Good Christian Sex--Introduction

A couple of years ago, I did a lengthy, multi-part review of Dr. Greg Popcak's book Holy Sex!  In general, the book was, well, not good.  There were some decent parts, but the good stuff was buried under the overwhelming tide of a stark duality--everything related to sex can be divided into "Holy Sex" (which is good) and "eroticism" (which is bad).  It was a more sophisticated version of the "two boxes" approach to sex that causes so many problems.  Plus, there is the Popcakian weirdness, like how wearing lingerie is like clergy wearing vestments during services.

But the biggest disappointment about the book is that a book like Holy Sex! is good and needed.  A nuanced take on sex and sexuality is desperately needed in Christianity, especially among more progressive visions of Christianity.  It is easy, though problematic, to simply "just say no," but it is hard to come up with a set of tools for navigating the complex and turbulent waters of sexuality.  I don't think anyone really loves the idea that "anything goes" with regard to sex, but because we don't have a good approach, people often default to that position.  I threw out some unorganized ideas, but there is much, much more work to be done in this space.

To that end, I recently stumbled upon Good Christian Sex, by Rev. Bromleigh McCleneghan, a Methodist who is a pastor at a United Church of Christ (UCC) church in Illinois.  The book has the provocative subtitle of "Why Chastity Isn't the Only Option and Other Things the Bible Says About Sex," which is encouraging.  Based on the Amazon reviews, the book is either a wonderful book or the Word of Satan himself (according to folks who proudly claim that they didn't read the book), which strikes me as promising as well.  I am also particularly interested to read a book about sex and Christianity written by a woman, as far too much of this space has been dominated by dudes talking to other dudes about dudes.

So, the plan is to do the same style of review for this book that I did for Holy Sex!  I just ordered the book, and it should arrive via the magic of Amazon soon.  As with Holy Sex!, rather than reading through the whole book and doing a review at the end, I am going to go chapter by chapter without reading ahead (perhaps grouping a couple of chapters together, depending how the book is set up).  I feel like that provides a more authentic reaction to the book, and I think it worked well with Holy Sex!    

The book is scheduled to arrive on Saturday, so I hope to have a post on the first section next week.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jesus Doesn't Care if You Masturbate, and Other Provocations

Image
1.  A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled upon this post on the Patheos Catholic channel .  In it, a young woman named Marina S. Olsen began what she promised is a series of posts discussing sexual sins, and she begins with masturbation.  To call the post alarmist would not do it justice--even in the heyday of the drug scares in the 80s, an anti-drug ad that adopted this tone would be seen as over-the-top.   But something struck me in reading her post--Ms. Olsen believes, with an apparently unshakable conviction, that what the Catholic Church has to say about masturbation is true.  Actually, that's not quite right--she takes as a given  that what the Church says about masturbation is true.  It is noticeable that at no point does she try to do the Dr. Greg trick, which is to justify her opposition to masturbation on the basis of ostensibly neutral or scientific grounds .  No, her thesis is that people despair about masturbation because masturbation is going to result in those folks
Read more

Another Theology of the Body, Part VI--A Theological Exploration of the Clitoris

I was introduced to The Body's Grace by Frank from Letters to the Catholic Right in this post , where he quotes Williams saying: It puts the question which is also raised for some kinds of moralist by the existence of the clitoris in women; something whose function is joy. If the creator were quite so instrumentalist in ‘his’ attitude to sexuality, these hints of prodigality and redundancy in the way the whole thing works might cause us to worry about whether he was, after all, in full rational control of it. But if God made us for joy…? I want to talk about the first part of that quote here, regarding the clitoris.  I am not aware of any theology that has been done on the clitoris, but there should be.  As Williams alludes to, the existence and nature of the clitoris is a theological "problem," especially if you want to hold on to traditional Christian sexual morality.  It is especially problematic if you want to hold that sexuality needs to be understood through the
Read more

Holy Sex!--Part 3.3 Getting Down to Business, Part II

Chapter 12 is about foreplay.  Most everyone acknowledges that foreplay is good, and this chapter is no exception.  Popcak makes the interesting but seemingly effective choice to break foreplay down into the various senses.  So, for example, under seeing he discusses things like wearing lingerie, under smell he suggests to use scented candles, etc.  There is nothing revolutionary or earthshaking here, but the suggestions are solid and reasonable. He also provides an unambiguous defense of oral sex.  Some might be puzzled as to why oral sex needs defending, but the traditional position of the Church opposed oral sex--hence the reason it was traditionally grouped with anal sex under the heading of "sodomy."  So, Popcak is stepping out a bit on a limb here, and he deserves his kudos for that.  He also makes clear that oral sex goes both ways, subject only to the One Rule.  Good on him for recognizing the needs of the ladies in this realm. I could see how his constant use of
Read more