Sex, God, and the Conservative Church

Erasing Shame from Sexual Intimacy

Tina Schermer Sellers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317199809
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Psychotherapie

Sex, God, and the Conservative Church guides psychotherapy and sexology clinicians on how to treat clients who grew up in a conservative faith—mired in sexual shame and dysfunction—and who desire to both heal and hold on to their faith orientation. The author first walks clinicians and readers through a critique of Western culture and the conservative Christian Church, and their effects on intimate partnerships and sexual lives. The book provides clinicians a way to understand the faulty sexual ethic of the early church, while revealing the hidden mystical sex and body positive understanding of sexuality of the Hebrew people. The book also includes chapters on strategies for a new sexual ethic, on clinical steps to heal religious sexual shame, and on specific sex therapy interventions clinicians can use directly in their practice. Finally, it offers a four step model for healing religious sexual shame and actual touch and non-touch exercises to bring healing and intimacy into a person's life.

1
Christianity and Sex

What’s Going On?

John, a newly married, 28-year-old youth pastor, was about to come to one of our couples retreats with his wife, Becky. Both were excited to have a chance to deal with problems that were emerging early in their marriage and not to have to wait for things to get worse.

As a young couple involved in the church, neither had had any sex education, and both had grown up in sexually silent and reactive homes, with an abstinence-only, generally sex-negative view of sex. Both had felt shame about their sexual desire with each other while dating, and even though they managed to be virgins when they got married, up until that point they had felt horrible after every small “transgression” of feeling and action and every dalliance into masturbation.

Neither had found very many people safe to talk with about intimacy issues before or after marriage, so finding a safe place to ask questions seemed next to impossible. When John and Becky would try to raise sexual conversations to seek insight, one of two things would typically happen: either they would talk with their friends, who were people too closely involved in their community or circle to feel comfortable talking about these issues with them (many of them had grown up in conservative Christian circles, too), or John and Becky would consult a therapist, only to find that the therapist wasn’t able to respect their faith tradition. They were at their wits’ end, but they were willing to try at least one more time, which is how I met them.

As we talked together, John and Becky described their sexual frustration. For starters, Becky had never had an orgasm “during intercourse,” and John “had never learned to ‘go down’ on a woman.” Plus, Becky couldn’t shake the knowledge that John had had a porn habit before they were married, and fretted that John was comparing her to the women he had seen online. The fact that neither John nor Becky was comfortable talking frankly about sexual issues in the first place only compounded the silence and increased their anxiety.

John communicated his own frustration this way. “No matter what I say to her, she doesn’t believe me,” he said in exasperation. “She thinks I am comparing her to pornography and that I’m a pervert! She doesn’t understand that porn is not the same thing to me as she is, or that I don’t want to have any involvement with porn—or that I haven’t even been watching it for over two years now. Now she thinks it must be what I am fantasizing about when we are sexual, which I’m not. Becky is my everything!

“I feel like the church instilled in her to be deeply suspicious of men and their sexual drives,” he continued. “Now, that same suspicion is in bed with us every night. I hate it, and I wish we could just enjoy having sex without all the suspicion about who’s thinking what.”

What Is Religious Sexual Shame and Why Does It Matter?

My clinical practice and academic teaching career have been on the campus of a Christian university. While the graduate program I teach for doesn’t require students to espouse any particular faith perspective, we nonetheless attract many students from conservative Christian backgrounds. In the early 2000s, I began to notice profound levels of sexual shame and dysfunction among many of the conservative Christian couples I treated and in the sexual autobiographies of family therapy students who had grown up in conservative Christian families. I began to wonder what we in the church had been teaching people about sexuality and Christian faith, and how this narrative had changed in the previous 20 years. Somehow or other, these young men and women in my office had adopted narratives about their bodies and their sexuality that were hindering their development as erotic beings. But how did it happen? When in history did these messages of sexual condemnation arise, fostering such an atmosphere of silence and shame around issues of sexuality, eroticism, and desire? And whatever we Christians had been teaching them, how did those ideas lead these young adults to such an all-encompassing ignorance about sexual matters?

I started to realize that a pervading sense of sexual illiteracy was infusing the stories and sex lives of so many who had grown up in conservative Christian homes. But why? And if these ideas were causing sorrow and suffering, as I saw that they were, were these narratives truly “Christian” at all? If they weren’t, what was? Furthermore, it seemed to me that in Jesus’s day, the very author of the Christian faith led his ministry not with lecture, warning, and condemnation but with compassion and grace when people brought their questions and wrestlings. When I looked at conservative Christianity’s teachings on sex and the body, why was I seeing the opposite of Jesus’s model? Was anyone else asking these questions?

