Rowland Croucher wrote in message:

Re Paul Tillich and infidelity, here’s the relevant bit from Eugene Peterson’s ‘The Wisdom of Each Other: A Conversation Between Spiritual Friends’ (Zondervan, 1998, pp.47-48) – a book worth reading. (I have multiple copies, if anyone’s interested):

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A (female) ‘Net-friend responded:

What I found most disturbing about this book was the way in which the famous and distinguished are constantly being dragged down by their sexual quirks. One wants to believe that there are people somewhere who will not betray their principles the moment their erotic nerves are triggered. But this book is full of evidence to the contrary.

We live in a very sex-negative society, particularly within the Christian frame work. If we are to be effective pastors, indeed effective Christians, we need to understand human sexuality, including our own. And I mean understand it in a way which has very little to do with sociological explanations of what people actually do or fantasise about, but rather focuses on that empathy, that moment when we can say “Ah yes! I feel that too.”

I have often wondered if it is this sex-negativity, combined with the permissiveness of society which seemingly “allows” so much of what crosses boundaries in terms of sexual practices into the practice of things which horrify society – such as the baby raping we are currently seeing in South Africa. After all, if all (nearly all) sex is wrong, then it can only be a little more wrong to rape someone?

As clergy people most of us would be in the situation where we find ourselves endorsing marital sex as holy, good and nourishing to the relationship and the individual. Most of us will have knowingly married couples where the couple lived together before the benefit of the marriage ceremony. I find it difficult to truly believe that the sexual act I laud after the legal marriage is actually any more holy, good and nourishing than the sexual act on the day before the legal marriage. I suspect many people share my doubts.

The reality would then appear to be that the *intentions* (perhaps combined with the actual results) of the parties to the sexual acts are more important than the sanction of the sexual acts by the church. I suspect that it is here that we, as clergy people, start to run into problems. How dare they have sex without my sayso!

In the patriarchal society where the lineage of the mother wasn’t generally recorded at all and where people married as soon as they were sexually “mature” and there was no form of contraception at all it may have been important for a woman to be a virgin when she married in order to ensure that bastards were not foisted on the man’s family. Education and reliable contraception has certainly pushed the age at which we regard young people as marriageable up considerably. My late grandmother matriculated at seventeen and went on to do a bachelor’s degree. She met and married my grandfather at the ripe old age of twenty-one and was regarded as a problem child by some of the older generation (and her peers) who may have left it too late to get any decent man. My aunt was twenty-two when she married. Her children were nearly all in their mid-twenties. My cousins’ children aren’t expected to marry until their late twenties. My mother was thirty two when she met and married my father and she admitted that many people thought she was a frustrated old maid, despite the fact that she’d had a very brief and disastrous war marriage in her youth. A woman of thirty two who marries today is regarded as being fairly sensible and probably ready for marriage. What to do with one’s sexuality, sexual urges and sexual practices until marriage?

In many ways the church has totally ignored the changes in society, and we pay a heavy price for that in terms of whether society regards us as relevant or not. Sexuality is probably the area in which the church has changed the least and has accordingly been given the least credibility. The failure of Vatican II and the pope to bring the Roman Catholic Church into the fold of non-reproductive sexuality impacted severely on the entire church, and it echoes down through the years.

With the massive impact that HIV/AIDS is making on developing countries questions of sexuality continue to emerge in places and from people we have regarded as being generally “sexless”. Mandela, Tutu, Patricia de Lille are all icons within the South African community who have spoken out on television about these things. While each of these people are parents and have obviously had sex, one does not regard them with the same sexual view that one regards Madonna – either the original or the multi-millionaire. The fact that they have chosen to speak about sex means that ordinary people are having sex. Your neighbours and mine. Maybe even you or I.

(I’m single, middle-aged and celibate for the last sixteen years, but you probably know what I mean). We need to develop a theology of sexuality which relates to God’s will for people’s lives – and people don’t necessarily believe that God is calling them to perpetual virginity and/or celibacy or even to celibacy for ten or fifteen years.

I think we need to be looking at sexual ethics in terms of more than just abortion, surrogate motherhood, divorce and artificial insemination and the ubiquitous question of homosexuality. We need to be looking at questions of responsible sexuality in a world of deadly sexually transmitted diseases. Condoms need to become neutral objects, with the emotional and moral impact of facial tissues, to be used when needed without shame or blame. We need to look at questions of children becoming sexually active at fourteen, thirteen, twelve and even younger. We need to look at questions of people who have been married but who are not now married who remain sexually active – and not with their former partners. We need to look as same-sex sexual activities. We need to explore options of the ethical, moral and responsible expression of sexuality outside of marriage.

Will this affect our theology? OK, rhetorical question. Will this invalidate our theology? I believe not. I believe it will impact positively on the role we are called to fulfil in society – that of being salt and light.