates” out of a lot of former believers. The “ultimate spiritual battle,” as one woman described it, between faith and sexual desire often results in the loss of the former.

“I couldn’t be a good Christian and have sex. And I guess my hormones took over and that became more important.”

– A twentysomething woman, formerly Pentecostal

The internal struggle between religious ideals and sexual urges summons contradictory impulses. “Oh, I’m not supposed to be doing this but I want to do this,” a woman remembers thinking in high school. Sexual desire itself was seemingly condemned. Many were burdened by the guilt that accompanied sexual exploration. A woman who recalls wearing a “love waits” ring in high school said, “Oral sex was all over tenth grade and — we knew we weren’t having sex — so technically we weren’t doing anything wrong that way. But we would feel guilty and cry about it…and just feel really bad.” Zuckerman concludes that suppressing one’s sex drive in accordance with traditional religious teachings can be emotionally damaging and result in a loss of faith.

“That was the first time I ever went down on a guy. And I remember being SO guilty about it…it was, like, such a deep guilt — like I had let down my future husband, I had let down God….I would just cry and cry and cry.”

– A 20-year old female college student, a former nondenominational Christian

Dr. Laura Schlesinger succinctly summarized the sexual ethics of most religions: “Holy sex is between a husband and a wife…. Unholy sex is everything else.” When the desire for greater sexual expression conflicts with this narrow definition of what’s permissible, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that many reject the worldview that produced it. Such a restrictive view of sex is, in fact, unnatural. “If there is any one form of human interaction that is ‘natural,’ surely it is sex,” Zuckerman writes. “We are neurologically wired for it, emotionally dependent on it, and physiologically designed for it.” There is evidence that secularism leads to better sex. According to multiple studies, avowedly secular people report experiencing less guilt and fear surrounding sex, as well as engaging in more sex with more sexual partners in a wider range of sexual practices, including oral and anal sex.

Mark Regnarus, a sociology professor at the University of Texas, has penned an op-ed piece in The Washington Post with a blunt thesis: “It’s not science that’s secularizing Americans — it’s sex.” The sexual revolution has engulfed the church. Changing mating patterns (which include fewer and later marriages) have had an impact, all of which are due to the ready availability of sex. “Sex has become cheap — that is, not hard to get — because it’s much less risky and consequential in the era of birth control.” For evangelicals, it has become harder to recruit new members from the unchurched because traditional sexual ethics “are making less and less sense.”

As someone who thinks a lot about religion and sex, and has uneasily accommodated them through dual identities, the article piqued my interest. Millennials have abandoned the church en masse, largely due to the incompatibility between traditional sexual ethics and their own sexual behavior. Forced to choose between the two, they unsurprisingly choose sex. Sex is understood solely in the terminology of medical science and psychology, outside (in Peter Berger’s words) the “sacred canopy.” Religion seemingly has nothing to say to their sexual experience.

As one in ministry in the church, I am bound to publicly uphold my church’s teachings on sexuality, which largely accord with the traditional ethic. My intense erotic desire has made me incapable of living out that ethic. The dissonance between my putative beliefs and my behavior, that “dance of dichotomies,” fuels much of the drama of my life.

Adapting sexual ethics to sexual reality appears, at first glance, to be a remedy. A number of theologians and ethicists have made that their project (culminating in some queer theologians finding spiritual value in anonymous gay sex). Difficulties arise, though. In Protestantism, the Bible has been the primary source of reflection for ethical deliberation. It takes some creative exegesis to explain away certain texts that seem to have clear implications for sexual ethics. The hermeneutical challenge is greater then first imagined. Historical-critical contextualization can only go so far. An integral progressive sexual ethics can be developed without much of a biblical foundation, but it then ceases to be distinctively Christian. It’s also hard to believe that theologically conservative churches will suddenly accede to this effort. (Interestingly, those churches in liberal mainline Protestantism that have accommodated themselves to the sexual zeitgeist are in steeper decline than their more conservative counterparts.) Traditional sexual ethics will remain within Christianity in some form or another.

Perhaps there’s something more fundamental going on. Is the nature of sexual desire so antithetical to normative religious practice that it’s impossible to reconcile one to the other? Most religions have adopted an ascetical approach to some degree when it comes to governing sexual behavior. Sex is seen to be potentially dangerous if not hostile to religious observance. Placing limitations on sex (whether it be monogamy, celibacy, heterosexual exclusivity) is considered vital for religious practice and spiritual development. But sexual desire is not so easily tamed, as evidenced by how frequently those limitations are transgressed. Even the threat of divine wrath cannot deter it. The church fathers condemned sexual passion because of its inherent unruliness. According to Augustine, its insidiousness comes from its irrationality, its inability to be controlled by the will.

It was Freud who famously observed that the libido is the primal energy that animates human life. It cannot be repressed. We are swayed by passion, propelled by a primitive, irrational force. Raw sexual desire arises out of the chthonic depths, evading mastery and mocking our pretensions to civilized conduct. Think of orgasm. During orgasm, one completely surrenders to passion and loses control, possessed by the sexual spasm. Eros’ dark power subverts our ideals, even our spiritual aspirations, drawing us into its vortex.

Eros and agape do not easily coexist. In Agape and Eros, Anders Nygren calls the latter the “most dangerous rival” to Christian faith. Eros promises a form of salvation that doesn’t rely on divine initiative. It seduces the soul, “terrible as an enchanter,” according to Plato. Eros is compared with raging flood waters that sweep away everything in its path. “Eros and Agape belong originally to two entirely separate spiritual worlds,” Nygren concluded. Karl Barth agreed, depicting eros as a ravenous desire at odds with Christian charity.

I’ve managed to maintain my religious identity only by compartmentalizing my life. Others have succumbed to sex, leaving the pews conspicuously empty.

At my evangelical college I recall hearing rumors about girls who were technically virgins but had not refrained from entertaining other orifices. The letter of the law and not its spirit, I suppose.