Let's talk about sex

Shannon Vowell has a remarkable article in the United Methodist Reporter this week where she calls the church to reappraise its teaching (or lack thereof) on sex and sexuality to its youth. She writes, "The bottom line on teenage sexual practice as far as our church is concerned is this: We've failed them by copping out on Scriptural teaching about sex, both institutionally and individually." She says that our desire to be relevant has led us to become relativistic, both in moral teaching and in fundamental doctrines such as the truth of salvation through Christ and the nature of God as Trinity.

She goes on to observe that "about sex, we stand silent - or simply echo a muted version of the ethos of culture: Anything goes, because we are too civilized and sophisticated to need God's boundaries."

Now, anyone who grew up in a United Methodist Church where the silence on sex was deafening can relate to what Shannon is saying. I grew up in a church like that, and while no one in the church - pastors included - would have thought they were doing anything wrong, neither did they consider that the church is the absolute best place for children and youth to learn about their sexuality.

In a seminar I'm currently taking on ethics in the early church, we spent a couple of weeks reading the church fathers on marriage and sex. Granted, the early church had some views on sexuality that we would rightly question. But what was significant to me is that these guys were preaching on sex and seeking to engage their congregations in the issue of how sex should be rightly understood. A colleague of mine in the class said that she had led a "good sex" retreat for her youth while a pastor in Arizona, which was oriented around helping adolescents understand sexuality in healthy and holy ways. But my colleague's courageous ministry aside, I think Shannon Vowell's view is the more common one in the church: Sexuality is considered so taboo that most churches won't engage their children on it at all.

Watching what this leads to in campus culture is as depressing as it is frightening. How many of us went to colleges or universities where, without any real formation around issues of sexuality in our faith communities, we were thrown into a culture where Bacchanalian revelry was the rule rather than the exception? And with no formation, what resources do such kids have to fall back on?

It is not as if there aren't brave individuals out there. Take Justin Noia, an undergraduate here at Duke who wrote this column last year on valuing sex and sexuality as a fundamental and inseparable component of love - something you would not want to trade in cheaply. Of course, Noia's column received angry letters to the editor (such as this one and this one) that insisted that his views were boring, Victorian, and misogynistic.

There is also a growing trend amongst Ivy League schools for abstinence organizations (or "chastity clubs"), such as the one described in this NY Times Magazine article on Janie Fredell and Harvard's True Love Revolution organization. It is a fascinating story, and one must appreciate the heroism of young adults who embrace chastity as a virtue in a culture that is often hostile to such a practice.

But we might ask, "How do we turn chastity from a virtue of the heroic minority to a viable or even preferred option for Christian college students?" I think the answer to that question has a lot to do with what Shannon is talking about in her article: it has to start at church.

Do you have any experiences of ministries on sex and sexuality in your own church context? Do you have any resources that you would recommend?