Sex Ed. For Adults

Exasperated during a class discussion about sexuality, a female undergraduate said, “I just want to explore my sexuality without being called a whore!” Don’t we all, my dear, don’t we all, I thought. Separated by a generation, my student and I were both raised in evangelical environments that shaped our thinking about sexuality with harsh binary oppositions. People are pure or impure, Christian or worldly, and for women especially, madonna (with a lower case m) or whore. In Sexuality and Holy Longing, Lisa Graham McMinn quotes an undergraduate who wrote, “sexuality is more about repression than expression, especially in the Christian subculture.” Indeed, despite widespread calls for grace, evangelicals often use rule-based approaches that establish a purity treehouse club to which one comfortably belongs, doesn’t belong, or is scrambling back up the ladder toward.

But critiques of such evangelical legalism are readily available, and McMinn wastes no time ranting. She creates a framework for sexuality that is both fresh and orthodox, and uses it to discuss adolescence, singleness, marriage, parenting, and the nature of sex and gender. Grounded in her sociology expertise, she describes sexuality as both “embedded in culture and embodied in physical, biological bodies.” A person experiences sexuality in the body, as male or female, and makes sense of that experience through culture (or “cultural scripts,” in McMinn’s words), but the human yearning for beauty, intimacy, and satisfaction transcends all such differences. We are made for relationships, but we can never fully satisfy our longings in this life. Grace is the bridge between our longings and their incomplete satisfaction. In this way, sexuality illuminates our longing for heaven, where we will experience wholeness at last.

Theologically, McMinn mixes Reformed understandings of creation, fall, and redemption with a Pietist emphasis on lived experience and longing for heaven. She also writes from her tradition, using the Quaker concept of querying with chapter-end questions that invite introspection and dialogue rather than simple answers. Throughout, she develops a “theology of grace” that promotes the embracing and expressing of sexuality in a broken world.

Because the book is discussion-oriented and because I was hungry, I tested it on two groups of friends. (I invited both men and women but ended up with all women.) Two holy longings—for dinner and dessert—were met by enchiladas verde and brownies, and others were explored in discussion.

The first gathering included four women, aged 21-27, who read the chapter titled “Adolescence: Awakenings and Choices.” They appreciated McMinn’s framework of offering information and inspiration rather than rules and strategies for repression. One woman said that instead of appreciating the God-created mystery of sex, Christians in her circles declared the mysteriousness of all things sexual, inadvertently enhancing the curiosity prompted by taboo. Another said that the “inspiration and information” frame would support her mentoring relationship with an adolescent girl.

McMinn says that adolescence is “primarily a time of awakenings and choices, of opportunities and the refining of one’s identity.” She encourages parents and elders to help adolescents make wise choices and understand their rapidly changing lives. The chapter does, however, assume that teens are raised by parents who are appropriately protective and attentive, and many of the discussion questions assume the reader has parented adolescents. It gives scant attention to the dark side of adolescent sexuality, in which children—of both attentive and inattentive parents—are exposed to sexuality through adult media, sexual abuse, non-consensual fondling, or supposedly consensual relationships between underage girls and adult men.

McMinn advocates “offering ways of exploring sexuality other than sexually acting out with boyfriends and girlfriends,” including using the body in sports and academics, investing in church and community, and forming same- and opposite-sex friendships. Ignoring her point, we went straight for the sexual stuff: non-marital sex (forbidden) and masturbation (a sad substitute for sex, but “we hunger and satisfy our hunger with the means available to us”). She recounts a conversation about masturbation with one young man in which she suggested that he could approach God not just in shame but with gratitude for his sexuality and the associated complex and confusing emotions. I looked twice through this section but found nary a mention of Onan. McMinn seems to encourage us to accept masturbation as part of many peoples’ lives and discuss it for what it is, an incomplete satisfaction of a God-given longing.

