Making Her Reaquaintance

My first visit out West since the pandemic struck provided me the opportunity to visit Stephanie for the first time in 2 1/2 years. She’s a favorite of mine. Attired in a short burgundy robe, she ushered me into her incall apartment and out of the winter chill. She offered me a glass of ice water in the kitchen, and, as we caught up for a few minutes, I stealthily glanced at her shapely ass. Then she invited me to the bedroom.

As seductive music played on a Bluetooth speaker, the first thing I noticed hanging on the wall in the darkened bedroom was a print of John Collier’s Lilith. Steph had become fascinated by the ancient Jewish myth. The demonization of Lilith, she said, encapsulated religion’s subjection of female sexuality. As she removed her robe to reveal a lacy babydoll nightgown, she said she had just finished reading Richelle Mead’s series about a succubus. (She’s partial to stories with supernatural themes that include lots of sex.) She confessed that the irresistibility of the succubus had parallels with her personal life. (Male friends of her boyfriends were particularly susceptible.)

By now her body was pressed against mine at the foot of the bed. My erection could be felt through my pants. She pulled off my sweater, unfastened my belt, and undid my pants. My hands slid underneath her babydoll and discovered that she wasn’t wearing panties. My hand brushed against her pussy; she let out a soft low moan. She pulled off her nightie. My boxer briefs came off. We kissed and embraced on the bed, my hands caressing her breasts. She poured some oil on my cock and gently stroked it. Her mouth found its way to my cock, her tongue teasing the head before she gently nibbled on my balls. She retrieved a condom, placed it on her lips, and rolled it over my cock taking me into her mouth. I caressed her light brown hair as her hazel eyes looked up at me with her mouth wrapped around my cock. Then she moved her body on top of mine. She cooed as I licked and sucked on her nipples. Straddling me, she slowly inserted my cock inside her wetness and mounted me. As I felt her muscles tighten tighten around me, she started by slowly moving up and down on my cock. She leaned forward and whispered in my ear to fuck her hard. Then she accelerated her rhythm. She urged me to thrust deeper. My hands gripped her hips as I thrust back into her. The sight of her bouncing on top of me was exquisite. My hands moved up her waist before they settled on her tits.

“I want you to come in me,” she squealed.

I erupted inside the condom.

When Steph returned to the bed from the bathroom with a warm, wet washcloth to clean me up, she returned to her complaint as to how religion stifles sexual expression. Open relationships, such as the ones she engages in, are condemned by nearly all religious authorities. (She noted some of these same authorities have mistresses or see escorts.) Virtue, she implied, is not undermined by consensual sexual conduct. Were I in “church mode,” I’d answer with certain prescribed arguments. But lying naked in bed with a woman just after sex makes me disinclined to respond. My arousal quickly returned.

“Look who’s waking up,” she said with an impish smile at the sight of my burgeoning erection. She ran her fingers up and down my aroused member and softly stroked it. I reached down and fingered her pussy. She moaned that she wanted me to fuck her again. She slipped a condom on me and got on all fours. She looked back at me as I entered her. I started slowly, then after a few thrusts, she told me to go harder and faster. I began pumping harder, her firm heart-shaped ass bouncing off my pelvis. I came with a shudder.

We resumed our meandering conversation. A fellow provider had encouraged her to use social media to attract clients, but Steph was disinclined to do so. She again teasingly implored me to read the succubus stories or something by Laurell K. Hamilton. (Despite the appeal of the sexual content, I demurred.) The night grew late. It was finally time to depart. I dressed, and she accompanied me to the living room. We kissed each other goodbye. Then it was back into the cold winter night.

The Duality

Over the past few months, I’ve been having phone sex with a clinical psychologist. Seriously. “Dr. Madison” says it gives her an opportunity to unleash her deviant side. She’s elicited from me some of my darkest secrets. She’s seen though the morally upright façade I present to my colleagues. Most recently I confessed in detail my most recent encounter with an escort.

During our calls, Dr. Madison has encountered the duality between my religiosity and my sexuality and the inner conflict it produces. When she inquired as to how I reconcile my visits to call girls with my religious commitments, I didn’t have a ready answer.

