Sexuality and Spirituality

Barbara Darling-Smith
Assistant Professor of Religion
Wheaton College, MA

What is sexuality? It is often understood in a theological context much more broadly than simply referring to genital behavior. Human sexuality includes our yearning for communion with each other and the divine. Sexuality is a powerful force in human lives, and part of what makes us who we are.

Gender and Sexual Images for Divinity

Religions utilize widely varying sexual and gender images to symbolize the divine-human relationship. Hindu and Tibetan Buddhist stories vividly describe multiple gods and goddesses. Confucian/Taoist understandings of ultimate reality are linked to the "female" yin and the "male" yang energies. These energies, though not deities, are what make up the cosmos. The wealth of diverse Native American religious traditions employ both male and female terms for various deities. Goddess worship is central to many Neo-Pagan rituals. Even Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which have traditionally desexualized the divine - while primarily using male terms - have been encouraged by feminists to use female metaphors as well.

Jewish, Christian, and Islamic mystics have described their ecstatic union with God in sexual language, just as Hindu sacred texts contain tales of the loving sexual desire felt by female cowherds for Lord Krishna.

Ethical Issues of Sexuality

Ethical views on celibacy, procreation/birth control, abortion, and homosexuality have caused enormous divisions within many religious traditions, which contain both traditional and progressive positions in the same religious communities.

Roman Catholicism mandates celibacy for its clergy, as do Buddhist monastic communities for their monks. Some Hindu renunciants practice celibacy as well. Neither Protestant nor Orthodox Christian communities require celibacy in clergy; and it is rejected as an ideal for Jewish and Muslim clergy.

Jewish, Roman Catholic, and Protestant ethicists have encouraged birth control for environmental reasons (though the Roman Catholic hierarchy does not approve). They point to the decrease in biodiversity and the destruction of ecosystems as results of human overpopulation; they also worry about the earth's capacity to provide food and water for increasing numbers of humans.

The official Roman Catholic view on abortion, also held by many evangelical Protestants, is that full personhood begins at conception (or very shortly thereafter) and therefore abortion is always morally wrong. Yet some Catholic moral theologians, though not approved by the church hierarchy, have moderated this position. Orthodox Jews, while generally rejecting abortion, teach that the woman's life must always take precedence over the fetus's life. The most liberal Protestants and Jews believe each woman should make her own choice; and many others stake out a position somewhere between.

Particularly vitriolic arguments arise over questions of ordination of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered persons and same-sex marriage. The most traditional position sees sexual expression as legitimate only when procreative (at least potentially), and therefore morally opposes homosexual sexual behavior as well as same-sex marriage and GLBT ordination. Some groups accept gay and lesbian members but do not ordain GLBT persons or believe in same-sex marriages. Within many Jewish and Christian denominations, however, there are voices calling for full affirmation of GLBT persons, including ordination and blessing of same-sex marriages. Reconstructionist Judaism, for example, sees homosexual sexuality, as well as heterosexual sexuality, as a gift and blessing from God which should be guided by the same principles of mutuality, respect, love, and commitment.

Thus we see from this overview of changing understandings and practices that many religions are increasingly viewing sexuality and spirituality not as opposites but as organically related components of healthy human beings, blessings which mutually benefit each other.

Bibliography

Contemporary American Religion. 2000. Douglas, Kelly Brown.

Sexuality and the Black Church: A Womanist Perspective. 1999. Genovesi, Vincent J., S. J.

In Pursuit of Love. 1996.

Homosexuality and Judaism: The Reconstructionist Position. Federation of Reconstructionist Congregations and Havurot; Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association. 1993. Nelson, James B. and Sandra P. Longfellow, editors.

Sexuality and the Sacred: Sources for Theological Reflection. 1994. Olyan, Saul M. and Martha C. Nussbaum, editors.

Sexual Orientation and Human Rights in American Religious Discourse. 1998. Parrinder, Geoffrey.

Sexual Morality in the World's Religions. 1996.

Presbyterians and Human Sexuality. Office of the General Assembly, Presbyterian Church. 1991. Spong, John Shelby.

Living in Sin? A Bishop Rethinks Human Sexuality. 1988. Waskow, Arthur.

Down to Earth Judaism: Food, Money, Sex, and the Rest of Life. 1995.