Sex, God & the Conservative Church: A Review

Tina Schirmer Sellers is a fascinating person within the context of American Christianity, and if her book is any indication, she probably wishes that she weren't. I just finished Sex, God & the Conservative Church: Erasing Shame from Sexual Intimacy and I have to say that I am really excited that this book is going out into the world—it is very much needed. We certainly need more people joining her efforts and this book intends to help with that project.

Sellers is a Christian therapist and researcher who holds a PhD in Clinical Sexology, teaches at a Christian University (Seattle Pacific University), and has been looking into the impact that the "Purity Movement" had on conservative Christians since somewhere around 2000 (she gives a good account of what that process has looked like HERE). And that isn't the sort of thing we generally expect to find among Christian (and particularly Evangelical Christian) counselors these days. In an environment where sexuality is sill perceived as threatening and awkward, Tina Schirmer Sellers is a sunlight and a stiff breeze. I want all of the Christian counselors out there to read her book. And I want her to turn this book into at least three other books.

The book itself has two distinct audiences. First, she is writing to therapists and counselors (Christian or otherwise) who will be, and already are, working with people who were raised in conservative Christianity. Second, she is writing to Christians who want to get a better understanding of "how we got here" and how to think positively about sexuality from a Christian perspective. Because I am the latter, I will not be reviewing the book for it's quality as a manual for therapists beyond recognizing that from my layman's perspective it seems to be very well researched. 

As a Christian who grew up in the thick of the "Purity Movement" within Evangelical Christianity, the real meat of the book for me was in the first five (out of eight) chapters. Sellers starts with an overview of the last 30-ish years of conservative Christian thinking and teaching on the subject of sex and sexuality, then provides an solid survey of the Western Church's teaching and evolution on the subject. That is followed by an exploration of the current Western (American) environment and messaging on sexuality, before two chapters exploring her own research and thoughts into a healthy, joyful, and sex-positive understanding of sexuality, based in Hebrew tradition together with New-Testament Christian theology. The book ends with her advice to therapists and counselors about how they can best help their clients heal from the damage which the purity movement and western culture have brought about. In other words, she describes the problem, identifies its causes, offers corrective thinking, and ends with specific solutions—the book is excellently organized, and (as a bonus) winsomely written with helpful anecdotes, case studies, and illustrations throughout.

My only complaint about the book is that it is too short. I regularly found myself at the end of a given chapter wishing that she had written a full book on that particular subject (and I am still eager to dive into the many books, blogs, journal articles, and researchers she cites throughout the book). After a little reflection, I can only hope that Sellers will follow this book up with first, a more exhaustive book (maybe as a collaboration with some theologians and Christian Historians) on the history of Jewish and Christian teaching on sexuality generally, and the shape of the last 40 years or so particularly; second, a rigorous theological exploration of God and eros (though she does reference some books which I have not yet read and which may do this quite well); and third, a more comprehensive survey of the messages which Christians have grown up with over the last 30-40 years in Western and Christian culture—I would love to read her thoughts on the impact that the LGBT "debate" has had on the sexual health of LGBTQ+ and cis, straight Christians. But I do not mean that to be a real critique, I suspect that Sex, God & the Conservative Church already does as much as can be done in a single volume and Sellers certainly avoids any sense of leaving an argument or explanation incomplete. As most good books do, it left me eager to learn and understand more.

I have already recommended this book to my pastor and am planning to recommend it to my Christian counselor and therapist friends, as well as to anyone who is working to understand the sexual shame and dysfunction plaguing Christian Gen-Xers and Millennials. This book is sorely needed and I really hope that it will become an active part of the conversation going forward.

Sex, God & the Conservative Church: Erasing Shame from Sexual Intimacy is available for pre-order now on Amazon and will be released on April 27, 2017

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the author and/or publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR,Part 255.

Homosexuality in the Old Testament: My Defense of LGB Relationships Part 3

Note this is Part 3 in a series which begins HERE

For my series in defense of the identities of transgender folk click HERE
My post in defense of Intersex persons is HERE

I think most evangelical Christians, regardless of their personal beliefs regarding LGB folk, see the Old Testament as something of a slam dunk for the more traditional position (1). The Sodom story and the term sodomite which we get from it, loom large in our minds. Leviticus 18:19-23  is as least as clear as Romans 1 in its prohibition of men having sex with men, and Leviticus 20:13 requires the death penalty for men who “lie with a man as one lies with a woman”, though for some reason, we don’t pay much attention to the horrific account of the Levite’s concubine in Judges 19.