She’s of the opinion that celibacy, except for a few notable souls, is unrealistic. (Isaac Newton supposedly confessed on his deathbed that he had never had sex.) Despite our elevated view of ourselves, Homo sapiens are ultimately primates designed to reproduce. Sex is our destiny. “Philip, you can’t deny biology,” she told me. “Do you find sex with a woman pleasurable?” Obviously, I replied. Condoning my hiring of prostitutes as an acceptable outlet for my arousal, she finds it implausible that having experienced the pleasures of sex I’ll be able to abstain from it. She also finds my intertwining of sex and religion fascinating, particularly my sexual fantasies about nuns. It’s as if I’ve merged the two crucial facets of my life, she said.

She read a quote from Foucault in which he posited that in sex there is truth (in coitus veritas). I had confessed my spiritual aspirations: “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mt 26:41). She suggested that in my case it was the opposite: the flesh is willing, but the spirit is weak. Despite my protestations to the contrary, I prioritize my sexual arousal.

To put a theological gloss on it, I practice a sexual antinomianism. The strictures on sexual behavior, as evidenced by my behavior, don’t apply to me. At some level I’ve convinced myself that the sacrifices I’ve made in divinity school and parish ministry excuse me from having to follow the rules in sexual matters. The flesh is willing, but the spirit is weak.

Among the many objects of my lust that I confessed was my obsession with Dr. Sheffield. As I relayed my fantasy of dominating her, the psychologist recognized my darker sexual impulses. “Philip, you are such a naughty boy!” she teased.

A Further Reckoning with Lust

I had signed “The Covenant,” my Christian college’s code of conduct, with the expressed intention of abiding by its stipulations. “Sexually inappropriate behavior” was among the forms of conduct I was prohibited from engaging in. “This includes overly intimate sexual behavior, sexual intercourse outside of marriage, and the use or distribution of pornography.” By my senior year, I had retained my virginity, and I was still committed to purity.

But I couldn’t stop the burning in my loins.

I was dating a sophomore. She was a music major, blond and Rubenesque. (I confess that the first thing I noticed about her was her ample chest.) She was smart and sweet and liked quoting C.S. Lewis. And she devoutly believed that True Love Waits®.

She was, in Pete Hamill’s words, one of the “noble defenders of the holy hymen.” Our physical interactions were restrained. I suppressed my sexual attraction to her. I couldn’t conceive of my girlfriend as an object of my sexual desire. She was too pure.

But True Lust Won’t Wait.

My faith was inextricably intertwined with my purity, and despite my lust, I had preserved my virginity. A pharisaic pride had crept into my soul. Unlike so many of my contemporaries, I had kept my pledge. “I thank you that I am not like other men” (Lk 18:11). But lust is without conscience. Religious studies professor Scot McKnight calls the expectation that young Christians will abstain from sex until marriage “absolutely not realistic.” I began to buckle under the weight of that expectation. I was losing Every Man’s Battle. For the first time I began to doubt that I had the strength to endure temptation (cf. 1 Cor 10:13). Desires I had long suppressed were straining to erupt with volcanic force.

The Covenant would be violated. I was about to consummate my sin.

A Divided Man

But I am carnal (Rom 7:14).

As she undressed and revealed her naked body, I instinctively thought “it was a delight to the eyes” (Gen 3:6). Then as she nibbled on my ear, my eyes glanced down toward the only item of clothing she still had on.

Her white thong panties.

The mysteries those panties concealed.

I was about to be irreparably marked by my sin, the implications of which I couldn’t fathom at the time. Pledges discarded. Prayers unanswered.

With fear and trembling, my fingers moved along the waistband of her panties.

“What do you want to do now?”

Let’s fuck.

She pulled her panties down her legs. Then my underwear came off, exposing my erection.

But I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind (Rom 7:23).

In my quest for victory, I had read the Puritan theologian John Owen, who had written of the “indwelling sin” believers must make war against. But now I was being seduced by Jezebel — with her deep blue eyes, red hair, voluptuous figure and full breasts — into committing fornication (cf. Rev 2:20). I was a divided man. Part of me still wanted to remain pure.

But I wanted to fuck even more.

The moment I knew sin, I fucked.

