I’m a big believer in asking good questions. This new book does that as it gives voice to a variety of experiences people have had growing up in American churches. It’s a necessary conversation to have if we want to move toward a more beautiful and holistic integration of sexuality and spirituality.

Find out how to win a free copy »

I grew up in a fundamentalist church, so I was pretty much obligated to attend youth groups and summer Bible camps. This verse of “Teen for God” by Dar Williams sums up my experiences pretty well:

The girls have looks and the girls have rules
They came here from their Bible schools
They can make you pay attention
To the way you dress and eat
Make you trip over your own two feet and they
Kneel down on their towels at night
Their nightgowns glow with a Holy light
And we pray for the sinners
And their drunken car wrecks
And vow that I’ll never get high
And have sex
I’m a teen for God

Like most church kids, I grew up thinking that sexual feelings were inherently sinful. Of course, that didn’t stop me. My first boyfriend was from church, and he was 16 (I was 12). He drove a big yellow Cadillac and somehow my parents weren’t freaked out that I was dating someone that much older than me. They didn’t have anything to worry about though. We “dated” for nine months and never did anything more than hold hands. But I remember vividly the dance our hands would do as they’d edge closer to each other as we sat next to one another during Sunday evening services. I was heart-flutteringly aware of our bodies so close together, of how much I wanted him to hold my hand, and how sweet it felt when he finally did.

My next boyfriend was from church too. We pretty much went right to making out in the downstairs Sunday School classrooms. I remember us finding a dark corner, sneaking behind those sliding partition doors, and laying on the floor and kissing. That’s all we ever did, but we did it every week.

For all of the hormones permeating the air in that little white church, I don’t remember hearing much about sex. At least not open and honest conversations about sex. Instead, the message that sex was bad was communicated through rules forbidding us from seeing movies in the theater, listening to secular music (burn those Amy Grant tapes!) or going to school dances — because those things were seen as gateways to promiscuity.

Churches are so seldom sources of constructive dialogue about sexuality. Yes, there are some lucky folks who grow up in churches that talk candidly about sexuality and prepare young people to enjoy healthy sex lives. But for the majority of us who grew up going to church, we usually need to go through a time of sorting out fact from fiction. (Will the angels really cry if I touch myself? Does my worth as a woman really boil down to the condition of my hymen?)

The new book, Oh God, Oh God, Oh God!: Young Adults Speak Out About Sexuality and Christian Spirituality, provides a window into that sorting out process. The essays cover wide ranging topics, including purity rings, homosexuality, body image, porn, sexual abuse, infertility, parenthood, fidelity, and embodiment. I appreciated that the Co-Editors, Heather Godsey and Lara Blackwood Pickrel, acknowledge in the Introduction that although they wanted to have a broader range of voices in this collection, the contributions were mainly written by white heterosexuals. (And that’s part of the problem with conversations about sex and the church, they are dominated by white heterosexual voices.) 

I don’t share the perspectives of every author, and that’s not really the point. The point, as I see it, is to share stories and ask questions. Each essay in the book is followed by a Bibliography, some Additional Resources, and Questions for Discussion and Contemplation. Questions like:

• What is your definition of pornography?
• What would happen if the church truly affirmed the God-created beauty and worth of the human body?
• What kinds of things would you include in a new sexual ethic for the church, one that both embraces the gift of sexuality and promotes seeking the image of God in our partners?

Important questions, don’t you think?

CONTEST:

I will be giving away 6 copies of Oh God, Oh God, Oh God!: Young Adults Speak Out About Sexuality and Christian Spirituality. To win a copy, do one or more of the following:

1. Leave a comment on this blog post
2. Become a Fan of LivingSexuality on Facebook and post a comment on this wall post
3. Tweet about this contest. Link to this blog post and include the hashtag #OhGodBook

The contest is open for a week. At 5pm on Thursday, February 18th I will pick 2 winners from blog post comments, 2 winners from Facebook, and 2 winners from Tweets. Do all three and you’ll have three chances to win.

- – - – -

BONUS FEATURE:

Here’s a pic of me from 1985, sitting on the stoop of my cabin at Spencer Lake Bible Camp in Waupaca, Wisconsin.

My most vivid memory from camp was when they would do the altar call at the end of the nightly service, and everyone who didn’t have the gift of tongues was supposed to go forward and get prayed for. So I did. But I had a hard time not being distracted by the thought of all the cute boys in the Snack Shack licking their ice cream cones and looking so kissable with their sun-loved faces.

I never did speak in tongues.

- – - – -

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of the book for review. My endorsement appears on the back cover.

