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This Sunday concludes our four week Healthy Sexuality worship series. We’ll focus on the ways sexuality and spirituality are related as energies of connection. In case you missed any of the first three sermons and follow up reflections, here they are:
Healthy
sex: Drawing the line(s)
If you’d like to do more reading, or listening, on your own,
here are four options Mark and I recommend:
Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics by Margaret A.
Farley
Written by a Catholic feminist, this book provides a broad
overview of historical, multi-cultural, and Christian approaches to sexual
ethics and develops its own framework around sexuality and justice. The book is academic but accessibly written.
In a later section she builds out seven “Norms for Just Sex.” 1) Do no unjust harm 2) Free Consent 3)
Mutuality 4) Equality 5) Commitment 6) Fruitfulness 7) Social Justice. — Joel
Shameless: A Sexual Reformation by
Nadia Bolz-Weber
This book weaves together deeply personal
stories, humor, poetry, and scripture in an attempt to open up conversations
about sexuality in the Church beyond messages rooted in shame. This book
would be good for anyone looking for a more story-based approach that is
theologically engaging while not being academically dense. — Mark
Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation
of Young Women and How I Broke Free by Linda
Kay Klein
This book is part memoir and part journalistic commentary that
explores the effects of the “purity industry” of the 1990s.
This book would be a good resource for anyone wanting to understand the harm
that can be caused by purity-based sexual ethics. – Mark
Where Should We Begin? Podcast. Ester Perel
Perel is a therapist and this podcast is recordings of live
marriage therapy sessions, (with the couple’s consent). One of Perel’s emphases is that sexual
intimacy can revive emotional intimacy rather than the other way around. From the website: “In Season 3 of Where
Should We Begin, I explore the evolution of marriage through the stories of six
couples at different points in their relationships.” (Episodes released weekly beginning October
10, 2019) – Joel