Why do Christians seem preoccupied by sex?

One of the mysteries of the Anglican situation in the early 21st century is the way that the sexual activity of its members has come to occupy such a central stage.  Many of us grew up in a time when discussing what went on in people’s bedrooms was a taboo.  The swing from past reticence to the current situation, where one’s orthodoxy is judged by what one thinks of other people’s sexual preferences, is extraordinary.  Historians in the future may look back to our time with puzzlement and ask this question of our generation.  Why did the Anglicans of that era fight over this topic of sex, when there were so many other more important crises for them to confront – global warming, refugees, poverty and war?

 I am in the process of reading a book which may give us a few pointers on our way to answering this question.  It is a book about the rise and fall of a church network in America called Mars Hill.  Situated in Seattle it was founded by the charismatic leader, Mark Driscoll. His youth and energy attracted thousands of young adults as members.  The church eventually shut its doors in 2014 after credible accusations of power abuse.  On this occasion it was not the story of a powerful leader taking sexual advantage of vulnerable young women.  Rather it seems to have been a case of an empire builder who became intoxicated by raw power and wealth.  He controlled not only a cluster of physical congregations in the Seattle area, but his influence stretched world-wide through successful on-line franchising of his preaching.

What was the secret of Driscoll’s success before he came to grief?  One secret of the attractiveness of his preaching was that he was frequently prepared to speak about an area of life that most of us, understandably, have shied away from when in the pulpit – sex and its enjoyment in married life.   For Driscoll there was a biblical duty for all couples to go into marriage with a determination to enjoy it in all its physical potential.  In short Driscoll was fascinated, some would say obsessed, by the sexual aspect of married life.  Making so much of the physical aspects of marriage, was a kind of exploration into what might be described as sacred pornography.  He made the most of passages in the Song of Songs to explore the physical side of married life.  It is not to be wondered at that his audience, consisting mainly of those in their twenties and thirties, were captivated and enthralled at his preaching. 

The book by Jessica Johnson that discusses these ideas of Driscoll has the intriguing title Biblical Porn.  This was published at the end of last year and it gives us detailed material about much of the teaching at Mars Hill.  The emphasis of the book is not however an analysis of texts and Driscoll’s use of them.   More importantly for our purposes, it explores the way that these teachings impacted on the individuals who heard them and tried to live by them.

We have already hinted at the fact that a preacher, who uses passages from the Song of Songs, may be appealing to the prurient levels of the personality.  Ostensibly Driscoll was teaching his young hearers about ‘biblical marriage’.  What he was doing at another level was to draw these young people into a trap of his making.  His preaching was, in other words, an effective scheme to gain power for himself.   Having gained their curiosity and attention, the next stage was to put the men and the women into confessional groups.  Here they were expected to ‘confess’ their sexual sins, whether fantasising about members of the opposite sex, pornography, pre-marital relationships or other activities deemed to be sinful.  Having engaged in this opening up, the members were then effectively in state of bondage to the leadership.  From that point on, all their future sexual activity would be under scrutiny.  Driscoll also seems to have freely used the information garnered in the confession sessions.  This came up as illustrative material in follow-up sermons.  The ‘sins’ and weaknesses of congregational members were also packaged up and effectively sold on to be ‘entertainment’ for Driscoll’s followers all round the world. 

The ideal of biblical marriage which Driscoll claimed to want for his followers also did not prove to be easily obtainable.  Although he extolled how wonderful it was to enjoy ‘biblical sex’, one imagines that there would have been frequent cases of ‘performance anxiety’ on the part of the men.  Worse still were the potential pitfalls for the women.  Not only were they enjoined to be constantly at the disposal of their menfolk for sexual purposes, they were also held to be in some way responsible if the men strayed into pornography or looking at other women.  There is a lot in the sermons about women needing to make themselves seductively attractive and alluring as a way of keeping their men from straying. 

