Sex and the church
Listen to the Lord and you will never be burned.
I grew up attending a Methodist church. Every Sunday, my two sisters, mom, grandma and I would load into the Toyota Sequoia and drive the 0.6 miles down the road to our small town chapel.
Opening hymn and remarks. Lord’s prayer by heart. Mildred on the organ. When pastor Steve would send the children back to Sunday school, I’d march myself down into the basement classrooms, ready to take on whatever Godly craft was to be taught that week.
I knew what sins were and that to get to Heaven you must accept the Lord God our Savior into your heart. I knew Adam and Eve and Noah’s Ark and Jonah in the belly of the whale. Jesus made wine but didn’t talk much. The devil comes in many forms.
My favorite story was the one about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. These three brothers wouldn’t bow down to the king (they only bow to God), so they were thrown into a furnace! for disobeying. But when the king looked in to check on their disintegrated bodies, the brothers weren’t alone. There were four people in the furnace, unharmed! Yes, the fourth person was God. The king let them out and he, too, obviously, became a believer.
Message received: Listen to the Lord and you will never be burned.
Fast forward a few years. I’m an avid bells player and hit some chords on the keys for the church band Sanctified. I’m tight with the pastor’s kids and read passages and light candles in front of the congregation — all around glowing in God’s eyes.
One night at youth group, the youth pastor hands us each a tasty treat, like an off-brand Oreo or a lightly salted pretzel stick. Then she holds up a cup at the front of the room. It’s filled with water. Clean and clear as a whistle.
She passes the cup around from person to person, and we’re instructed to crumble up the treat in our hand and dump it into the cup. The end result? Goopy slop. No one’s wanting that.
This was the lesson: We (being the high school youth group participants) are the water, clean and pure. Sexual partners are the tasty store-brand treats. The more cookies and pretzels we taste, the more impure, diluted, mushy sludge we become.
I never thought I’d sign a virginity pledge so fast.
Then again, I didn’t know I could.
I don’t blame my youth pastor for shaming my sexuality. I don’t blame her for the list I kept of the 60+ boys I made out with in high school, or for when I lost my virginity my senior year and I cried because I deemed myself impure for my future husband even though I lost it to a boy who cared for and adored and just wanted to hold me. I don’t blame anyone but myself for having such a narrow mindset, a warped outlook, a shame-based view of what came so naturally to me.
My relationship with sex remained rocky throughout college. I craved to explore but knew I wanted to get married. I dated the same person on and off for three years, during which I vowed to become a born-again Christian(???), because, well, if I marry this guy, I could basically re-be a virgin, even if he is controlling and manipulative.
This is exhausting to even write.
I studied abroad during my junior year of college with strong, independent (read: from California), beautiful women who challenged my views on intimacy. Sitting around our St. Kilda kitchen island, I brought up my crush on my CrossFit coach (who, side note, was recently one of Australia’s firefighter calendar models 🥵).
I was almost taken aback by how nonchalantly they encouraged me to sleep with him, because, why wouldn’t I? In Australia once, baby! No strings attached.
I thought about it — and him — for a while. What I knew best was the lead up before lines were crossed: the flirting, the playful touching, the witty replies, the what ifs. I remember laying on the deck of a sail boat in the Whitsundays, staring at the stars, waiting for my phone to illuminate with his latest sext.
Then we met for coffee, and I found him back in my room. He lived four blocks away, and it wouldn’t be the last. I never told him — it wasn’t that kind of relationship — but he liberated me from myself. We had a truly no-strings-attached agreement (except for, of course, when I woke up in his bed one morning to his live-in ex-girlfriend threatening to kill me — but that’s a story for another time).
I keep a book on my desk called Sex and the Constitution, a 668-page account of America’s history with sex and religion and law. My god, in ancient Greece, men slept with men and women with women, and no one batted an eye. My god, it was encouraged! Art then was what we’d deem erotic today: the phallus, “a potent symbol of fertility.” In Rome: the phallus, “the divine creative force.”
It wasn’t until Christianity rose in popularity did sex become inherently shameful.1
I’ve read Peggy Orenstein’s Boys & Sex, Girls & Sex, and Don’t Call Me Princess. I’ve listened to — and highly recommend — Radiolab’s In the No series. A Q&A I wrote in grad school was with a sex therapist, part of the reason being was that when I first watched Meet the Fockers in 2004, I was enthralled with Roz, Ben Stiller’s sex therapist mom, and her openness with intimacy. I bought sex in ancient Peru playing cards when I hiked Machu Picchu, not because I found them taboo, but because I’m drawn to better understanding where sex fits in the world — today, yesteryear, and in my life.
***
I still have habits that, if I were to psychoanalyze, stem from my self-inflicted Christian upbringing. Like, I need an emotional connection before a physical one. Or, when I feel shame or guilt or anxiety, I get the same pit in my stomach that I’d felt standing in the pews at summer camp when the pastor said to have sex is to be the same kind of sinner as a murderer. (Rough!)
But one thing is for sure:
Instead of store-brand cookies, I have Double Dark Chocolate Milanos in the cabinet.
And ooo, do I have a sweet tooth.
Please know I have no intention of shaming any Christian who still believes in saving herself for marriage. (Although I’m deep into binge watching Sex and the City for the first time, and Charlotte just found out her husband can’t get it up.)