William Frey has been a leader among those fighting to affirm historical sexual standards in the Episcopal Church. In this guest editorial, he explains what kind of sex Christians are for, not just what they are against. Bishop Frey is dean and president of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, Ambridge, Pennsylvania.
After all the debate about sex at denominational conventions this summer, it would be tempting to think conservative members of mainline churches are enmeshed in a kind of Victorian prudery. Those who have opposed liberalizing tendencies seem to some always to be telling people “don’t.” It is time for those who hold to historic standards to dispel that mistaken notion. While it comes with clear limits, sex is great. After all, God invented it.
The Bible’s attitude toward sexuality is perhaps nowhere better described than in the Song of Solomon. Admittedly, some Christians have at times been embarrassed, even scandalized, by its graphic depictions. The first editors of the King James Version tried to give it a “G” rating by their chapter headings, which suggested that the book was not about sex at all, but about Christ and the church. But only a healthy appreciation of sex could lead the biblical writer to remark, with evident pride, that when Moses died at the age of 120, both his eyesight and his “natural force” (which some scholars believe refers to sexual potency) were undiminished (Deut. 34:7). And Jesus’ first miracle was performed to enliven a wedding.
Christians, in other words, are not prudes. We like sex. We celebrate sex. We thank God for sex.
But—and here we differ radically with our society—we do not see sex as a right or as an end in itself, but as part of discipleship. When we say no to promiscuity or other substitutes for marriage, we do so in defense of good sex. It is not from prudery that the Bible advocates lifelong, faithful, heterosexual marriage, but out of a conviction that the freedom and loving abandon that are necessary for sexual ecstasy come only from a committed marital relationship.
The Christian vision of stable marital love is so powerful that even counterfeits are attractive and can occasionally produce some degree of love and affection. But only the real thing really works. Only the genuine article grows and deepens and passes itself along to the next generation.
Perhaps we ought to make long marriages our image—our “icon”—of sex. An icon is a picture we look to as a model. We study and meditate upon it because it reveals some aspect of God’s glory in the world.
Our society has made sex its icon. That’s why it is found on every magazine stand, in every commercial, every movie aimed at teenagers. This icon portrays only well-curved young women and well-muscled young men. It celebrates sex for individual satisfaction.
But look at a couple celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Let’s make them our icon of sex. Their bodies may sag and creak. Their hair is thin or gone. But we see in them something that makes us want to cheer them on. Through them, and only through them and that kind of committed love, shines something of God’s glory.
This is sex we should celebrate. And this is why we have all those “rules and regulations” for sex, why we have to say no to so many things people want to do. Sex was made for human beings, not human beings for sex. This ideal is so glorious that we have to hold it up as a possibility. To do anything else would be to rob people of a glimpse of the fullness of God’s dream for the creation.
Is Apartheid History?
January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation took effect in the United States of America. Thenceforth, slavery as a legal fact belonged to history. But more than 128 years later, racial discrimination and serious de facto segregation still exists in the United States. A racism-free society requires more than better laws.
June 17, 1991, South Africa’s Parliament voted massively to repeal the Population Registration Act, and President F. W. de Klerk declared that apartheid “belongs to history.” Perhaps. If the persistence of American racism is any clue, South Africa has a long and difficult trek ahead. Several factors make the creation of a democratic republic with political, economic, and educational opportunity for all a distant goal.
First, the South African constitution needs to be overhauled—not easy when the various political and social factions have distinctly different visions of post-apartheid South Africa. White leadership must manage the pace of reform, keeping it brisk enough to encourage enlightened elements, while not outpacing its constituency’s ability to absorb change. Among blacks, divisions between the older, more pragmatic leaders and their younger, more ideological counterparts must be healed. Only then can a shared vision be forged and the legal foundations for a new society laid.
Second, educational opportunity must be provided to those who have been deprived. South Africa’s economic engines are stalled. External sanctions have left them starving for capital. And the restricting of good educational opportunities to whites has left them short on well-prepared workers. The global shift toward an information economy and high-technology requires an educated work force. But a recent poll of South African university students showed that most hold little hope for their nation’s future, and they plan to emigrate.
But education provides more than economic petrol. Because educated people make a habit of expanding their understandings, racial reconciliation thrives where education is valued. South Africa presently provides four times as much money to educate each white student as it makes available for the schooling of the typical black child. Creating a level playing field of educational opportunity will require an enormous commitment of capital.
In addition to better education and economic opportunity, a spiritual ingredient must be stirred into any recipe for racial reconciliation. Dean Curry, chair of the department of history and political science at Messiah College, calls de Klerk “a courageous and morally grounded politician,” pointing out that the president comes from a branch of the Dutch Reformed Church that has never bought into the theological justification of apartheid. Curry notes that de Klerk has repeatedly spoken of apartheid as immoral. And South Africans as a whole are serious about morality. (Without that commitment, the Byzantine theological justification for apartheid would never have been necessary.) South Africans, says Curry, have few symbols they can share—not even a common flag. But they do have the church.
Lonni Jackson concurs. “South Africa has one thing going for it,” says Jackson, research director for African affairs at the Institute for Religion and Democracy. “The church is much more influential there than in the U.S.,” he says, and thus it can “become a force for change and reconciliation.” Too often American Christians have focused their efforts on economic sanctions. But as the legal framework of apartheid passes, prayer and support for indigenous agents of reconciliation and relief become crucial. Such organizations as Africa Enterprise (for which Jackson has worked), the National Initiative for Reconciliation, and Operation Hunger deserve concrete support, he says.
Remembering our own history, Americans will realize that racial reconciliation is the task of every generation. The road ascends, but slowly. After the repeal of apartheid’s legal framework, we must not relax our concern for the healing of South Africa, but we must commit ourselves to support those who are giving—and perhaps laying down—their lives in its cause.
By David Neff.