Our discussion stayed on masturbation for some time. (If you, on the other hand, have had enough, you can skip to the end of the paragraph.) One woman said, “I think she should have written more about female masturbation as a form of healthy self-exploration.” In response, another woman said, “What? I didn’t know women did that!” There is little in the book about female masturbation, and little on compulsion and addiction in masturbation. My friend, the female masturbation advocate, suggested that an entire book could be written about the subject from a Christian perspective. (Feel free to take the idea and run with it; I don’t plan to write that book myself.)

The second dinner discussion, on the chapter “Sleeping Alone: Sexuality and Singleness,” got worldly. These ten women, aged 27–40, have years of experience being single. They appreciated McMinn’s blunt statements about loss and sadness: “Loss is part of life … the world is broken; it is not as it should be. We are incomplete, single or married, and we long for what we do not have.” They detest the sacramentalizing of singleness, especially the notion that singles have special religious options such as “the unencumbered ability to love and live freely … unrestrained by obligation.” In fact, many singles have serious obligations and responsibilities to their friends, families, and jobs. Despite stereotypes to the contrary, they are not on-call to fill ministry gaps. One woman said, “Just address the longing of unwanted singleness. Don’t pat me on the head and say it’s holy.”

Sexuality and Holy Longing assumes that most Christian singles follow orthodox Christian practice in sexual morality. In our group, one woman said, “I’m not 17 anymore, and I don’t buy all the rules. Maybe sex before marriage can be redeemed. Maybe healthy unmarried people have better sex than unhealthy married people. Maybe the rules aren’t chiseled in stone. I want to be holy, responsible, and honest. I also want to have sex.” Others discussed sexual boundaries, flirting in bars, sex toys, and nudity in the performing arts, all areas of moral complexity.

The chapter on marriage, which was not subjected to enchiladas and discussion, describes marriage as one of God’s ways to fulfill the needs of the community (by stabilizing relationships, aiding economic security, and providing a home for children) and of the individuals involved. McMinn situates contemporary marriage practices within history, describing various marriage patterns over time, and also biologically, in terms of mammalian sexuality. Her treatment of marital sexuality focuses on myth-busting, including the supposed boringness of married sex and the supposed lower sex drive of women. She describes marriage as both exclusive and abundant and addresses ways in which marriage opens people to new and fruitful relationships while shaping new boundaries for cross-sex friendships. The chapter also touches on addiction, abuse, and adultery, and devotes a section to describing healthy practices of confession and redemption.

Sexuality and Holy Longing is a bold book. Again, McMinn reminds us that sexuality is always encultured, its universal nature expressed in different cultures in different ways. We learn how to understand it from orthodoxy, Scripture, and our own experience, all understood within our limited cultural framework. Ultimately it is grace, and not the perfection of our ideas, that will save us. Her book will offend readers who believe that sex isn’t a matter for public discussion and alienate others who are simply weary of our hyper-sexualized culture. Moreover, although her orthodox commitments are quite clear, she risks being misunderstood as excessively open-minded.

At its best, however, evangelicalism has resisted cultural withdrawal. Carl F.H. Henry advocated thorough cultural engagement in The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (1947), and did so later as the editor of Christianity Today, publishing Christian considerations of racism, civil rights, poverty, and social justice. McMinn takes a similar approach, but in a cultural context in which sexual images, talk, and practice are explicit and crass. Her response, forthright and biblically grounded, is a blessed contribution to a frequently profane discourse.

Sexuality and Holy Longing should become a standard text for Christian college, seminary, and church courses about sexuality. It is for everyone, not just engaged couples or newly marrieds. Above all, McMinn models a healthy way to take on the issues. She shows herself in intimate dialogue with students and friends about questions that have answers requiring more living than declaring. She shows individuals living out their sexuality not in trepidation, but with confidence that God accompanies them with plentiful grace, love, and opportunities to change course.

Jenell Williams Paris is associate professor of anthropology at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is the author of Urban Disciples: A Beginner’s Guide to Serving God in the City (Judson) and Birth Control for Christians: Making Wise Choices (Baker).