I was going to write a long list of the books I’ve read this year and which ones I’d recommend and for whom… but there is only so much time in the day. So I decided to narrow it down to a few books, though I realize they’ll probably only appeal to about half of you (sorry guys, maybe next year you’ll get your own list). For fresh takes on puberty, periods, self-esteem, and passion, I give you:

All The Wrong People Have Self-Esteem: An Inappropriate Book for Young Ladies – To give you a sense of what’s in store, the author runs a workshop in NYC called “Mistakes on Purpose,” believes “Collage is a way of life” and this is her website. Her premise? “interesting people are full of doubt. People who are totally sure their way is the only way are always wrong. I think self-esteem is a myth perpetrated by psychologists, movie stars, magazines, and the pharmaceutical industry. They want you to think something’s wrong with you because you don’t have self-esteem like you ‘should.’ Oh, please! georgia o’keeffe, beethoven, and mark twain all had their doubts, but managed to get a few things done, and so can you.”  Read more…

I love the idea behind My Little Red Book – a collection of 92 stories of first periods.

Menarche is a rite of passage for women, yet it is often shrouded in such secrecy that young girls assume it is something they need to fear, or at least be ashamed of. Some of the stories in this collection do recount sad tales of adults who did little to prepare girls for this transition into womanhood. Yet, there are stories of tenderness and celebration.

I hope that this book will begin a new way of thinking about and talking about first periods (and all periods, for that matter). I wonder how euphemisms like “The Curse” impact how women feel about menstruation, their bodies, and sexuality.

Menstruation is a sign that another life is possible. It is an opportunity to celebrate womanhood, creation, life, motherhood, and Self. When did these become shameful things?

Okay, so it may only be a book review, but I feel pretty proud to be published in the current Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy.

I reviewed “Sex & the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance and Religion on America’s College Campuses” by Donna Freitas.

Freitas interviewed and surveyed students from a variety of colleges, including Catholic and Evangelical schools. Initially she thought she would be comparing these religious campuses with the non-religious ones, but she soon discovered that the real distinction was between the Evangelical campuses and everybody else.

What I couldn’t say in my review is that I totally identified with her description of the Evangelical campus. I went to a conservative Christian college in Minnesota in the mid-90s. There was a lot of pressure to NOT LOOK sexual, NOT ACT sexual, and definitely NOT BE sexual outside of marriage. There was a strict code of conduct that included things like stipulations on how long a woman’s skirt had to be – and it was enforced.

We also had visitation hours strictly enforced. As a resident assistant my junior year, it was my duty to monitor the dorms on the weekends and be sure that if the opposite sex was visiting, that the door was open, the lights were on, and there was no hanky-panky going on. I may not have agreed with the rules, but I managed to adhere to (most of) them. Imagine my confusion, then, when at one point I was taken to task for having a piece of art in my room that was deemed offensive. The closest thing I had to anything “suggestive” was a tasteful (I thought) black and white print of Isabella Rossellini and Mikhail Baryshnikov. (Although, now that I think of it — he did have his shirt off! And they were in an embrace. And dancers do wear those tights that show everything. Ah yes, I can see what was so disturbing to one’s virgin eyes!)

So although the other schools have their share of sexual issues to deal with, it’s clear (at least to me, and I believe to Freitas) that the Evangelical campuses have their share of problems as well. They may not be the “obvious” problems that draw attention, but Evangelical campuses are perpetuating a possibly dangerous naivete among their students.

Ignorance is not bliss.

I was flipping through the book “The Dirt on Sex” last night. It’s a Christian book aimed at talking to kids about sex — “It’s real. It’s raw. It’s true. It’s the dirt.”

Author Justin Lookadoo does give some good physiological information, such as the fact that sperm is present in pre-ejaculate and that a girl can get pregnant at any time during her cycle. And while it’s true that many sexually active teens wish they had waited longer to have sex, Lookadoo is heavy-handed as he repeatedly talks about the “guilt” and “shame” some teens experience.

He paints a very ugly picture of sex with comments like: “with oral sex you give the power to destroy you to the other person” and “the rush of self-hate because you have given someone a very private, intimate experience and it was treated as a joke.” He clearly believes that teenage sex is always without genuine feeling because boys only use sex to prove they’re not gay and to impress their friends, and girls only get pressured into sex when they have a low self-image. That is overly-simplistic and sexist.

It’s wrong to promise kids that “married virgins do it best.” First, only 5% of people are virgins when they get married, so it’s pretty rare for two virgins to get married. Second, plenty of virgins have sexual problems when they get married. And plenty of non-virgins have terrific married sex lives.

Sorry Justin, your “truth” is a bit muddy.