Let’s be honest.
The topic of sex has been a source of great shame and confusion for many Christians. Growing up in the church, I was taught that there was exactly one way for Christians to express their sexuality — by staying abstinent until they got married to a person of the opposite gender. After that, they could have all the guilt-free sex they wanted.
This idea was taught as a Biblical view, and I somehow came to believe that the Christian sex ethic came to earth fully formed, straight from heaven, about 2,000 years ago.
The fact of the matter is that the prevailing view of modern Christians about sex developed over thousands of years of church history. It has been shaped, influenced, and even twisted by many different thinkers and movements — some helpful, some not-so-helpful.
So, let’s take a look at the church’s checkered past when it comes to sex.
What Jesus said about sex
This will be the shortest section of this article. Jesus said nothing about sex. Not a word. He went as far as affirming monogamous marriage and prohibiting divorce without reason (both of which would have been quite shocking to the culture of his day) — but beyond that, nothing about sex.
The early church leads a sexual revolution
Without any direct command from Jesus, the early Christians set about navigating the minefield of human sexuality in the way that they thought honored God and each other. They took Jesus at his word and committed themselves to sexual monogamy in a way that was truly counter-cultural.
In those days, it was reasonably common for male Roman citizens to have multiple sexual partners and regularly engage with prostitutes for casual sex on the side. Moreover, in the Greco-Roman world, it wasn’t unusual for people to share their spouses. Yes, wife swapping.
While the early Christians were known for their generosity and willingness to share their possessions, their partners were strictly off-limits. Early Christian writer Tertullian said that of the early Christian sub-culture that they are, “One in mind and soul, we do not hesitate to share our earthly goods with one another. All things are common among us but our wives” (Apology 39).
According to author, historian (and atheist) Tom Holland, Christianity revolutionized sex and marriage. “It gave women a dignity that no previous sexual dispensation had offered.” by demanding that men control themselves and prohibiting all forms of rape and sexual exploitation. Christianity confined sexuality within the boundaries of monogamy. It is ironic; Holland notes that these are the same standards for which Christians are now derided, but it was a sexual revolution at the time!
Three cheers for singleness
In ancient times, the long-term single were considered to be living a human life that was less than fully realized. Back then, everyone got married, and everyone had children. Children gave you security and care in old age. Children gave you a legacy — a name that would outlive you. Singleness was not a viable life choice. Singleness was not really on the table. In fact, there were strict laws in the Jewish Talmud that said all men must get married.
Then enter Paul. Paul comes along in 1 Corinthians 7, and he doesn’t say, “Singleness is awful and therefore here are ten steps for finding a mate.” He doesn’t say, “Here are some ways to get yourself a life while waiting for Mr. or Mrs. Right to come along.”
No. Paul says singleness is good. He lifted singleness as a legitimate way to live in a way that would have shocked the world. Suddenly, Paul was calling singleness a gift. In so doing, Christianity was the first religion that held up singleness as good.
No time for sex — Jesus is coming!
Single or married, the early Christians didn’t have much time for sex. Why? Because they lived in full messianic expectation. They believed that Jesus’s second coming was imminent — that he could rock up at any moment and well… you wouldn’t want to be caught in the act, so to speak.
This created an environment where celibacy was exalted over marriage. In fact, to get married, it was thought, would burden a person with worldly responsibilities —like taking care of a spouse, children, and a household — to the neglect of the greater task of spreading the gospel.
Besides, what was the point of getting married when the end of the world was about to end?
The Apostle Paul not only elevated singleness as a legitimate way to live, but he also went further and suggested that practicing celibacy was a higher road of sorts since it allowed Christians to concentrate wholly on things of God.
Of course, the second coming didn’t happen, but the emphasis on celibacy remained. In fact, couples in the second century were expected to stop having sex altogether after producing several children.
An involuntary erection creates a new doctrine
You can’t really talk about the Christian history of sex, without mentioning the influence of Augustine. Fast forward a few hundred years from the church in Acts, and the man considered by many to be western Christianity’s greatest theologian, Augustine of Hippo, came along with his own unique take on sex.