Driscoll’s control over those who had bought into his ideas for biblical marriage had the hall-marks of a typical cult.  The original lure was the titillation of listening to sexually-explicit sermons.  This was followed by the time of confession.  Once anyone had arrived at this point, it was almost impossible to draw back.  The church now had control over them through knowing many of their guilt-laden secrets.  All that remained was for them to try and attain the goal that had originally sounded so wonderful, biblical marriage.  If they failed, as many of them must inevitably have done, they were held in this permanent thrall of feeling defeated.  This would make them still more dependent on the leadership to help them move forward in some way.  As with members of a cult, this dependence on the leadership would have been laced with a deep sense of guilt and fear.  Many of them realised by now that giving away their sexual privacy had not been a good idea.  Every one of these Mars Hill members should have had, in the beginning, a notice on their bedroom doors which stated quite clearly: ‘Keep out, our sex life is none of your business.’

Allowing a church to get deeply involved with the sex life of its members is always going to be a hazardous and potentially harmful activity.  Of course, there will be times when a church leader is forced to say that betrayal or sexual misbehaviour by a congregant is an issue which needs to be faced and dealt with.  The more pervasive sins that are encountered in a day-to-day situation will be the ones that relate to greed, selfishness or cruelty.  Thanks to the public discourse of many conservative Christians, many people regard Christianity as only ever concerned about sexual sin.   This is a very damaging to the Christian cause.  It is also a gross distortion to the forms of behaviour that Jesus sought to outlaw.  He was far more interested in exposing hypocrisy and power abuse (Matthew 23).  When an excessive preoccupation with sexual behaviour is encouraged by Christian leaders, the truly important moral issues of the day are overlooked.

Mark Driscoll is a good example of how easy it is to get people feeling energised by playing the ‘sex card’.  This made sure that his churches were places to attract plenty of attention, as well as arousing a maelstrom of feelings and passions among his hearers.  Something similar seems to be happening every time a conservative preacher or church leader today talks about LGBT issues in a condemnatory way.  People are made to feel strongly because talk of sexual behaviour always stirs people in a deeply personal area of their lives.  What we see, when petitions are signed against liberal bishops, is the manipulation and stirring of strong human passions using rhetorical devices.  Anglican Christianity is cheapened and discredited when it indulges in this kind of rousing of primal passion by popular preachers.  We need, for issues as important as these, clear and calm discussion to replace the cheap and ill-thought out use of mass control techniques.    

About Stephen Parsons

Stephen is a retired Anglican priest living at present in Cumbria. He has taken a special interest in the issues around health and healing in the Church but also when the Church is a place of harm and abuse. He has published books on both these issues and is at present particularly interested in understanding how power works at every level in the Church. He is always interested in making contact with others who are concerned with these issues.

19 thoughts on “Why do Christians seem preoccupied by sex?

  1. Sounds like standard 1950s gender stereotyping. As well as creating huge burdens for both sexes. I remember this stuff. Women were supposed to submit! The teenage magazines if the day also said sex hurt! I suppose if he preached that it was fun, that actually is a huge step forward. Tough on those who aren’t married, though. The church definitely gives the impression that sex is one of only two things that matter. The other being money. And I agree with you, there are so many other important issues. So many other MORE important issues, I should say.

  2. I wonder whether Driscoll planned to attract and control people In this way, or whether the situation just developed? Did he have a strategy from the outset, or did he just take opportunities as they unfolded?

  3. I think Driscoll stumbled across the power of talking about sex etc and so carried on. Ministries in the States are very competitive so,having a formula for success, was very important to him. Driscoll did talk about other things but clearly in in Jessica Johnson’s account this theme was the most distinctive feature of his ministry. He was removed for power games but the ‘success’ he was enjoying allowed him to feed his narcissism and become drunk with his power. I am sure that there are other interpretations of the ministry, but Johnson’s account seems plausible and worth sharing here. The question we have today is whether conservative Anglicans talk about sex because they know it gets them attention and publicity. Sermons on sex whether to promote or condemn will always shock or titillate. Simply getting headlines in the press gives considerable power to these conservative groups.