Most Crucial of Her Vows

I had a chance encounter with a nun a couple of mornings ago. She was in front of me at the pharmacy. I believe she was from the Dominican Order that lives in community nearby. Afterwards I thought about her solemn vow of chastity. In A History of Celibacy, Elizabeth Abbott writes, “Chastity was the fundament of the nun’s vocation, the most crucial of her vows.” Her denial of sex defines her identity. Her veil, “the outward sign of inward chastity,” in Penelope Johnson’s words, hides her hair, long a symbol of female sexuality. “The nun’s chief aim was to preserve her soul by preserving her chastity, the virtue into which all others more or less collapsed,” Nancy Bradley Warren concluded about medieval nuns.

How does she do it?

Her sexual self-mastery is a reproach. I experience primal sexual desire as an irresistible force that demands urgent satisfaction. Is she simply, by nature or self-discipline, asexual? Does she sublimate these urges into spiritual aspiration? Or does she simply grit her teeth and resist temptation? Perhaps she secretly wears sexy lingerie under her habit for a thrill.

The Council of Trent pronounced an anathema on those who disputed that virginity and celibacy are superior to conjugual relations. Alcuin insisted that chastity is angelic. Others have not been so sure. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Theseus compares a nun to a rose “withering on the virgin thorn.” Luther thought the nun’s vow of chastity wholly unnatural: “Only one woman in thousands has the God-given gift to maintain pure chastity.” The biological imperative was too strong. “Nature wants to get out. It wants to cast its seed and multiply.” The skepticism of the Reformers was amplified by modern secular critics. In La Religieuse, Diderot asks, “Can these vows, which run counter to our natural inclinations, ever be properly observed except by a few abnormal creatures in whom the seeds of passion are dried up, and whom we should rightly classify as freaks of nature?”

The contours of this reflection are shaped by personal experience. My college girlfriend later converted to Catholicism and entered religious life. Her virginal aura was one of her attractions to me, and I’m quite certain her virginity is intact. Does she experience the absence of compulsive sexuality as freedom? Or is she deprived of an essential human experience?

The same fascination does not extend to priests, despite shared vows. “They’re just guys,” Southern Comfort told me of priests. She would have been one to know. She claimed that she slept with a couple of them, including one serving at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. (I’m reminded of a scene in The Young Pope when a glamorous call girl claimed to “have clients who insist I am proof of the existence of God.”)

For reasons that would interest a psychoanalyst, I’ve developed a definite nun kink. There’s a scene in a movie in which a young novice serving in Africa, played by Chloe Sevigny, surrenders her chastity to a plantation owner in exchange for assistance to AIDS victims. As she slowly lifts up her white habit and her panties are pulled down, her rosary beads dangle against her bare skin. There is an irresistible erotic charge to the imminent violation of her solemn vows. I find the violation of this particular taboo especially arousing.

Domine non sum dignus

“Candidates for ordained ministry shall make a complete dedication of themselves to the highest ideals of the Christian life. To this end, they shall agree to exercise responsible self-control through fidelity in marriage and celibacy in singleness.“

If I am to continue my path to ordination, the Candidacy Committee must grant endorsement. “This is a time for mutual assessment of a candidate’s strengths and growth areas in discerning readiness for completing candidacy.” A crucial step is the endorsement interview with representatives of my synodical candidacy committee and appropriate seminary faculty. The committee uses the interview to decide whether to grant, postpone, or deny endorsement for supervised ministry. The committee scheduled the interview after the spring semester, which allowed me more time to complete my endorsement essay, which guides the discussion during the interview.

I dread the possibility of questions concerning whether I am living entirely in accord with our church’s teachings.

I began my candidacy with the hope that as I progressed toward ordination, I would become capable of dedicating myself to this standard of behavior.

My hands firmly clasp her hips as my pelvis slams repeatedly against her ass. My face is contorted in anguish as I desperately strain to climax. In a perverse sense, this is a mortification of the flesh. Our coupling is starkly emotionless, simply marked by raw physicality. Amidst the intensity of sexual frenzy, I feel driven by a sense of desperation. When Audrey had earlier opened the door to her hotel room in her white lingerie, her sensuality overpowered me. Now as I fuck her with manic intensity, I experience a curious blend of liberation and dread. My muscles tighten, I become slightly dizzy, and an aching cry escapes my throat. The void that follows in the wake of orgasm subsumes me.

As my sexual explorations intensified, it became apparent that my lust was propelling my behavior in a decisive way. Before each furtive encounter I promised, “This will be the last time,” only to once again renege on that promise. I prayed for deliverance. Victory. At one point I bluntly pleaded, “Please stop me before I fuck again.”