Now, before I lambaste Augustine’s views on human sexuality, it is worth mentioning that there is incredible wisdom in Augustine’s vast array of writings. However, on the subject of sexuality, Augustine had some emotional baggage that may have tainted his view.
In his “Confessions,” written around 397, Augustine speaks on an occasion where, as a 16-year-old, Augustine and his father went to the public baths together in the provincial city of Thagaste, in what is now Algeria. At some point during their visit, the father may have glimpsed that the boy had an involuntary erection or remarked on his recently sprouted pubic hair.
In hopeful anticipation of soon being a grandfather, his father — playfully and joyfully shared the news with Augustine’s mother. However, Augustine’s mother, a devout Christian, responded somewhat differently to the incident. In fact, Augustine says, and I quote, that she “endured a violent spasm of reverent, tremulous trepidation.” The whole episode obviously left a scar on Augustine.
His teaching about human sexuality was overwhelmingly negative. In fact, when he taught about the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Augustine declared that God’s punishment for their plucking the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge was to curse Adam and his wife with a new sensation — sexual lust. He suggested that before they ate the apple, Adam and Eve had enjoyed complete control of their genitals. Their sexual intercourse had been calm, rational, and dispassionate.
Not to mention boring.
However, after the Fall in the Garden of Eden came the loss of control. However, true Holiness demanded control!
It may have been Augustine’s influence that led the papacy to enforce a mandate that all its clergy remain unmarried and celibate. Believe it or not, it wasn’t actually church policy that priests had to be celibate until over a thousand years after Jesus. For much of early Christianity, priests could marry and have children.
Policing the sex lives of Christians
Having brought the sex lives of their church leadership under control, the church set about policing the sex lives of its constituents by introducing wide-ranging rules and reforms — some of which could only be described as bizarre. Here are a few:
Procreation only
The early Christian church argued that intercourse existed for one purpose — procreation. Therefore, any sexual acts for pleasure were widely condemned by the church. Thomas Aquinas, a catholic priest, and philosopher in the 12th Century warned that if a man slept with his wife just for pleasure, it was akin to treating her like a prostitute. “Sex is not for enjoyment,” Aquinas warned, “It is only for procreation. Taking any pleasure from doing it was essentially the same as prostitution.”
And since sex was only for procreation, that meant a ban on sleeping with pregnant women. The church said that sex with a pregnant woman was unnecessary because well… once a woman was pregnant she couldn’t exactly get pregnant again, could she?
To reinforce this rule, the Catholics taught that sex during pregnancy could lead to spontaneous abortions or birth defects. According to a popular medical text during the early church, the fetus might be “defective in vital and other qualities, ill-tempered, sickly, and short-lived” if the parents slept with each other during pregnancy.
Demonizing sexual desire
Augustine’s aversion to sexual desire lived long after his passing. Even thinking about sex was a sin, according to the early Christian church. Anselm of Canterbury, an 11th-century monk, put it this way:
Anselm described sexual desire as “The storm of lust that has smashed and battered my unhappy soul, emptied it of all strength, and left it weak and empty.”
Gosh! Sounds awful! The poor man!
Sex banned for five months per year
The early Christian church went out of its way to limit sexual intercourse — even between married couples. Religious laws and proclamations issued by the Catholic Church tried to restrict when people could sleep with each other, and they ended up banning sex for most of the year.
“No sex on Sundays!” one rule proclaimed, “That is the Lord’s Day, and it shouldn’t be contaminated by lust.” And don’t plan on doing it on Thursdays or Fridays, either, because those days should be spent preparing for communion.
Intercourse was also banned during Lent, before Christmas, and at the Feast of Pentecost, which together added over five months during which it was disallowed. On top of that, early Christians were not supposed to have sex on Feast Days. Yes, you pretty much had to check your calendar in the early church before getting it on.
It all depends on your position
Let’s just say that you did the right thing and got married, then suppressed and withheld your natural, sexual desire until an appropriate day on the calendar for you and your partner to have sex strictly for the purpose of procreation.
Even then, there were a lot of restrictions. Because it was believed that the purpose of sex was procreation, all kinds of non-procreative sexual acts were labeled sinful. Oral sex? No! Anal sex? Definitely, no! And even more surprisingly, the church banned certain sexual positions, which were thought to be bad for procreation. For example, it was believed that you were unlikely to get pregnant if you had sex standing up, so that was also a “No!”
