Welcome to “Good Christian Sex”

 

 

 

Comments.   Considerations.   Questions.

   

 

                                                 by Kenneth Bagnell

“People are unreasonable, illogical and self-centred,” the renowned Desmond Tutu once said, “but love them anyway.” I can go with the first half, but recently, I’ve had a bit of a challenge about the second. Why? Because, in my research, as I went deeper and deeper, I came upon a new book, called Good Christian Sex by a liberal Protestant minister, Rev. Bromleigh McCleneghan whose church is near Chicago. I’m sure she’s  sincere, liberal and a member of that theological culture known far and wide as “Progressive Christianity.” (The word is, at times, exploited: don’t we all, for various reasons like to be regarded as “progressive?” )     

       Inevitably the subject in itself, has drawn attention. Basically, the book doesn’t object to  sexual relationships that in the past would be denied us, denounced by our parents and justifiably so. At least back then. I still recall a long gone colleague, then in his late sixties, coming into my office his eyes truly running with tears. Why? Because his daughter’s still young husband, was, night after night after night, coming home after two A.M.  It was pretty evident what was happening. Today we have, even more evidently, a rapidly secularized culture which is very likely to accommodate what wrecked his daughter’s marriage decades ago.  Now things are changing. Hence there’s value in a book on this subject. My inference from the book upon reading it is simply this: today, sexual activity right or wrong, depends largely on “the situation and the individuals.” These aspects now challenge your fidelity and mine regarding the commandment: “Thou shalt not commit adultery….” (By the way it would take a book to explain what that commandment truly means.)

        After reading and pondering the overall message of Good Christian Sex, I do not have a distinctly black and white answer to which such practices are okay and which are not, according to Rev. McClenegan’s,  Good Christian Sex.  Yes, I know the morality of the subject in today’s world is deeply complex. But take this one example which, I expect you will agree, is too common: A decent middle class married man travels a lot, from Toronto to Montreal. He stays at a good hotel, middle range, with a nice dining room, which has a charming, attractive hostess who becomes a friend. They connect. Once dinner is over, they go to a nightclub, and from there to her quite appealing apartment, and he stays to keep her company. In bed. It takes place pretty well every time he is in Montreal. Is it morally wrong?  It is as if years ago, he said yes to the vow the clergy person asked and he pledged to adhere to monogamy. But that was then. (The words in some marriage ceremonies have even been discarded.) I’d like to ask Rev. McCleneghan for her opinion on (a) the dropping of the pledge to being faithful and (b) her judgment on the casual practice of the husband going to bed with his “friend” in Montreal. Given my reading of her book and my inference on its perspective, I would not be surprised, if she told me that in today’s culture my Montreal illustration is no longer a “big issue.” I submit that’s the direction in which much – too much — liberal thinking on marriage is drifting. Moreover, to me, her book justifies my inference:  Its subtitle is: “Why chastity isn’t the only option….”

     Moreover, I’m sure she’s not alone. In fact, several ministers, Lutheran and Congregational, plus a respected Reform Rabbi, endorse this book about a significant issue which once upon a time was regarded as a major moral matter. I assure you I realize some male-female situations are as painful as they are complex. An insightful sentence comes back to me as I write, a sentence from a renowned Canadian scholar who became a great American diplomat, John Kenneth Galbraith. “A man,” Galbraith once said, “can love more than one woman…” He’s right. And the genders can be reversed: “A woman can love more than one man.” But….  

     Life and love, we are now coming to realize, is well beyond just complexity. Both are drifting,  especially in the United States, into territory that is fully unacceptable in the Christian Church, the Judaic faith and most others. It verifies the value of the reflections in a book written years ago, by a late major American theologian Richard Niebuhr titled, “Christ and Culture: Living in an increasingly secularized world.” Dr. Niebuhr could not even imagine what would soon transpire in the North American Christian culture. In my view the movement I’m about to touch, is mostly, not entirely,  a US movement called, “Christian Swingers.” Back in the 1980s/1990s an umbrella organization for such various clubs was set up. It’s now greatly expanded to accommodate many thousands of Christian husbands and wives who participate in sexual activities of every form. It’s made quite insulting by suggesting it developed during the years of “Progressive Christianity.”

     One example from one group trying to justify organized infidelity, must suffice.  It says this: “We believe that many Christians and non-Christians have misunderstood the Christian message and Christian spirituality because of distorted views of intimate relationships that have been taught by the Church… If you search the scriptures and understand the original Hebrew/Greek texts, the history of biblical interpretation and the influence of non-Christian thought on Christian tradition, you will find that you have been sold a lie all these years….” Really? It continues:  “God put people on the earth to breed and enjoy each other….” This is sadly, an implied, an unjust aspect of what’s called Progressive Christianity. (In my view, the so-called Christian Swingers should have had a full chapter in Rev. McCleneghan’s book.)

      While I recognize her effort, I can’t come to feel confidence in her work,  that as Catholics might put it, “the foundation.” I came to this view when I read that even Rev. McCleneghan’s parents didn’t seem to mind her pre-marriage practice of sleeping with her boyfriend. (On her way into the ministry!)  Her prose, at times is not crystal clear;, but includes that when she was raised by Christian parents, (her father a minister) and then on her own chose the ministry, she ventured to have sexual intimacies well before marriage. Hence her perspective was shaped long before she wrote her book, obviously since in her introduction she writes: “I knew to always use a condom, and make sure my partners and I were regularly tested for STI’s…” I find it difficult to  place much confidence in a clergyperson with such a perspective.  I  guess the times are changing indeed.  

    To be fair, this does not totally undermine her book; it simply provides a window on the questionable moral perspective she writes from. The book is said to be written to help you and me form our own “progressive” evaluation. After all, she’s been around. (Along the way she mentions that Hugh Hefner, founder of that remarkably intellectual magazine Playboy, influenced her pre-adult thinking.  Can you believe  in a minister who says Hugh Hefner influenced her? Rev. McCleneghan feels that once freed of our puritanical Christian past (meaning Christian values) we’ll be able to make mature decisions not just for ourselves, but for the children we bring to life. Good luck to the future.      

          It’s a fact, I must suggest a sad one, that in certain instances, the casual sexual implications of Rev. McClenegan’s book “Good Christian Sex” may have arrived many years before she was even born. It’s now about 50 years since, along with a CBC television crew, I flew to Chicago to interview one of the 20^th century’s renowned theologians, Paul Tillich. As the interview neared its end, I asked Dr. Tillich what brief counsel he’d have for Christians facing the changing theological future. He replied in one short  and pungent sentence which in later years was reprinted in many various books about Paul Tillich.  “Keep open.” he replied to me back then “and again I say keep open.”  Tillich certainly kept open, in ways the author of Good Christian Sex would perhaps affirm. (To read it google: “Should a theologian’s life affect his/her theology.”) It’s what might happen, perhaps to many of us, if we took too seriously the well-intentioned but quite secular prescription of a book called “Good Christian Sex.”

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