But I couldn’t stop fucking.

I came to realize that there wouldn’t be one last time.

Hier ficke ich, ich kann nicht anders.

I recently watched clips from the film Nymphomaniac. The protagonist is a middle-aged woman who proclaims, “I am a nymphomaniac, and I love myself for being one. But above all, I love my cunt, and my filthy dirty lust.” The film details her sexual precociousness in explicit detail (she has anal sex when she loses her virginity), and her sexual odyssey goes on to include sex with an endless number of partners, masochistic encounters, and lesbianism. Simply put, she can’t stop fucking.

I am devoured by desire.
Roland Barthes

Feminist Andrea Dworkin wrote of the “stigma” that indelibly marks the one consumed by sexual compulsion: “The person, made for sex or needing it, devoted to it, marked by it, is a person incarnated restless and wild in the world and defined by fucking: fucking as a vocation….”

Fucking as a vocation. “For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war” (Rom 7:22-23). “The bondage of the will” no longer seems merely theoretical. Each furtive encounter manifests a disequilibrium between my spiritual aspirations and my lust. I struggle to inhabit the dichotomy of piety and passion. My good works vie with the works of the flesh. I’m burdened by a sensitive conscience and a robust libido. Perhaps my perceived calling to ministry is nothing more than the cry of a guilty conscience to atone for this other vocation.

I have an acute sense my profound unworthiness. Domine non sum dignus. I’ve certainly questioned my fitness for ministry. Of course I wouldn’t be the first man of the cloth to succumb to sexual temptation. Among the “cloud of witnesses” I look to for inspiration were men of willing spirit but weak flesh (MLK, Jr.; Merton). The “randy vicar” is a staple of Anglican lore. The prospect of the exposure of my double life, and the disrepute such scandal would inflict on the church, makes me hesitate. “He must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace” (1 Tim 3:7).

A dominant characteristic of the conservative religious culture in which I was raised was what has been termed “sexual exceptionalism,” in which sexual sins outweigh other transgressions. I have acutely felt this thorn of the flesh. My incapacity for sexual discipleship strikes at the heart of my religion.

I don’t want to be pure.

The guilt has been intense. I’ve done things I would have never thought I was capable of. But the pleasure has also been intense. There’s the sheer physical pleasure, of course. But there’s also something else. “In the electricity of stigma there is a mixture of sexual shamelessness, personal guilt, and a defiance that is unprincipled, not socially meaningful in consequence or intention, determined only by need or desire,” Dworkin wrote. By “electricity of stigma” I assume she meant the frisson of transgression. My fascination with call girls, in addition to their practical convenience, certainly derives from the taboo surrounding prostitution. Georges Bataille in Eroticism argues that the transgression of taboos constitutes the erotic. Bataille was haunted by the remnants of his Catholicism yet considered the brothels of Paris as his “churches.” My acquaintance with the mysterium iniquitatis is most keenly felt in sex. There is a genuine thrill in leading a double life. “I have grown to love secrecy,” Oscar Wilde wrote in The Picture of Dorian Gray. “It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvellous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it.” Replace that common thing with illicit sex and it becomes even more marvelous.

Have my sexual transgressions implanted doubt? Or has my doubt led me to transgress? The late Rachel Held Evans dismissed “doubt as a STD.” I’m not so sure. The distinction between belief and faith is not theoretical anymore. Faith is hard. The divine is notional rather than an experienced presence.

I don’t want to be pure anymore.

Latter-day Sex

A couple of years ago I encountered two female Mormon missionaries at the public library. I surreptitiously eyed the slender blonde. In her prim blouse and long skirt, she was the very definition of “modesty.” I visually stripped her and imagined her in her temple garments. Then I started to fantasize about her.

She was taught that sexual sins are the “most abominable above all sins” except murder and denying the Holy Ghost (Alma 39:5). Yet surely she’s been tempted. I imagined her at night in bed obediently reading the Book of Mormon. She strives to remain chaste. The flesh has its own prerogatives. Her unchaste thoughts about her sister missionary return. Thoughts she can no longer suppress — thoughts about a stolen kiss; a forbidden taste. Her body stirs. Unable to resist, she sets down her holy scripture. She rubs her breast through her garment. She knows she’ll have to confess her sin to her bishop. The shame of having her moral uncleanliness exposed mortifies her. Still, her other hand slips inside her bottom garment….

