Sex and Spirit

Sex and Spirit: Our UU Ethic and Theology of Sexuality                    

Rev. Laura Bogle

February 5th, 2017

For over 40 years the Unitarian Universalist Association has been engaged in comprehensive, values-based sexuality education.  What are the ethical values that ground that programming for children, youth and adults?  What does our faith have to say about bodies, sex, sexuality and reproductive justice? 

Readings

Butch Hancock (musician, quoted in “The Education of Shelby Knox” documentary 2005):

“Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in Hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love.”

South American writer Eduardo Galeano:  "The Church says: The body is a sin. Science says: The body is a machine. Advertising says: The body is a business. The body says: I am a fiesta.”

From Josh Ritter’s song, “Gettin’ Ready to Get Down”:

“Eve ate the apple 'cause the apple was sweet
What kinda god would ever keep a girl
From getting what she needs?”

I love this Josh Ritter song we just heard because it paints the whole story for you – a young girl full of herself and her feelings and her passion – Mama and Papa and Pastor see where that might go – send her off to a Bible college thinking they can control her.  Thinking that a religious control and denial of her body will save her soul.  But somehow she manages to hear a different message in the gospels:

“Be good to everybody, be a strength to the weak
A joy to the joyful, the laughter in the grief
And give your love freely to whoever that you please
Don't let nobody tell you 'bout who you oughta be”

She comes out of that Bible college just as powerful and full of herself as before.  A walking miracle, she’s still getting’ ready to get down.  And you know what “getting’ down” means, right? – well, what you are probably thinking right now.  But it can also mean getting real, getting down to business, taking no crap from anyone.

Not an accident that this story song is about a woman—we in western Christianity-dominated culture have a history of focusing on women’s sexuality, controlling women’s sexuality, as a way to control women’s power.  A long, long history that is way out of the scope of my sermon this morning.  Women and young girls are simultaneously bombarded with messages about how they should look to appeal to a male gaze and at the same time subject to incredibly harsh judgement if they step outside of a very proscribed circle of sexuality.

Men and boys don’t escape these confusing messages either.

Who here grew up with the message that Butch Hancock received—sex is dirty and you save it for the person you love?

Who here heard contradictory messages about sex and sexuality growing up?

I remember growing up, I went to a K-8 school.  And when I hit middle school years, when often you start having school dances and such, we had no such thing at my school.  You see for a couple years there our principal was also a Baptist preacher and was not in favor of dances or dancing in general.  Apparently 12 year olds moving their bodies to music was a little too dangerous.  So it wasn’t until my 8^th grade year and a new principal arrived that we finally had a school dance.  I still remember what I wore to that dance, and how I felt going to that dance.  The excitement and the dread.

One year: no dancing, because sinful.  The next year: everyone encouraged to get dressed up and fancy (I wore my first mini-skirt!) and go dance with someone of the opposite sex.  

There’s some mixed messages for you.

Maybe your parents didn’t talk to you about sex; or maybe they did and it was an awkward embarrassing blip in a much longer stretch of silence on the topic. Or maybe your parents did try over time really hard to give you the information and the values; to normalize the conversations you needed to make good decisions for yourself. Regardless, we are all still swimming upstream in a culture that promotes a certain glorification of sex and sexuality, and at the same time our culture is steeped in a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant kind of puritanism. 

We are surrounded by sex and sexualized images on TV, commercials, movies, internet—and yet there are *very* few places we can talk openly and honestly about our sexual selves or our sexuality without being embarrassed or judged or worse shamed. 

It is in part because of these contradictory messages that the Unitarian Universalist Association first launched sexuality education for children and youth in our congregations. 