 

And as with Romans 1 in the last post, I think that it is problematic to claim that any of these passages, much less all of them when taken together, are referring to any and all instances of gay sex. In the case of the Leviticus passages (which like the Romans 1 passage is descriptive), we need to ask, what is being talked about when the act is described. In the cases of Sodom and the Levite’s concubine, the question becomes “what, precisely, is the passage condemning?”

 

I should note at this point that in order to keep the length of this post under control, I will be addressing Genesis and the creation narrative in my next post when I take a look at natural law theory and the oblique references.

 

Let me begin with the Sodom story. There is a tradition that the “sin of Sodom”, which apparently grieved God so much that He destroyed the city with fire from heaven, was the practice of gay sex, and this has been used as evidence that God really doesn’t like it when people have gay sex. But there are some serious problems with this position. First is that Ezekiel 16:44-52 identified the sin of Sodom as arrogance, greed, and extreme inhospitality. We don’t actually get a reference to homosexuality in Ezekiel’s account of Sodom and while the passage is full of generally sexual imagery, it is actually fairly difficult to construct any of it as homosexual.

 

Furthermore, the men of Sodom’s desire to rape foreigners does fit with the concept of extreme inhospitality which Ezekiel calls out (and which Jesus seems to be referring to in Matthew 10:15). Attempts to focus on the homosexual aspect of Sodom’s sin (that it was men (2) that they wanted to rape) are particularly problematic in that they minimize the horror of sexual violence and tend to gloss over Lot’s incredibly upsetting solution to the problem - offering his daughters in place of the angels (3). I am not going to argue (particularly in light of Jude 1:7 (4) ) that sexual sin had nothing to do with the sin of Sodom, however I see no reason to conclude that the sin in question was gay sex when it is clear that an overwhelming rape culture was so pervasive in the city. If God condemned the city for cultivating a culture of raping foreigners, it seems far more likely that He was condemning the rape than the homosexuality.

 

The story of the Levite’s concubine in Judges can be subject to the same analysis (5).

 

Which leaves us with Leviticus. And again I want to begin by looking at the cultural context for discussions of homosexuality, this time in the ancient near-east. In other words, what would have been in the minds of the original author and readership of Leviticus concerning “men who lie with men as one lies with a woman?”

 

As with the Hellenistic culture of Romans 1, whatever was being described, it seems fairly safe to say that monogamous, covenant relationships would not have been within their overall concept of the practice. Certainly there is less information available about the practice of gay sex in ancient Mesopotamia and the near east than there is for classical Greece and Rome. However, so far as I have been able to discover, the predominant cultural expressions of gay sex involved temple and cult prostitution, auto-emasculation, and ritual domination. And so once more, what are currently translated as straightforward descriptive denunciations of gay sex turn out to have involved connotations of idolatry and abuse.

 

With this observation, certain things begin to stand out in careful exegesis of the passages: Notably, the Leviticus passages both restrict themselves to proscriptions of male-male sex. This is striking (even in a fairly andro-centric context) because in the Leviticus 18 account, the next prohibition (bestiality) does include prohibitions for both men and women while the surrounding sexual prohibitions (being heterosexual in nature) also include women (6). I would suggest that if Leviticus is condemning this sex merely because it is homosexual then it ought to be followed by a parallel proscription of lesbian sex. If, on the other hand, “lying with a man as one lies with a woman” is being forbidden because it is bound up in cult prostitution and idolatry, there would be no reason to include a parallel condemnation of lesbian sex which (so far as we know) was not an integral part of any contemporary cult practice. In short, the absence of lesbian sex in Leviticus 18 only makes sense if the prohibition is of cult prostitution and not of homosexual sex per se.

 

Ultimately, the contemporary, dominant, expressions of gay sex were bound up in practices (temple prostitution, idol worship, auto-emasculation, ritual domination-rape) which nearly all Christians today can agree are incredibly sinful and/or damaging. I believe that it was these “practices of the nations” which God was warning people away from, not the monogamous, covenant relationships LGB Christians are asking the Church to recognize today. And this is the model for homosexuality which seems to have existed in the Hebrew worldview which, together with the contemporary hellenistic/Roman model would have been what Paul had in mind when he wrote the letter to the Romans (7).

 

In Summary:

Although both the Old Testament and the New Testament have only negative things to say about gay sex when they discuss it, the gay sex being discussed is always entwined with uncontroversially negative and damaging practices (rape, cult prostitution, pederasty, and auto-emasculation). The Bible would be (and in many places is) just as condemning of heterosexual sex when it is practiced in equivalent ways. It is therefore not warranted to conclude that God condemns gay sex when it is practiced in the monogamous, covenant context of marriage. At least not on the basis of careful exegesis of the “direct references” in Scripture. In the next post I hope to address Genesis, natural law, and porneia … oh my!