Once during a trip out West a few years before that, I visited Salt Lake City. I confess I was smitten with the sister missionaries who guided the tour of Temple Square. That night at my hotel I was unable to resist the prospect of a romp with a call girl within sight of the Temple, so I called a local escort service. The lady dispatching the girls informed me that FS was not an option. I hired a brunette anyway. A cute girl arrived at my door an hour later. Among the ground rules we had to abide by was no touching. After she changed into lingerie, I asked her about the restrictive regulations. “This is Salt Lake City after all,” she replied matter-of-factly. “The Church controls everything here. Even sex.”

Growing up in a part of the country with a sizeable Mormon population, I’ve long been fascinated by the exotic beliefs and practices of the Latter-day Saints. And the exotic can become erotic. About five years ago, a newly constructed temple in the area was open to the public before its dedication, and I toured it with a friend. Inside it looked nothing like a traditional church; the rooms resembled the foyers in upscale hotels. There was a certain sensuousness to it all.

The origins of Mormon sexual morality are tangled. While condemning premarital sex and masturbation, the church’s early endorsement of polygamy privileged fecundity and provided the men who practiced it bountiful outlets for sexual pleasure. Joseph Smith argued that because God made women so enticing, men were entitled to more than one wife. Smith said that God told him, “And if he have ten virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot commit adultery, for they belong to him.” As one ex-Mormon puts it, “If you don’t grow up Mormon, you don’t realize there’s all these sexy things about it.” Mormon rituals are tinged with the erotic, as evidenced by the temple garment. This aesthetic coexists, however, within a culture of sexual repression. The Doctrine and Covenants bluntly says, “Therefore, cease from…all your lustful desires” (88:121). The Book of Mormon insists on chastity: “But remember that he that persists in his own carnal nature, and goes on in the ways of sin and rebellion against God, remaineth in his fallen state and the devil hath all power over him. Therefore he is as though there was no redemption made, being an enemy to God” (Mosiah 16:5). “Sins of immorality” are commonly understood to be exclusively sexual in nature. A few years ago, a Mormon therapist came to the conclusion that “masturbation is neither sinful nor even a ‘transgression.’” As a result, she was recently excommunicated from the church.

A religion with erotic overtones coupled with erotophobia tempts its own adherents. The taboo of forbidden sex can itself heighten sexual tension. “All Latter-day Saints must learn to control and discipline themselves” a church-published pamphlet admonishes adolescents. Such self-mastery can be difficult to achieve. Porn star Angela White revealed in an interview, “A lot of my memberships are from more conservative states in America…. Utah is a big one.” She continued, “There are a lot of people condemning masturbation and sexuality while doing it behind closed doors.” And they’re not just watching porn. “You’ve no idea the people I could get in trouble,” a Salt Lake City call girl told the author of a soon-to-be published book. Many of her clients are prominent members of the Church of Latter-day Saints. At its extreme, it produces a sex cult. In the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-day Saints, polygamy is still sanctioned. Emphasizing the Mormon tradition of procreation as a means to achieve godly status in the afterlife, the FLDS mandated that sex with the sister wives were reserved for certain “seed bearers” to ensure the birth of “spirit children.” Since “the Seed Bearer has special authority to spread his seed among the daughters of Zion,” the wives’ husbands were even forced to watch as he copulated with their spouses.

Meanwhile, I await my next encounter with sister missionaries.

“Lead us not into temptation”

She sat alone in a pew on the right.

Dark blond hair. A short blue sundress that showed off a golden tan and a shapely pair of legs.

She kept distracting me during the liturgy. I tried to focus on the sermon and the words to the hymns. I kept peeking at that short little sundress, though.

She had no idea I was visually stripping her dress off her and fantasizing about fucking her.

After the service, a parishioner introduced me to “Emily.” She recently graduated from college and returned to the area. Friendly and sweet, Emily said she is looking for a faith community to connect with. I offered to meet with her and introduce her to our parish’s educational offerings. Emily promised to contact me and set up a time to meet later this week.

Don’t do the pew.