Rev. Sarah Gibb Millspaugh writes in her essay about the history of sex ed in our congregations that, no surprise, UU’s have long been in the forefront of issues like family planning – way back in 1929 the General Convention of the Universalist Church in America passed a resolution in favor of family planning.  It was the sexual revolution of the 1960’s that threw open some of the more rigidly held rules in our society—no sex before marriage for instance—and raised a lot of complex and tough ethical questions for Unitarian Universalists.  Again, no surprise, our congregations were often places that embraced the increased sexual freedom, liberation from stifling gender roles, and questioning of cultural norms.  It was not that ethical principles were thrown out the window, but a different kind of ethical basis was in operation. Rather than a set of hard and fast rules about which acts were or were not OK, there were guidelines based on values. 

Sarah Gibb Millspaugh writes: 

“Theologians, philosophers, and average UUs wrestled with the implications of such new guidelines—a “New Morality,” one based in “situation ethics,” where the right or wrong of a sexual act could not be determined by the type of act alone. Love mattered. Emotions mattered. Individuals’ values and beliefs mattered.”  (see her full article here:  http://www.uuworld.org/articles/40-years-sexuality-education )

It’s a lot more complicated to navigate a set of guidelines than a list of rules.  It takes more self-knowledge, more discernment, more responsibility.

And so it was that the first UU sex ed program for teenagers began in the late 60’s.  Called About Your Sexuality or AYS, complete with filmstrips and very focused on health and equipping teens with scientific knowledge about their bodies and reproduction.

I recently had a conversation with Shirley Brooks, who was chair of the religious education committee at TVUUC when AYS was first being tested in the congregations and she remembers, as someone raised Baptist in the South, feeling uncomfortable with some of the content and letting the UUA staff know that. 

Even when adults affirmed that educating youth about sex and sexual health was good, it could be hard to put it into practice if you yourself had never had a chance to examine your own attitudes and values, to get a bit more comfortable yourself having a conversation about sex.

And so the next step in our evolution was to grow the programming to reach all ages.  Beginning in the early 90s a new curriculum—Our Whole Lives, or OWL--was developed in concert with the United Church of Christ. What is so amazing about OWL is that it is truly a lifespan curriculum, with age appropriate modules for K-1, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12, young adults, adults.  And this year the UUA is field testing a new curriculum just for older adults—those over 50.  Each of these programs, no matter the age group, are rooted in four primary values:  self-worth, sexual health, responsibility, and justice and inclusivity.

OWL recognizes that if we expect teenagers to be able to reflect critically about their values related to their sexuality, then we better start laying the foundation when they 5 years old. 

And it recognizes that our teenage years are not the only times that we need education about sex and sexuality.  It recognizes that sexuality is an integral part of who we are for Our Whole Lives.  And, importantly, OWL curricula make the assumption that sexuality, in its many expressions, is fundamentally a good part of the human experience—not a sin, nothing to be ashamed of or covered up.  It is this fundamentally good sexuality that is distorted or damaged by societal “violence, exploitation, alienation, dishonesty, abuse of power, and the treatment of persons as objects” (OWL brochure).

The OWL curricula are not explicitly religious, and they are used in a wide range of settings – not just UU congregations—but these assumptions I just outlined are certainly rooted in our liberal theological understandings.  The very fact that we do comprehensive sexuality education in church and we call it Our Whole Lives is a theological statement itself!  We put our very embodiment into the center of who we are as a people of faith.

My colleague Rev. Gretchen Haley has written:

“Early Christian thinkers – influenced by Plato, Aristotle and Hellenism, imagined human life dualistically – body and soul separate. The soul was eternal and of God, the body was sinful and to be overcome in service of saving the soul.

In the 17th century, the philosopher Rene Descartes further systematized the division –
promoting a dualism of mind and body. Descartes is the one who proclaimed ‘I think therefore I am.’ The brain means you are a person; your body – inconsequential -incidental, secondary, and problematic – something to be controlled or managed in service of the real you – your mind.

Feminist, queer and other progressive philosophers and theologians finally and thankfully critiqued this dualism – and science further revealed its flaws. A liberal theological anthropology – that is an understanding of the human person – refuses to separate the parts in any way – but rather approaches humanity as one – one of body, mind, spirit, all one. All connected, all alive, indivisible, all gifts of God, or of the universe, all worthy of love and belonging….”