  4. Stephen – have you considered how many of your contributions are “preoccupied by sex”?

  5. Analysis of all the Christian Concern articles on their Facebook page so far this year:

    LGBT issues: 33 articles

    (Gay Conversion 11, Gay Adoption 9, Transgender 7, LGBT in Schools 3, Gay Marriage 2, Gay Sex 2)

    Christian Persecution and the right to express Christian views and values: 12

    (Christian Persecution 6, Right to express Christian views 5, Dangers of Other Religions 3, Resisting Secular Values 1)

    Other Issues: 10

    (Prayer for the Nation 4, Brexit 3, Abortion 2, Assisted Dying 1, Home-schooling 1, Faith 1)

    CC Promotion (books, affairs, meetings): 4

    Poverty: 0

    Overseas Aid: 0

    Health Service: 0

    Environment: 0

    Welfare: 0

    Unemployment: 0

    Science: 0

    The Elderly: 0

    Mental Health: 0

    Disability: 0

    Women: 0

    In short, LGBT-related articles outnumber all other articles put together.

      1. Is it? If there are newspaper articles on what Christians should or shouldn’t do, or anti-gay stuff, then people reply. And vice versa of course. How individual churches behave would be more informative.

  6. The adherents of the sexual revolution are by definition people who major on that topic. Christians are not, not intrinsically. But they have to put their more sensible perspective in the face of the revolution’s fallout (huge increases in broken families, diseases etc etc etc) since the only alternative is to say nothing, and hands up who is advocating that.

    The Christians might be as silent as before on the topic otherwise. It is rich for the revolutionaries to say Christians are obsessed etc when all they are doing is necessarily speaking out against the others’ excesses and in favour of a better way. But then it was also rich when the revolutionaries said ‘Oh look, marriage is in more trouble than before’ when the reason for that was the adoption of the changes or so-called reforms that they themselves had fostered and advocated!!

  7. It’s a curious idea, that it’s necessary to speak out against others’ ‘excesses’. Especially when the excesses spoken against are mainly sexual ones, while excesses of greed, power lust, environmental destruction etc. are ignored.

    I used to be pretty good at preaching about what God doesn’t like, and who and what he condemns. Then it came to me, as a sudden realisation, that I was doing no good that way – except to make some people miserable and others self-satisfied. Much better to leave the Holy Spirit to convince people of their guilt, in God’s own good time, and preach about God’s love and redeeming power instead. Then I found that people came to me to talk about what they weren’t happy with in their lives, and to ask advice and prayer. It’s a much more effective mission tool, if you want to look at it that way.

    More importantly, that’s the way the gospels show Jesus operating. The only people he publicly denounced were the religious establishment, who were satisfied with their own behaviour but all too ready to condemn the prostitutes, tax collectors, and other sinners. The latter were comfortable in Jesus’ company, and therefore open to being shown a better way.

    1. Well, I think we have our fair share of those doing the same thing! Why they think having sex is a worse sin than greed or selfishness I couldn’t say!

  8. Hi Janet, there are many points that can be made.

    Yes, intelligent people concentrate on lauding or condemning ideas not people.

    As for condemning people (Jesus and Paul often did) there is not always much gap between that and condemning an idea. People are lauded/condemned only insofar as they are (at present, but not necessarily in the future or intrinsically) adherents of the offending idea, so it is much the same as lauding/condemning the idea.

    Christian activists condemn (and again this is much the same as condemning the idea or ideology) largely media or politicians, since other adherents of inaccurate/not-working ideologies are liable to be dupes of media or politicians. Media, politicians and big business are today’s establishment and ”right-thinkers” (right-on thinkers), forever pressing perspectives on the populace as though repetition brings truth! You said it was the establishment that Jesus spoke against: yes.

    You have in mind a stereotype of people who speak against sexual sin but not against greed or selfishness.
    First, whom do you have in mind here? I would speak/be against all 3 of those things, and so would any New Testament Christian.
    Second, if the idea is that we should not condemn a given handpicked sin because other sins exist (and one cannot mention all sins with the same breath) then that is a weak/illogical argument, whose only motivation I can imagine is bias. Of course other sins exist – bring forward anyone who’d say they don’t? How does the acknowledged fact that other sins exist stop people ever speaking about one given favourite/protected sin?
    Third, it is a NT perspective that there is something especially-warped (*not* especially-unforgivable) about sexual sin compared with other kinds: 1 Cor 6.18 every other sin is outside the body but s/he who commits porneia sins against his/her own body. Think through the logic of that?

