Some time ago I was talking to one of the Aboriginal leaders in my community. She explained that she had once been a Christian, but had given up the Christian Faith to return to the religion of her forebears. There was a clear cultural preference involved in her choice. I can see similar choices being made by some in my own ethnic group. In the British Isles, some have returned to the pre-Christian religion of their forebears as well. In other places in Europe, the Christian Faith and pre-Christian faiths are often mixed together in popular piety. I wonder to what extent such choices represent a cultural rather than religious choice? We tend to laugh at such movements, seeing them as “pagan”, or superstitious. However, this may only represent our own later cultural conditioning.

The world’s two major religions – Christianity and Islam – as well as Judaism, all derive from the Middle East, and what can be called “Semitic” culture. (Although the term “Semitic” is often used as a synonym for “Jewish”, it is also used to describe the culture and tribes of the Ancient Near East.) Such cultures have attitudes to sexuality which are part of their cultural psyche. Such attitudes to sexuality involve a whole constellation of thoughts and emotions, and like many psychological processes, the emotions often carry more weight than the thoughts.

What is distinctive about Semitic attitudes to sexuality? Perhaps we see the distinctive traits most clearly when we confront Islam. Once while on a tour of Egypt, our guide was constantly having to tell the North American women to cover their shoulders and not wear singlet tops. In that culture, exposure of the shoulders was seen as a sexual thing. Recently we have had the veiling of Muslim women in focus. As explained to me, this is a matter of modesty to some (but not all) Muslims. It would seem that the hair – of women, but not men – is also a sexual thing in Semitic cultures.

Is this simply a cultural difference? At what point does the sexualisation of parts of the body represent either a sexual obsession or a fetish? Does the adoption of such an obsession by a whole culture protect it from accusations of being the product of a sick mind?

Christianity is probably the most “European-ised” of all the Semitic religions, thanks to the Roman Empire and a cove named St Paul. Nevertheless, Semitic culture flows through into the Christian religion. Since we have all been conditioned by that cultural mentality, are we incapable of stepping back and perceiving its effects? Undoubtedly there are some things we don’t take seriously, like New Testament comments about modesty barring braided hair, gold, pearls or expensive clothes (1 Timothy 2:9). However, when some get upset about breastfeeding in public, is that Semitic attitude to sexuality showing its true colours? Would we think, and more importantly, *feel* differently, if we had remained as Druids or Celts, dancing naked around Stonehenge at the spring equinox? Is it possible for us to distinguish between Christian ethics and Semitic culture, when it comes to sexuality, and to discard the latter?

a Netfriend