A Journey of Questions—A Habitat of Suffering

As I dug in and did some research, I found that the ministry of Jesus was built on faith, justice, love, mutuality, equality, and care for those less fortunate. His ministry called religious leaders to account for the ways they were marginalizing, abusing, and discounting those not in power—the poor, women, children, the sick, the disabled, the socially outcast and shunned, and those of other races or creeds. His example taught that all people were precious creations of God, and over and over again in the Gospels we see Jesus’s guidance and grace as he walked with those who sought his company, or who brought an open heart and honest questions. He wasn’t ashamed, like his contemporaries apparently were, by the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4), even though she was a foreigner, an outsider, and a victim of sexism, classism, and xenophobia. Jesus not only spent time with her but also commended her for her spiritual insight. The woman caught in adultery in John 8 had every reason to expect religious law to fall on her like a ton of bricks, but Jesus not only speaks to her but also goes so far as to defend her dignity and worth, and to chastise the religious leaders for their hypocrisy.

And it wasn’t just women. Jesus held up children as spiritual exemplars when his disciples told them to go away (Matthew 19:13–15, Mark 10:13–16, Luke 18:15–17). He invited Zacchaeus and Levi, both tax collectors, to be his companions (see Mark 2:14, Luke 5:27–28, 19:1–10). He defended the criminal dying on the cross next to him (Luke 23:43). He even prayed for the forgiveness of those who had framed and crucified him, in the very moment that he was dying (Luke 23:34). And these are just to name a few.

If we talk to those who have followed Jesus throughout their lives, we gather countless stories of how he is still affecting people’s lives in our own day and age. Kris and Sue, a married couple, clung to each other and to their faith community as they went through the illness and death of their ten-year-old daughter, Lillie. Glenn, a husband, described his faith as giving him a rock-like foundation of courage as he endured the pain his wife, Cherri, caused when she had an affair. In my own life, it was my faith and community that held me together 20 years ago when I went through a very painful divorce from a deeply wounding marriage, and then nine years of single parenting. Only love and justice of the magnitude of Jesus himself could transform pain into beauty.

Jesus’s example was one of self-giving, of deep love, and of setting people free from the things that imprisoned them, and I and others had experienced his healing and liberating power. So why was it that each year I would hear so many stories of sexual pain and suffering from family therapy students, many of whom were Christians actively seeking to follow Jesus’s example? If they were trying to order their lives around the teaching of someone as liberative as Jesus of Nazareth, why were they hurting so badly? Why were they so deeply frustrated and despairing in their sexuality? True, some of the situations I encountered had originated from poor choices or from unusual challenges in their current sexual relationships. But on balance, what seemed pervasive was a deep distrust of the body and of sexuality, and for many, a deep distrust in the other gender, or even in intimacy and marriage itself.

As I explored these questions, I began to learn that much of that sexual suffering was generally rooted in either of two primary venues, or sometimes both. One was a culture of silence or of punishment around forms of sexual curiosity, and the other was a social culture that defined sex and the body as objects for pleasure without any consideration for relationship and mutual care. My clients, both men and women, expressed feeling ashamed of their sexual desires or experiences. They told of long histories of seeing sexual desire as something wrong, impure, or problematic about them. Women described a sense of disdain for their bodies—how they looked, how they felt, their desire or lack of it. Men spoke about feeling entitled to sex and then disappointment in their sexual relationships, or a sense of confusion and naïveté around what to expect from their partner, or even around rudimentary skills like how to love, how to touch, or what was needed to bring their partner pleasure. In nearly all cases, there was an obvious lack of grounding in any form of sex education—positive or spiritually rooted—a scarcity that was compounded by conservative Christianity’s pervasive, sex-negative message of what not to do with each other. All in all, it was a toxic mixture, one that left men and women ill-prepared for eroticism and physical pleasure with each other.

In many cases, clients had spent their formative years wanting, shaming, repressing, secretly touching, engaging in recreational sex, and living in a culture that objectified sex and bodies. They felt at odds with their bodies, with their partner (if they had one), and with their faith, all at the same time. With couple after couple, client after client, the pervasive question seemed to be, “Is there a greater purpose in sex, or is it merely about feeling good in the moment or fulfilling some expectation in marriage? Is there anything more than this suffering, or is this all there is?”

Janet had experienced some of these things firsthand. At age 54, having been married a little over three decades, she knew all about the sexual dys-function that conservative Christianity can cause. “My husband and I both came from good Christian homes and were virgins when we married at 21 years old,” she said. “Both of our families hadn’t talked about sexual matters when we were growing up. For most of the first 30 years of our marriage, I had low sexual desire and my husband was the constant initiator. It set up a bad dynamic between us. All I knew was what I ‘should’ do and nothing about what I really wanted as a wife or a sexual person.