Our first principle, affirming the inherent worth and dignity of every person, means every person’s body, and their sexuality too.  And when I say sexuality, I’m not just talking about having sex.  A holistic and integrated viewpoint tells us that sexuality encompasses so much more – it is related to our identity, how we are intimate in lots of ways with others and our selves. Sexuality is related to sensuality—how we experience the world through our senses.  It has to do with power and relationships.  And it has to do with basic physical health and reproduction.

Our sexuality can be the site of both the greatest pleasure and the deepest pain we experience in our lives.  Both the place of deep creativity and love, and the place of destructive alienation from love.  It’s not an accident that self-worth is listed as the first of the core values present in all of OWL programming.  In our western culture so much human struggle around self-esteem and worth is tied to our bodies and whether we and others perceive our bodies to be powerful, attractive, healthy, sexy, or even just normal.

In the OWL curriculum for 4-6 grades there’s an exercise that has kids standing in a circle and step in when a statement is read that is true for them.  Want to try it?   You can raise your hands instead. 

Statements: Anyone who has brown eyes.

Anyone who has siblings.

Anyone who likes ice cream.

Anyone who is the youngest in the family.

Anyone who is the oldest in their family.

Anyone who is the only child in their family.

Anyone who is a twin or multiple.

Anyone who is a middle child.

Anyone who wishes they were an adult.  (or wishes they were younger)

Anyone who loves their family.

Anyone who sometimes gets mad at or disagrees with someone in their family.

Anyone who has talked with a parent or caregiver or a child about growing older and body changes.

Anyone who thinks they are normal.

Ooh, it’s that last one that’s a little tough, even for the adults in the room.

How do you know what’s “normal”?

We all absorb very narrow stories, most often in the media about what is normal.

Two recent examples of moments when I realized the unspoken, unconscious idea I have about what is normal.

Anyone watch the NBC sitcom “This is Us”?  Sitcom about a family, including three siblings.  The sister is played by actress Chrissy Metz who is fantastic.  And Chrissy is also a very large person.  The size of woman that you don’t often see on TV sitcoms.  And what is so great about her story-line is that it includes romance and yes, sex.  It is a sign of how narrowly defined our stories are that to see an example of a beautiful large woman having a successful and sexy romance is totally surprising. 

What is normal?

The other example I have to share is an interview I heard recently on NPR with a veteran and his wife.  (http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/01/01/507749611/for-veterans-trauma-of-war-can-persist-in-struggles-with-sexual-intimacy )  They were talking on national public radio about the impact that the vet’s service and his PTSD had not just on their marriage in general, but on their sex life and their sexuality. The whole interview was so tender, so vulnerable; so unlike anything I had ever heard in a public setting.  What a gift they gave to so many listening, who might have been wondering if they were abnormal for the ways they too struggled.

UU Rev. Rob Keithan: “If studying sexuality has taught me anything, it’s that virtually everyone will struggle with sexual health and happiness at some point in our lives, if not throughout our lives. If our religious community stays silent on the subject, then our faith becomes just one more entity sending us the message that our struggles with sexuality should be hidden; that our only option is to wrestle with them in isolation.”

The UUA began offering sex ed for our youth to help them navigate changing times and social mores.  Over the years we have realized that when we do it well, it’s not just something for the kids, as if adults have it all figured out.  It’s a project we all must be engaged in, and a project that this central to living out our progressive religious heritage.  We are not a church that says the body is a sin.  We are the church that says the body is a fiesta, and you better be prepared when you go to that party. We are the church that says we will work to make that joyful celebration of our bodily selves a felt reality for each of us; to be whole, holy, empowered, respected, and healthy.  We are the church that says rather than pushing our sexuality to the side, or keeping in the closet, or even relegating it just to the bedroom—we will actually save our souls when we bring sexuality out into the light of day.  That it is through talking about the beauty and risks, the pleasure and the pain of our sexual lives that we might be healed.

