The TGIF Sex Blog [Religion and Sex]

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-=[ Religion and Sex ]=-

Eroticism is assenting to life even in death.

-- Georges Bataille

What are the consequences when a religion does not recognize our basic human need for pleasure and uses its powerful influence as a way to implement social rules that repress our “God”-given right for nurturing, sensual, and erotic pleasure? What happens when we reduce sex to the mechanical joining of male and female genitals? What is the result of ignoring the vital sustenance women and men derive from the sexual rainbow of playful, loving, intimate, responsible, passionate, and transcendent sex?

When I first began to formally study human behavior, I was alarmed by the amount of studies of child abuse indicating that parents who abuse their children were often deprived of physical affection during their own childhood, and as adults fail to experience satisfying sexual relationships. Further studies show that deprivation of bodily pleasure during infancy and adolescence and the repression of pleasure promote adult violence.

Religions emphasizing a high, Father-like God that punishes deviation in sexual behavior commonly endorse anti-sexual and anti-pleasure values. As a part of their values, these religions promote negative attitudes about the physical nurturing of infants and children. They also punish adolescents and adults who indulge in prohibited erotic pleasures.

In a study on emotional bonding, researchers are quoted as saying that, “Deprivation of bodily pleasure throughout life -- but particularly during the formative periods of infancy, childhood, and adolescence -- is very closely related to the amount of warfare and general violence [in a society]. On the other hand, cultures that promote nurturing in child-rearing, that are comfortable with the body and with sexuality and pleasure, produce adults who have little sexual dysfunction, who promote gender and social equality, and a society that does not glorify slavery or war.”

In the twelfth century, the great Benedictine abbess, Hildegard of Bingen, re-interpreted the myth of Adam’s sin as a failure of Eros. In other words, she was saying that Adam was banished from Eden not because he discovered nudity or sex, but because he did not enjoy deeply enough the delights of the Earth.

Recently, a Dominican theologian, Matthew Fox, was silenced by Vatican celibates for his endorsement of Hildegard of Bingen’s interpretation of the Eden myth and for his positive attitude towards an erotic (Eros)-friendly creation spirituality. Fox argues that our failure to celebrate the pleasures of the Divine Presence in our lives causes an unhealthy compulsion to conquer and achieve pleasure elsewhere. He sees a direct link between patriarchal (father-like) religions that deny the importance of the nurture we draw from erotic pleasure and the anti-pleasure, anti-sex value systems of fundamentalism and fascism.

Religious fundamentalism of any kind rests on the literal interpretations of sacred texts written (mostly) by males who determine what rules guide human behavior and spell out punishments for those who break those rules. In this way, moralizing and condemnation become more important than celebration and play.

The repression of Eros and pleasure make for strange bedfellows. One only has to look on the early support of Hitler by Christians who agreed with his attacks on contraception, pornography, and sexual permissiveness. More recently, Christians in the US have supported neo-fascists attacks on abortion clinics, gays, and the liberal worldview. In fact, the Christian right, led by the likes of televangelists such as Pat Roberson, are part of the mainstream political wing of the Republican Party. I don't need to go into details of the consequences of religious fundamentalism in the Middle East, do I?

Anthropologist Margaret Mead warned us 25 years ago that we were entering a transitional stage she called the “pre-figurative.” What she said then was that the myths and symbols that gave meaning and direction to our culture have lost much of their meaning and significance, and that we are only beginning to create a new set of symbols (a “cosmology”), a culture that respects sex, pleasure and sensuality; that we have yet to begin to create icons and myths that will provide models for a new consciousness of the Earth and ourselves.

The prospect of change and evolution frightens, even terrifies, many people around the world. We can expect, and have begun to witness, fundamentalist, even fascist, religious sects to join forces across boundaries to oppose these impending changes. Such civil wars are already evident in the ongoing debates about sexual ethics, homosexuality, and alternatives to monogamy among Catholics after the Second Vatican Council, and at the recent General Assemblies of the Presbyterian, Episcopal, Evangelical Lutheran, Southern Baptist, and United Methodist Churches.

The human race is now caught in a struggle of adapting to a new consciousness, a new sense of morality. Many people still prefer to regulate sexual practice with rigid, repressive laws. The pioneering psychologist, Jean Piaget, called this “heteronomous morality”; Lawrence Kohlberg called it “conventional morality.” Stuck in this lower-level form of moral reasoning, people are concerned about whether genital activity is heterosexual, homosexual, or masturbatory.

Far fewer people appreciate and are comfortable with a morality based on personal responsibility -- an internalized (something you select for yourself) set of principles that focus on the quality of relationships. In this autonomous or “post conventional” moral thinking, one is concerned with the extent to which a relationship expresses the values of a spiritual “humanism” by being self-liberating, life-serving, joyful, and offering the potential for true freedom.

To create a social attitude that respects the body and its relationship to the ecology and to all of life, will not be easy. However, I truly believe that if we fail to make that transition only further instances of the holocaust, destruction of the environment, will continue unabated. The cost of repression of our inherent sexuality is not secondary, but vital to the quality of our existence.

Love,

Eddie