Categories: uncategorized
Date: 10 October 2007 19:14:56
"They're repressive institutions hung up on sex" also known as "They're out of touch with modern life" or "They're not exactly gay friendly spaces"
Yup, piece of wreckage number 3 is the sex one.
Now regular readers will know this is where the wreckage may get an ickle bit sharp, & may still be a bit warm. Still here goes.
Firstly as somebody who has been married, (largely but not exclusively as a result of buying into the whole evangelical Christian approach to sex), divorced and has faced coming to terms with their own sexuality I know there is some truth in all of those statements. However, I also know they are extremely two dimensional statements which disguise a more complex, greater truth.
For all the "they're hung up about sex" people in churches actually tend to avoid the subject like the plague because there is a huge difference often between their public pronouncements and personal views. To be honest, in my experience, the personal views often have many more shades of grey in them than they'd like to admit. There tends to be alot of "should think" going on.
Churches also know there are a great diversity of views and open diversity isn't something churches tend to do very often. Additionally seeing as churches tend to have a disproportionate number of people in stable marriages in them it can be easy to slip into making absolute statements which don't challenge them personally. What I have found, particularly during the coming out process, is that when faced with the challenge of how to relate to somebody who is non-heterosexual they are actually lovely. However, when they are talking about the subject in an abstract sense, not being aware of the personal aspect, the discussions can be horrendously bigoted and homophobic in nature.
Now don't get me wrong I'm in no way trying to deny the horror that many people have faced within churches because of the lines taken on a range of sexual issues, (I know too many people dealing with the damage years afterwards). What I am saying that the largely due to the silence and apparent fear of open diversity the relationship between the church and sex is much more complicated than we often acknowledge.
In terms of some books to help you if you are interested in any of these issues and looking at the different perspectives the church takes here's a few:
The Way Forward? Christian voices on Homosexuality and the Church ed. Timothy Bradshaw, Faith beyond Resentment by James Alison and Reluctant Journey A pilgrimage of faith from homophobia to Christian love by George S.E. Hopper are worth a read.
To balance things out you may also wish to read Holiness and Sexuality Ed David Peterson.
On sex / family and Christianity generally Theology and Families by Adrian Thatcher, Dreaming of Eden by Kathy Galloway and Memories of Bliss by Jo Ind are all worth a read.
So my conclusions after all of that, yes it may be an important part of wreckage, but it is a piece which is not all that it appears.