PART 4: The Indirect Texts HERE

Footnotes:

(1) The most common response I have seen from the LGB affirming crew is to point out that very few Christians take the OT law as particularly binding or are able to enunciate a hermeneutic which justifies a selective application of Leviticus. This is probably true but it doesn’t actually prove the case one way or the other.

(2) Male angels? This brings up some interesting questions pertaining to the gendered-ness of spiritual beings, for more on that, check out my series on a Christian Defense of the Identities of Transgender Persons.

(3) The generally acknowledged "magisterial" work on the subject of sexuality in the Old Testament is Flame of Yahweh by Richard M. Davidson. I am not a fan, and Davidson particularly loses me on this point where he argues that the men of Sodom were not in fact attempting to rape but only to have consensual sex with the angels and defends his position by pointing out that Lot offers his daughters to the crowd in lieu of the angels. Davidson seems to believe that if a father offers his daughters to an angry crowd in order to satisfy their sexual demands, the crowd’s subsequent treatment of those women would not qualify as rape.

(4) It is worth pointing out the the ESV’s translation of “sarkos heteras” as “unnatural desire” constitutes some unwarranted commentary-in-translation, and that the more literal “other flesh” would have been a better fit as it would have reflected the Matthew and Ezekiel interpretations by allowing for the concept of extreme (sexual) inhospitality to foreigners.

(5) Although at least in this one Davidson is willing to admit that there was rape going on - despite the fact that it uses the same words as the Sodom account.

(6) This is also true of the Leviticus 20 passage, though the order is different.

(7) I should probably mention here that Philo of Alexandria (a Jewish Theologian/Philosopher contemporary of Paul) universally associates gay sex with paganism, cult prostitution, extreme hedonism, auto-emasculation, and/or paederasty. He also sees it as “contrary to nature” because it is non-procreative, which I will discuss at length in the next post.

The Absurdity of Opposing Trans People: A Stern but Necessary Reply

 


 For those of you who were unaware, Mr. Carlos D. Flores recently published, what I consider to be, a damaging and insulting article at The Public Discourse on the topic of transgender persons. The following is my reply:

 
Mr. Flores:

I would like to begin by addressing what I see as the larger, more fundamental assertions you make in your article The Absurdity of Transgenderism: A Stern but Necessary Critique before I go on to respond to the more specific points you made throughout.

First, you seem to be operating under the assumption that a person’s gender is both obvious and static. Unfortunately I can not find a single place in your article where you defend either of these assumptions. How do you think a person’s gender ought to be determined?

 
In an effort to help you answer this question, let me present you with some of the common methods for determining a person’s gender:

1. One’s own self-perception: Clearly you reject this possibility, apparently on the grounds that “those people are wrong and do not recognize reality” (my paraphrase of your “Why think that what one “identifies as” is significant at all, especially to the extent that others should actively recognize or cater to such an identity, and especially when the identity one adopts is contrary to reality?” if this is an unfair paraphrase please correct me). If you want to assert that a person is wrong, that assertion ought to be demonstrated - but you have declined to do so.
2. Biological Sex: At first blush it would seem that this is the method you prefer. However, within your first few paragraphs, you state that one cannot change one’s gender by surgical alteration of one’s body. If that is the case then you must not believe that our genders are determined by our biological sex (our bodily characteristics) as that would imply that a change in biological sex would indeed result in a change of gender.
3. Brain Structure: You rejected this possibility near the end of your article, arguing that DNA trumps brain structure/chemistry and that brain structure can change, which leads me to:
4. DNA: I am inclined to think that this is your preferred method but if so, it is quite problematic. You reject the relevance of intersexed persons in this debate, but surely you see that the existence of people whose genes do not mark them as obviously male or female makes it impossible for DNA to serve as an absolute determiner of gender. Essentially what you are saying (if you are indeed claiming that our genders are determined by our genes) is that you have discovered a rule by which reality may be judged despite the fact that, by your own admission, that rule fails to function 100% of the time. Sometimes, as in the case of Klinefelter syndrome wherein a person possess XXY genes rather than simply XX or XY, a person’s gender is not evident on the basis of a DNA study. Yet you want to maintain that when DNA “works properly” the case is clear. Surely you see the problem? If you admit that DNA is not an absolute measuring stick, then you must be using some other device to judge the outcome of a genetic reading - This principle goes back at least as far as St. Thomas Aquinas’ fourth argument for the existence of God: comparison is impossible without a perfect standard -. If you are using another device, then DNA is not your actual measuring stick.
5. The Soul:  I can’t imagine that this is your method as the person most qualified to determine a soul’s gender would be the proprietor of said soul, and you have dismissed out of hand the idea that we ought to accept a person’s self-perception as definitive.

