We aren’t rushing to produce these articles in this series, even although we have planned a few of them. We’re not sure how many there will be, but this latest one has been a month in the making. Our experience with the last article series that parts of had to be rewritten multiple times shows that there isn’t necessary merit in rushing into print. The story of our ministry and work is that it is evolving and it can take a bit of time to get together all of the knowledge that goes into each article.
So here is our latest article about Christian womanhood, and the theme is “God Made You Sexual”. What do we mean by this? Well, we’ve often referred to complementarianism as being a set of theological beliefs that reduce the essentials of feminine sexuality and really try to make womanhood an extension of male sexuality. The idea there is that (a) a woman is made to be an extension of a man’s life and (b) her sexuality is quite inferior or subservient to a man’s. And we find that such beliefs in the Church are a reflection of the same sort of beliefs that have long been held across society until the advent of present day feminism. Unfortunately these attitudes remain extremely entrenched and are stereotypically expressed in a great deal of the pornographic material that is readily available today, and in the many dismissive or crude terms used to describe parts of a woman’s body. The primary inspiration for this article came from reading Peggy Orenstein’s book “Girls & Sex”, in which she describes the cringeworthy content of some sex-education material available in parts of the US. Orenstein’s account is not written from a Christian perspective but it could be so easily describing content produced by a Christian organisation because of the Church’s long history of denying female sexuality.
As we’ve noted to date, we have the theological viewpoint in egalitarianism that upholds the idea that a woman is equally capable of ministering in a church to the same extent that a man, but egalitarianism hasn’t bridged the entire gulf that complementarianism covers. More particularly, egalitarian theology doesn’t address the sexuality of Christian womanhood in the way that complementarianism does. There haven’t been (to our knowledge) publications produced in the name of egalitarianism that counter the “purity culture” material that have come out of organisations like the Southern Baptist Convention. It is probably truthful to say that a lot of Christian books about female sexuality or marriage have been produced from a complementarian viewpoint. There is definitely a gap to be filled there.
So let’s just try and address this issue for our female readers: God made you sexual. What do we mean by that?
You, Christian woman, have been created by God in a certain way that makes you distinctively female. This is addressed by the fact that you have some physical parts of your body that are specific to female sexuality, such as the physical appearance and components of your breasts and genitals. Along with your appearance comes the fact that you can have experiences in your body that are related to these sexual parts, such as arousal and pleasure. You can also have some other experiences, like periods, that are uniquely female. What is really relevant to this discussion is that you do have sexual organs and you do have the ability to become sexually aroused and to engage in activities that produce sexual pleasure for you. You also have a right to be recognised in having these experiences in an equal way to the recognition of men’s sexual experiences in society. Ultimately our expectation is that your sexuality is recognised in the Church in that you are recognised as having a sexual body, created by God for purposes irrespective of whether you are married or single.
If you are single at any point of your life, the experiences which you can have as a godly woman which are related to sexual arousal and pleasure will be experienced through masturbation in an act of sexual devotion, as we have referred to it elsewhere in this blog. If you are in a Christian marriage then these experiences are most likely to be taking place with your husband and have a wider range of permissible outcomes, such as procreation. However, there should be nothing in either your experiences or outcomes, when in a marriage, that is mandated or dictated to you by your husband or your church or any other person or organisation in a way that disregards your own right to control your body. This means there is no reasonable expectation that the leadership of your church, or your husband, have an automatic right to subjugate you and trample on your personal rights. Ultimately all sexual experiences that are shared with your husband are to be conducted on the basis that you and him are equal partners in the marriage and that mutual respect or agreement without trampling on each other is the best approach to a harmonious marriage with a component of sexual intimacy.
Saying you are sexual is also saying you have a right to have that respected. This means that the Church has no role in promoting misogynistic concepts such as that a woman’s body causes men to lust. This is because men have a choice of whether to lust or not, irrespective of whether women’s bodies are sexually desirable or whether they have chosen to wear certain clothing styles. for example. In some societies in the world, the idea that women’s breasts should be sexualised, for example, is actually abhorrent. That’s why, for example, in parts of Africa, women can go bare breasted and be considered normal for so doing. The problem is that with the blaming of women culture that is so prevalent in the church, based on the failure of men to take responsibility for their own actions in choosing to lust, women are actually being made unequal, and to be subjugated sexually to men. Thus the stage is set for women’s role being assumed to primarily provide for men’s sexual desires or needs, and women’s own sexual desires or needs being repressed or denied.
Since purity culture largely excuses or minimises Christian mens’ sexually misogynistic behaviour towards Christian women, what is actually to stop us egalitarians from advocating that Christian women should be afforded the same rights as men have historically enjoyed in patriarchal churches? Actually, we aren’t approaching it that way. We don’t see a place for turning the tables as much as that. These churches have promoted that men have dominion and control over women. As much as radical feminists would like to turn the tables, that is not a recipe for women to be respected in the Church. The answer is to give equal recognition to Christian men and women and accept that means that women have the right to dominion over their own bodies and are not in any way obligated to surrender this to men or church leadership.
Let’s summarise this for the benefit of our female Christian readers. Mighty woman of God, your heavenly Father has created you with a sexual body. Because of your body, you have the ability to express yourself in sexual ways that are still within the bounds of how a godly woman should behave, but which in the past some churches have criticised. You have the right to choose singleness for yourself at any particular period of your life, and the enforced singleness that is the best way for you to get through adolescence is a great time for you to get to know your own body and entrust in God to help you navigate a new complex landscape of sexual development and maturity. It is entirely your personal choice if you want to remain single throughout your life and no one in any church has the right to dictate to you that this choice is inferior or somehow contrary to godliness. In turn, you also have the choice to devote your sexuality to God and to enjoy the fruits of sexual pleasure in ways that are pleasing to God inasmuch as they are not inherently sinful (i.e. through masturbation in a godly way).
It is also your choice if you wish to become married and to enter into some of the common outcomes of marriage, such as parenthood. You have the right to be an equal in a marriage and to be treated with respect, whether it is by your husband, or by the Church. This means that you have a right to refuse sexual pressures placed on you by your husband. You also have rights in other sexual aspects of the marriage, such as whether to have children, and if so, how many of them and the particular timing of conception. You also have the right to object to being sexualised by your husband and expected to behave in certain sexualised ways within the marriage, and you have the utmost right to expect your husband will be as committed to supporting the marriage as you are.
Ultimately as a woman of God, your body is as equally a temple of the Holy Spirit as any Christian man’s is, and the undeniable biological and physiological facts that you will experience sexual arousal, and that you will be able to experience sexual pleasure, is something that the Church must recognise and support. It must equally be able to support that Christian women can choose whether to experience these things in celibate singleness or in marriage, and respect either scenario without question., And above all, it must ensure that its male membership do not have any rights to dominate, control or sexualise its female membership.