    We have all, I imagine, repeatedly thought through the idea that people don’t like hearing condemnation. That of course is a truism like the Pope being a Catholic. Further, someone challenging you will remain in your memory longer. It will also sometimes be the case that they go so far as to challenge you because they are not slavishly obeying convention, and that’s because your soul is too important to be sacrificed to fashion or convention (who are pretty feeble gods anyway).
    In 2004 Soul in the City promoted this new perspective: tell people what you are for, not what you are against (a nonsense, since whatever you’re ‘for’/’very for’ you’ll be ‘against’/’very against’ its opposite!). Evangelicals then became more indistinguishable from the general population. Previously they’d done both; now the idea was to make a ‘spun’, calculated, artificial, unbiblical divide between these 2 important parts of the message, thus giving only half a message *and* giving the impression of not caring about sin.

    Effective mission tool? Repentance is key to…

  9. …Repentance is key to revival; revival is by definition societal transformation. This is an historical pattern that has proven its truth. Don’t try it without either repentance or prayer – the 2 keys. Whereas post-2004 church attendance has fallen off (apart from in churches with rounded properly Christian messages and praxis like the RCOG), and society has become more confused, more illogical and less educated in its philosophical moorings, and more divided (often between ideologues and truth seekers).

  10. The Mars Hill/Mark Driscoll story reminds me of an experience I had when I was 18 /19. I’d been away at college and returned to get acquainted with our church and its young peoples’ group. The youth leader encouraged me to go to him for ‘counselling’, which I declined to do. I gradually discovered that he put pressure on all the group members to tell him their secrets, under the guise of ‘counselling’. He then used these secrets to control them, telling them what they could and couldn’t do. I actually witnessed him threatening one girl with ‘telling’ if she didn’t do what he wanted. She complied.

    It’s one of my great regrets that I didn’t report him to the elders sooner. By the time I did, his control over the group was absolute. When the pastor and leaders attempted to address the situation the entire group left the church, and all the young people were ordered not to speak to me.

    I hope they got free from him before the damage became too severe.

  11. I think it is perfectly possible (and more frequent than we think?) that people can be attracted to pastoral roles because they are nosey about other people’s lives. Just like they can be tempted to use prayer meetings for gossip.

    1. In the case I have recounted, the position of youth leader wasn’t a pastoral one, and Larry had no pastoral training. Nor was he curious about, or interested in, people in general. The so-called ‘counselling’ was purely a means of getting malleable young people to reveal their secrets to him, so that he could gain control over them. It was all about power.

  12. Getting back to the original question. As an older person (baby boomer) I would say that a significant influence on the rise of the importance of sex is the underlying western philosophical changes.

    The rise of existentialism has led to the rise of the “self”. Sex and self gratification has risen substantially on that wave of thought. Relationships have become more about “me” than about “us”.

    Alongside this (and linked) is the challenging of taboos. These taboos have been perceived as “telling me want to do” with the implicit assumption that that is inherently wrong.

    However I do detect in the youngest generations a return to a higher morality – but it looks different. For example – watch “Sex Education” on Netflix – at first sight it seems to be (very explicitly) about sex. But look again – and it is about Love.

  13. Fascinating. A number of years ago friend who became an associate pastor of a church in a well known international network of free churches, was required to keep his senior pastor regularly updated with information about his finances and personal life “to ensure he is family life was disciplined and discipled”. This included telling the pastor of the amount and frequency of sexual intercourse he and his wife were sharing.

    I was horrified, my friend thought it normal. While this is absolutely not something that would be prevalent with in that network of churches generally, it’s shocking that it was able to go on for years without being challenged. Sadly, though on a much smaller scale, the fate of that Church and Pastor mirrors that of Driscoll and Mars Hill.

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