In fact, any sexual positions that the church believed reduced the chances of conception were automatically sinful. Yes, pretty much the only position that was “pleasing to the Lord” was the missionary position.
No shaking hands with the unemployed
It is interesting that in the early Middle Ages, masturbation was not actually considered a serious sin. The earliest Christians might have followed the Romans, who didn’t see masturbation as a problem at all. However, by the 8th century, that had all changed.
The Anglo-Saxon Canons of Theodore said that “He who desired to fornicate with himself and is not able to do so, he must fast for 40 days or 20 days. If he is a boy and does it often, either he is to fast 20 days, or one is to whip him.”
By the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas had decided that masturbation was one of the most serious sins because it was “against nature.” Population declines in the 14th century, particularly after the Black Death, may have contributed to changing views of masturbation. During a population crisis, the “wasting of seed” was a bigger problem.
Don’t mention the ‘S’ word
By the time we had arrived in the modern era, there was so much guilt and shame associated with sexuality and sexual activity ingrained into the psyche of Christians that any discussion about sex was strictly off-limits.
I remember the first time my Father preached a sermon on the topic of sex back in the 1980s — something quite ground-breaking at the time. After the service, he stood at the door and greeted everyone as he always did.
I remember one little old lady getting right up in my Dad’s face and, waving one pointed finger perilously close to his nose, screeching at him, “If you ever mention ‘that word’ in church again, I’m never coming back.” She couldn’t even bring herself to say the word “sex,” because I suppose she was far too upright and pious for the likes of anything slightly pleasurable or necessary for the survival of the human race.
So, young people — many people — were left to grope around in the dark for some semblance of a sex ethic that was both balanced and pleasing to God. The church offered neither. All that it said was, “Don’t do it until you are married.”
The Purity Culture Movement
When it became apparent that naughty Christians — especially the younger ones — were engaging in a bit too much pre-marital hand-holding (or worse), some bright spark decided that it was time for a new approach. Sex, as a topic, was back on the agenda by the mid-to-late twentieth century, driven by a movement known as the purity culture movement.
Purity culture — a subculture of evangelical Christianity that peaked in the 1990s — involved young people pledging to abstain from sex until marriage. The primary tools that the church used to drive home this message of abstinence were fear, guilt, and shame.
Purity culture pushed myths about premarital sex and the guaranteed benefits of abstinence until marriage. Proponents promise Christian young people that if they wait just a little longer, then their dreams will come true — complete with amazing wedding night sex and lifelong sexual and marital bliss.
The problem is, a whole lifetime of messaging about the dangers and wickedness of sex is unlikely to be undone in the act of marriage, and feelings of shame can continue for years.
. . .
Reclaiming a Christian sex ethic
What’s clear from all this is that the church has done a fairly decent job of leaving people feeling confused, ashamed and hurt, through its teaching on human sexuality. In fact, to say that the church has handled the issue of sex relatively poorly would be a generous assessment.
So, what are we to do?
Do we dispense with everything that the church has ever taught us? After all, the idea of complete sexual liberty and freedom sounds really good on paper, but somehow, I feel like it would not be without its own consequences for human relationships.
Instead, I believe that the church ought to be offering the world something more than merely the echo of our times. What exactly does that look like? Well, I do not pretend to have the answers.
However, when I look to the example of Christ, I believe that our teaching on human sexuality should reflect his nature. It should be about enduring faithfulness to one another. It should be about seeking the other person’s good, not merely looking to our own interests. It should be about loving others as we love ourselves. It should be an act of radical self-donation to another person. It should be sacred.
Above all, it should not be tainted with crippling shame and guilt.
—
This post was previously published on Backyard Church.
***
You Might Also Like These From The Good Men Project
Join The Good Men Project as a Premium Member today.
All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.
A $50 annual membership gives you an all access pass. You can be a part of every call, group, class and community.
A $25 annual membership gives you access to one class, one Social Interest group and our online communities.
A $12 annual membership gives you access to our Friday calls with the publisher, our online community.