“This pattern finally began to change as our kids grew older,” she continued. “After they left home, I began to work on my own reactions and lack of autonomy. It helped tremendously in my ability to exercise more freedom within our sexual relationship. I found that the more I grew sexually, the more intriguing our relationship became. I am just now discovering how sexuality is linked to spirituality in my life. My husband has helped me to feel free to experiment and find new ways to be intimate with him.”

Stories like Janet’s invite us to ask questions about the how, the what, and the why of sexual and spiritual nourishment or starvation. What kept this husband and wife from discovering how sexuality is linked to their faith? What set them up to spend the first 30 years of their marriage in constructed roles of “Christian husband” and “Christian wife” that inhibited the gift of sexual communion? What would they have needed while growing up that might have helped them to be nourished by the gift of sexuality at the outset of their relationship and through raising children? And what was it about time or the circumstances of life that finally allowed them to experience a more mutual and enjoyable sex life together?

Sex Is a Vital Part of Life

The vast majority of couples in our culture, both those who claim a faith and those who do not, have one thing in common: they want something more. A 2010 study found that while the majority of couples believe that sex is a vital part of life, 43 percent of Americans are sexually satisfied, down from 51 percent just six years prior (Fisher et al. 2010, 36). Some of the factors for our culture’s increased dissatisfaction are physical, like the challenge of living with pain or illness, while some have to do with lifestyle, like working long, exhausting hours, depleting the time and energy necessary to foster intimacy. Other factors may have to do with the quality of the relationship in areas like trust, support, playfulness, or respect. Yet if what I’ve heard in my practice over the years is any indication, beneath each of these factors lie the foundational sexual narratives that were absorbed growing up, and the ways in which those messages affect what people have come to believe about their sexual selves.

This chapter is going to take us on a journey to better understand the messages that have infiltrated traditional conservative Christian teachings, as well as the ideas that inform our culture’s views on sexuality. We’ll explore how those ideas have helped and hindered the discovery of God’s gifts of eros, sexuality, sensuality, pleasure, and the body, especially for people who grew up claiming a Christian faith. Those of us who practice therapy know firsthand that the ideas and narratives that our clients carry with them into treatment did not come from a vacuum. They have actual, historical origins and represent a tangled jumble of overt and covert messages about gender and sexuality, delivered to us over time through family, friends, culture, and community. But many clients who grew up in conservative Christian homes, living with silence and condemnation around sexuality and sexual knowledge, come seeking clarity, guidance, and a newfound freedom to be fully human, made in God’s image (see Genesis 1:27). These are the people whom we’ll have in mind as we explore these ideas further.

We’ve Been Here Before

As I’ve treated and taught people over the last 20 years, it’s become clear to me that while so much has changed in our culture, the ways in which sexuality is discussed in the traditional Christian church are about the same now as it was back then. In fact, if I have seen any trend over that time, it is that those now in their twenties and thirties who grew up in a conservative Christian church community describe an even more rigid, condemning, and fear-based message about sexual desire, their bodies, and sexual behaviors than was present from the 1960s through the 1980s. The examples that follow will offer a glimpse into how these common, faith-based sexual messages have been handed down over the last several decades.

Common Threads

Here are the themes repeated in the vast majority of sexual stories I hear from the Christians whom I have served and taught:

• “Sex was a silent, loaded topic in my family while I was growing up.”

In stories like these, whenever a child in the family did bring up a topic involving sex or sexuality, an adult in the family would likely get upset and say something like, “How could you bring that up at the dinner table?” or “We don’t talk about those sorts of things,” or “Where are your manners?” Typically, the adult, who would now be visibly uncomfortable, would make a quick move to change the subject or postpone discussion until some later time. Even though the child’s question or comment may have been made in complete innocence and curiosity, the parent’s response communicated that the young person had done something wrong by bringing it up (embarrassment), that they should have known better (shame), and that this was very bad, or secret, or inappropriate for conversation (humiliation).

The words in parentheses are strong feelings that mark the memory in the body. The young person’s physical reaction to the emotion creates a meaning for them, usually that “something must be wrong with me, I must be bad, or there is something very bad about sex.”

“My parents never talked about sex when I was little,” a 28-year-old woman once told me, echoing many other stories I’ve heard from Christians over the years. “They didn’t even talk with me about sex when I had my first menstrual period in the fifth grade. Throughout my childh...