It is in our congregation’s three-year plan to offer the OWL curriculum for one age group in the coming year.  We might consider at some point opening the program to others in our community; families who may not be UU but who want their kids to experience a values-focussed, comprehensive sexuality education program.

If we want to do that we will need trained facilitators and a commitment from the congregation for us all to engage.  If you think you might be interested in getting trained to be an OWL facilitator, I invite you to talk with me.

A final note on preaching about sexuality in the current context – I planned this topic a long time ago—well before I knew what the political world would be like in February 2017.  And a couple of weeks ago I almost scrapped it. Why is it important to preach about bodies and sexuality in this current context?  Here’s what I came to:

When we have elected a person to the highest office in the land who has called women and parts of women’s bodies names that objectify and degrade, and has perhaps acted in on that objectification, then it’s more important than ever that we model what mature and healthy and just sexuality looks like. 

And I’m not talking about the President’s choice of words.  I have a good friend who took her 8 year old daughter to the Women’s March.  Her cardboard sign had this awesome kids’ drawing of a kitty cat on it and it said “This pussy grabs back.”  I know some people were shocked to see an 8 year old carrying a sign like that.  But when we get more outraged about a word than we are about the actual treatment of women and girls in this country something is seriously wrong.

Here’s the other reason I think our focus on embodiment this month and today’s topic of sexuality comes right on time.  We experience this world in and through our bodies.  There is no other way to experience it.  Our deepest spiritual experiences are through our bodies.  Our emotions come through our bodies.  And our ethical knowledge, our discernment of right and wrong, is developed in our bodies. 

Yesterday I played and snuggled and sometimes struggled with my daughters.  It was a felt, bodily experience.  Holding them, drying tears, smelling their heads, carrying them when they are too heavy, cleaning up their sticky fingers after breakfast with syrup…. 

When I stop and let myself really feel this bodily connection, the work it takes to sustain the bodies of my children, the pleasure I take in feeling their little bodies next to mine, the life force that flows between us in these exchanges—then I can’t help but have empathy for the parent who is fleeing violence and war, the parent who moves in search of a better life, to simply keep body and soul together, to keep the bodies of their children alive and well-fed and flourishing.

Marvin Ellison, professor of Christian Ethics is also a gay man (and I learned recently originally from Knoxville!) and author of the book “Erotic Justice: a Liberating Ethic of Sexuality” published in 1996.  In it he says “As sensuous human beings, we know and value the world and therefore become self-directing moral agents only as we feel connected in and through our bodies.  …Moral knowing is rooted in feeling, and we depend on sensuality to grasp and value the world.  When sexuality is feared and evaded, people lack responsiveness and run the risk of becoming out of touch with what causes joy, suffering, and vulnerability, including their own.  A people alienated from their bodies are more likely to be content with, and even at home with, pain and oppression.”

When we cherish and appreciate our own bodies and are able to take pleasure in bodily connection, when we are in touch with the vulnerability of our bodies and the bodies of those we love, when we understand these bodies and these connections of the body as sacred—then we extend that sacredness to all. 

Perhaps that’s what the young girl in Josh Ritter’s song knew.  That oppression of her body would lead to oppression of her loving spirit, and then oppression of others around her.  Walt Whitman knew that in his very bones when he wrote “I sing the Body Electric” way back in 1855.  I want to leave you with a bit of his poem today:

"I sing the body electric, 

The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them, 

They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them, 

And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul. 

…

The man’s body is sacred and the woman’s body is sacred, 

No matter who it is, it is sacred—is it the meanest one in the laborers’ gang? 

Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the wharf? 

Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as much as you, 

Each has his or her place in the procession."

May we be dis-corrupters, uniting body and soul, in the service of more life, more freedom, more justice for all; each body belonging here, a sacred bit of God, a sacred bit of the stars that made us.

May it be so. And amen.