Those are all the common methods I am aware of. You see where this is very frustrating? You have claimed that a person’s “real” gender is obvious; and yet you provide no viable means for determining said gender. Your total approach seems to be (I hope I have misunderstood you here) that a person’s gender is what happens to strike and outside observer as “obvious”. But surely you will concede that many things which seem obvious at first blush, turn out to be anything but on closer inspection.

 

Having begun with an argument which boils down to “transgender people are wrong about their gender identity because their claim seems contrary to my assumptions” you then proceed to exert substantial effort equating the very real claims of transgender persons with the hypothetical claims of: 1 - A caucasian man who identifies as a person of Sub-Saharan African descent and has himself surgically altered to resemble your idea of how a person of Sub-Saharan descent ought to look. 2 - A seventy year old man who identifies as a sixteen year old. 3 - An anorexic man. Your claim is that the first two are “perfectly analogous” to the case of a transgender person. They are not.

 
At their roots, both of these analogies, if taken as arguments, beg the question. You claim that they are analogous because gender, age, and ethnicity are all matters which one person can determine for another. As I have already shown, you have not even defended that claim with regard to gender (and I deny it). I will grant it in regard to age, and plead ignorance with regard to ethnicity, which is hard for anthropologists to draw black and white lines around, and race, which is proving just as fuzzy to the geneticists. So you are attempting to show by analogy, that it is ridiculous for trans persons to identify with a gender other than the one you claim they were born with, and for your analogies to work, you must assume that trans persons have no legitimate basis for identifying with a gender other than the one you claim they were born with. Thus your analogies only hold up (and even then only poorly) if we grant your conclusion as a premise.

 
Because they are circular in this way, I think you are in very real danger of reifying an unsubstantiated position in the minds only of those already inclined to agree with you - those who see the claims of transgender persons as absurd or far fetched - without actually convincing anyone who disagrees with your major premise/conclusion. Such an outcome would serve only to exacerbate polarization while complicating dialogue and the search for actual truth on this issue - an outcome which your concluding paragraphs convince me you are eager to avoid.

 
With your third analogy (that of the man with anorexia) you are on even weaker footing. In the case of anorexia, the individual legitimately thinks that their body is overweight when, in fact, it is demonstrably underweight. Whereas a transgender person, knows their body to possess sex characteristics which contradict their perceived gender. Thus an anorexic person will claim, “my body is problematically overweight” when you would contend that they are thin, where a transgender person will claim “my body is problematically male” when you would contend that they are male. In short, a transgender person (who has not undergone either hormone replacement therapy or sexual reassignment surgery) would agree with you about the sex of their body, where an anorexic person would not agree with you about the weight of their body..

 

For the remainder, and with the preceding established, I will address your article point by point:

Regarding your claim that “gender reassignment surgery is not medicine”: 
First, you are setting yourself in opposition to the American Psychological Association as a well a host of other psychological groups in your assessment. Of course you are free to do so, but challenging the established medical and psychological authorities on the matter does shift the burden of proof to you in questioning the medical efficacy of SRS and hormone replacement therapy. Your assertion that post operative transgender persons are more likely to attempt suicide is, at best, a misunderstanding of the research you have cited. The link you provided in support of your contention actually maintains that SRS is effective as a treatment of “gender dysphoria” but that due to comorbidity factors, further psychological help is recommended. This is extremely problematic because, by misrepresenting the study you have cited you are, in effect, and hopefully unwittingly, exacerbating the problem the study has identified.

 
Furthermore, you imply that SRS is being offered to every child who exhibits discontent with their birth sex. In reality there is a complex and careful process which must be followed before a child is eligible for physical intervention in relation to gender dysphoria (Check out the American Association of Pediatrics for a good rundown on the subject).

 
So to answer your question: Yes, SRS is generally accepted by the medical establishment as an effective treatment of gender dysphoria.

 
Your next objection consists of a teleological attack on the concept of SRS as medicine. In this attack you assert that anything which deprives a bodily organ of its natural function, cannot possibly be described as medicine. I await your attack on amputations, mastectomies, hysterectomies, and the like. A significant body of medical practice involves depriving the body of a given organ’s function in order to preserve the health of the body as a whole, so I fail to see how your proposed definition of “medicine” can be consistent with modern, or even traditional, healing and medical practices.

