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.
Lutheran Guilt 