Despite my sexual excesses, one line I haven’t crossed is engaging in a sexual relationship with a parishioner. I’ve certainly been tempted. Heidi and Anne tested my self-restraint. In the era of #MeToo and #ChurchToo, there are few easier ways to get dismissed from ministry than getting caught engaging in sexual misconduct. Sexual desire, however, cannot be so easily bracketed off from the life of the church. “For the pastor there are more situations, more opportunities to act out sexually,” one male pastor observed in Sex in the Parish. “If you’re not clear about your sexuality, you’re going to act on your fantasies.” A poll conducted by Christianity Today in the 1990s revealed that nearly one-fourth of clergy had engaged in some form of inappropriate sexual behavior. Some ministers suggest that even fantasizing crosses a line. “The limits of intimacy with a parishioner are stepped over when sexual fantasies abound.”

Lead us not into temptation.

Even as I spoke with Emily, my hypersexual imagination wondered what was under her dress. I thought about her wetness. Her tightness. Her soft moans. The way her tits would bounce during our exertions.

I doubt the thought would even cross her mind, but if Emily ever came on to me, in my weakness, I don’t think I’d be able to resist pulling her panties to the side.

Revelation

Still thinking about the recent Pew survey about the growing acceptance of casual sex among Christians….

This verse from Romans, which I’ve quoted before, sums up my struggle:

I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind (7:23).

As a believer and minister of the gospel, I am bound by divine revelation, the record of which is disclosed in the Bible. As a young believer, I became firmly convinced that if I were to live my life in accordance with the gospel, I was to abstain from sexual activity until marriage. Religion, in general, discourages unbridled sexuality, and conservative Christianity does so with particular vehemence. Yet I continued to battle these impulses that tempted me to violate my pledge. Living up to the stringent biblical doctrine of my understanding proved to be unattainable. To even look at a woman with lust in my heart was a sin. A bikini-clad girl was enough to stoke arousal and the subsequent guilt that came with it. The harder I fought against lust, the more intense the impulses became and the more frequently I succumbed to them. I sinned in secret, because it violated my religion, and I kept sinning because I couldn’t stop. The “law of my mind” which dictated sexual purity was assailed by those instincts that dwell “in my members.”

A psychologist poses this stark question: “What if revelation and common sense (or biology) diverge?” What if the law in my members contradicts the law of my mind? To put it another way, through my sexual explorations, I’ve encountered a revelation in the flesh.

Despite the heavy guilt I incurred, I excused my initial forays with escorts as youthful experimentation. By the time I was visiting Leigh regularly after college, sexual curiosity had turned into compulsion. Experimentation now yielded to indulgence. It was humbling to observe my capacity for self-discipline diminish every time Leigh let down her brown hair and removed her lacy lingerie. At the time, I was working for a prominent parachurch ministry dedicated to promoting “family values.” Contrary to my principles, I was proving incapable of restraining my sexual impulses. In my quest for purity, I had tried to admonish myself: “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). Then I discovered what Hamlet meant:

The Devil hath power
T’assume a pleasing shape.

That pleasing shape had soft, creamy skin. Full breasts. A seemingly voracious sexual appetite. My flesh instinctively responded to her open thighs. “Great sex is apocalyptic,” Norman Mailer wrote. “Apocalypse” (ancient Greek: ἀποκάλυψις) literally means “unveiling.” As my body rocked against Leigh’s, I started to receive the slow but certain revelation that I was incapable of chastity. During an earlier encounter with an escort, she teasingly predicted that my inexperience would soon yield to promiscuity: “Soon you’ll be having sex like a rabbit!” She was prophetic. The law of my members continually impressed itself on me, and I assiduously sought to obey this law. I couldn’t be sated. The more I fucked, the more I needed to fuck. My emerging satyriasis nevertheless uneasily coexisted with my religious commitments. I couldn’t forsake my theological studies or my work in ministry. Nor, despite my rationalizations and theological explorations, could I shake my earlier traditional sexual ethic. I sinned in sex and was convicted by my sin. Each time I penetrated the Deaconess, I experienced a sense of desecration. The law of my mind could not be erased.

Anyway, back to that survey. Perhaps a growing number of self-described Christians have also experienced that law in their members which can’t be reconciled with inherited interpretations of scripture.

Christians and Casual Sex

Here’s an unexpected finding from a recent survey of American Christians from the Pew Research Center:

“Half of Christians say casual sex – defined in the survey as sex between consenting adults who are not in a committed romantic relationship – is sometimes or always acceptable.”