You seem to be assuming that the body has a single purpose and that its purpose cannot be in conflict with the purposes of its members and organs. The assumption does not hold. I don’t have a particular problem with teleological thinking, but to suggest that a given organ or member is monolithic in its telos is overly simplistic. The hand is for grasping; but it is also  for manipulation, and for touch and exploration. The tongue is for chewing; but it is also for processing food, and for taste. Our sexual organs are indeed oriented towards reproduction; but they are also for pleasure, intimacy, and bonding. It often happens that one telos must be sacrificed for the preservation or achievement of others. Surely it is to the individual concerned to make that decision and no one else.

Regarding your section “On Gender Identity Disorder Therapy”:

First I want point out that your language in this section  is misleading at best. To my knowledge nobody is trying to ban therapy for transgender persons (unless you are referring to Dr. McHugh who shut down at least one form of therapy - SRS - at Johns Hopkins in 1979). The people hoping to enact “Leelah’s Law” want to end a specific and demonstrably harmful form of therapy. You may disagree with them, but to characterize it as an attempt to criminalize “gender identity disorder (the old term for gender dysphoria) therapy is a misleading generalization.

 
Second this whole section is a further example of begging the question. Your points would hold (to some extent, and once your language was tidied up) in defense of your conclusion, if your conclusion were not also your major premise (i.e. that people suffering from gender dysphoria are unaware of their “real” gender and should therefore be “helped” to see their “real” gender). But in order to claim validity, the argument must first somehow demonstrate that transgender persons are mistaken with regard to their “real” gender. As I have show, you have failed to do this.

Regarding your section “Some Common Objections”:

 The first paragraph in this section is the basis for my conjecture that you see DNA as the ultimate determiner of a person’s gender. If I have misunderstood you, I apologize but I was unable to find any indication - much less a direct statement - anywhere else in your article.

 
In response to your request for empirical evidence that transgender persons brains are structurally similar to the gender with which they identify, here is one study. However since you do not believe that brain structure is determinant of a person’s “real” gender (see above) I will spend no more time on this point.

 
As a minor tangent here, you seem to conflate sexuality with gender identity. They are distinct, sexuality is a reference to one’s sexual life, whereas gender identity refers to a person’s gender (masculinity, femininity etc…) Of course the two topics are related as one’s gender cannot help but have an impact on one’s sex life and sexual identification. But because I can say that I am male without implying much about my sexual practice, it is important to make the distinction.

 
Next you bring up the possibility that the existence of intersex persons might explode your claims. Your solution to this (very proper) suggestion is that a) the intersex population is very small - which it is, though you have under-represent their numbers by at a least a scale of magnitude check here and here - and b) most transgender persons are born with functional reproductive equipment. I fail to see how either of these facts are relevant to the question. Surely you must grant that if even a single person cannot, even in principle, be deemed male or female by your method of verification, then either your method or your metaphysics of gender must be flawed. Nobody would accept as reflecting reality, a scientific model which openly acknowledged exceptions to its rules. Such a model may be a worthwhile practical guide in some or even the vast majority of instances, but cannot be counted as determinant of basic reality. So yes, the existence of intersex persons does actually weigh heavily against any attempt to assert that gender is rooted in a person’s physical body.

 
To your second point, that most transgender persons are born with functional reproductive equipment, I must admit to some puzzlement. Of course that is true. I am not aware of anyone who denies it. But may I ask how it is possibly relevant? Transgender people aren’t claiming that their bodies are ambiguous. Quite the opposite, their claim is that their bodies unambiguously contradict their gender identities.

 
I am willing to grant your last objection. If the United States accepts the medical conclusions of the psychological and medical community, then you will indeed find yourself in the position of having your taxes spent on providing health care and equitable treatment for your fellow citizens, trans or cisgender. I suppose it will come down to who’s understanding of the truth will be recognized.

In Sum:

  Mr. Flores, I sincerely appreciate your desire that our society base it’s policies and actions on truth. I share that desire. Unfortunately I believe you have misapprehended the truth in this instance. Furthermore I would urge you to consider the serious suffering among transgender persons as well as their friends and families your words will cause if you are wrong, as I believe I have demonstrated you are.Ultimately your article provides no actual defense for its assertions and advocates damaging treatments while attacking therapies which have been shown to be helpful. I ask that you retract it immediately in the real interest of those very persons for whom we are both concerned.

Sincerely,

Bill Hoard