According to the survey, 54% of mainline Protestants agree that casual sex is permissible. Even 36% of evangelical Protestants agree. These numbers still lag far behind the percentage of religiously unaffiliated Americans — 79% — who condone casual sex.

Self-applied religious labels are notoriously slippery. Nominal believers are counted with more committed adherents. Those who attend religious services monthly or more are much more likely to condemn sex outside of a relationship. The article notes that liberal sexual mores clash with Christian traditions which proscribe premarital sex. Even progressive Christian sexual ethics generally confine permissible sexual activity to a committed relationship. That significant numbers of believers reject the precepts of traditional Christian sexual morality reveals its weakening saliency among people in the pews.

Rush into Perdition

Along with others on our pastoral team, I’ve been reaching out to check-in with parishioners during this plague. The fear is palpable, and my virtual “ministry of presence” seems inadequate. I was drained after this afternoon’s round of phone calls.

Then I thought about The Girl in the Black Dress.

As I watch, she reaches behind her back and unfastens her bra. She seductively removes it, exposing her perky breasts. Then she inserts her fingers into the waistband of her panties. She slides them down her legs, stepping out of them. Her bare, shaved mons pubis is uncovered. Soon she will be spreading her legs for me….

Dr. Jen Gunter writes in The New York Times, “Right now the only safe sex is no sex with partners outside your household.” But I am carnal (cf. Rom 7:14). Sex researcher Justin Lehmiller writes that “we all have different propensities for sexual excitation (getting turned on) and sexual inhibition (getting turned off). Put another way, we all have a ‘gas pedal’ and a ‘brake’ when it comes to sexual arousal. However, some people have a gas pedal that’s always partially pressed (which makes it easier for them to get turned on)….” “Excitation transfer” is the clinical term for how strong emotions — including anxieties about mortality– amplify sexual response. There is historical precedent for this. An Italian historian at the time of the Black Death wrote of survivors, “They rushed headlong into lust.”

Susan Cheever writes, “For a while there is no such thing as ‘too much’ with the object of desire.” That almost ineffable feeling comes over me once more. Palpitations. Exposed by my raging hard-on. Yearning to give in to that throbbing need to fill a cunt hard and fast.

Crazed with spring all I want to do is fuck
Maggie Wells, “Sonnet from the Groin”

Her hands are pressed against the wall, her ass arched toward me. My hands grab her hips as I furiously thrust my pelvis back and forth. Filling her faster and faster, harder and harder. I fuck her with a desperate intensity, my entire being concentrated into this moment. My body tenses and guttural grunts accompany each hard thrust….

Once again, I stand naked before temptation, that “dizzy rush into perdition,” in Bataille’s words. “Temptation is the desire to fall, to fail, to faint and to squander all one’s reserves until there is no firm ground beneath one’s feet.” There is a queasiness from the specter of another fall from grace and the concomitant guilt. There is also anticipation of “the delirium into which temptation would have him slide.”

Robert Auer, “The Temptation of Saint Anthony,” 1917

The taboo on sexuality which the religious of his own free will carries to extremes, creates in temptation a state of affairs abnormal certainly, but in which the erotic element, rather than undergoing a change, stands out more sharply.
Georges Bataille, Eroticism

One pastor wrote, “Virtue is a state where you have been tempted but have successfully passed the test.” By that definition, I am notably deficient in virtue. Having sipped from sweet stolen waters (Prov 9:17), I seek to slake the thirst of the flesh. Self-control is one of the fruits of the Spirit (Gal 5:23). Yet when I picture The Girl in the Black Dress, I feel helpless before her seductive charms.

“The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.”
Oscar Wilde

My theology was unable to prevent me from acting out.

These words from an unnamed pastor have recently stuck in my head. “Justification can conquer fornication,” one prominent pastor promised. As I entered divinity school and ministry, however, my sexual failure only became more pronounced. In my earlier quest for purity, I prayed for a “hedge of protection” (cf. Job 1:10) and took up my “sword and shield” (cf. Eph 6). Sex was “the enemy” against which I waged battle. The thorn in my flesh (cf. 2 Cor 12:7) only pressed deeper.

A number of providers have moved to virtual platforms. On Pornhub, a petite redhead is pleasuring herself….