In the next edition of the pastoral journal Leaven an article of mine will appear entitled Regarding Sex: Beyond Hedonic Ambivalence. This particular edition of Leaven will focus on sexuality and my contribution is an attempt to help frame some of the theological and psychological dilemmas churches face as they approach sexuality.
I make three moves in the paper. The first move is to suggest that because churches so rarely discuss sex the conversational and theological void is filled with a hodge-podge of (often implicit) assumptions, many of which create problems. As an example, here is a part of the paper:
Implicitly, many people believe that sexuality exists on an erotic continuum (e.g., from kissing to sexual intercourse). Many people also implicitly assume that “sin” is a binary category (an act or mental state is a sin, or it isn’t). Obviously, these two implicit theological assumptions create a disjoint when the binary category is applied to the continuum. Thus, the ubiquitous youth group conversations about where “the line” is to be drawn in sexual activity. Church leaders and parents are often frustrated by these questions, but they can also be at a loss about to how to proceed in a coherent fashion...
The second move I make in the paper is to suggest that the most influential and problematic implicit assumption regarding sexuality has to do with what I call hedonic ambivalence, spiritual worries over the uniquely pleasurable aspects of sex. I argue that many of the religious recommendations regarding sex are parsimoniously understood by their attempt to marginalize the hedonic aspects of sex , replacing pleasure with a more "spiritual" terminal goal (e.g., procreation). Implicitly, the assumption seems to be that holy sex should seek to marginalize pleasure. I go on to use this analytic perspective to examine religious opinion (Protestant and Catholic) across a variety of sexual behaviors. Here's a bit showing how the argument is applied to autoeroticism:
Hedonic ambivalence is also observed in mixed feelings regarding autoeroticism, or masturbation. Some Christian traditions prohibit the behavior. Other traditions don’t know what to do with the behavior, and thus pass over the topic in silence. This silence is troublesome in that autoeroticism is the most frequent sexual activity we humans engage in. My point here is not to render a moral verdict on autoerotic activity, but to examine the assumptions behind the warrants for prohibiting the activity. A common warrant is to cite the “pointlessness” of autoeroticism. The assumption here is that we wish to see sexual climax as having a “point,” a goal. Masturbation clearly has a goal—the achievement of pleasure—but this is deemed unsatisfactory and spiritually problematic.
Finally, in my third move, I suggest that more fruitful theological conversations regarding sex can be had if we intentionally move the focus from hedonics to harm. A taste of that argument:
...two of the Ten Commandments are explicitly focused on managing sexual relationships: “Do not commit adultery” and “Do not covet your neighbor’s wife.” If we reflect on God’s goals in the Ten Commandments we grasp that God is calling out and creating a new kind of community. This suggests that God’s main concerns regarding human sexuality are more sociological than hedonic. That is, God’s concerns over sexual activity appear to be less concerned with the fact that sex is pleasurable, and more to do with issues involving the violation of social contracts (Do not commit adultery) and the reduction of sexual rivalry (Do not covet your neighbor’s wife).
Look forward to this edition of Leaven, not just for my piece but for the other contributions as well. I'll let you know when this issue of Leaven is out, after which I'd be happy to forward a copy of the article to any interested readers.


The Theology of Faërie
The Little Way of St. Thérèse of Lisieux
The William Stringfellow Project (Ongoing)
Autobiographical Posts
- On Discoveries in Used Bookstores
- Two Brothers and Texas Rangers
- Visiting and Evolving in Monkey Town
- Roller Derby Girls
- A Life With Bibles
- Wearing a Crucifix
- Morning Prayer at San Buenaventura Mission
- The Halo of Overalls
- Less
- The Farmer's Market
- Subversion and Shame: I Like the Color Pink
- The Bureaucrat
- Uncle Richard, Vampire Hunter
- Palm Sunday with the Orthodox
- On Maps and Marital Spats
- Get on a Bike...and Go Slow
- Buying a Bible
- Memento Mori
- We Weren't as Good as the Muppets
- Uncle Richard and the Shark
- Growing Up Catholic
- Ghostbusting (Part 1)
- Ghostbusting (Part 2)
- My Eschatological Dog
- Tex Mex and Depression Era Cuisine
- Aliens at Roswell

On the Principalities and Powers
- Christ and the Powers
- Why I Talk about the Devil So Much
- The Preferential Option for the Poor
- The Political Theology of Les Misérables
- Good Enough
- On Anarchism and A**holes
- Christian Anarchism
- A Restless Patriotism
- Wink on Exorcism
- Images of God Against Empire
- A Boredom Revolution
- The Medal of St. Benedict
- Exorcisms are about Economics
- "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?"
- "A Home for Demons...and the Merchants Weep"
- Tales of the Demonic
- The Ethic of Death: The Policies and Procedures Manual
- "All That Are Here Are Humans"
- Ears of Stone
- The War Prayer
- Letter from a Birmingham Jail

Experimental Theology
- Eucharistic Identity
- Tzimtzum, Cruciformity and Theodicy
- Holiness Among Depraved Christians: Paul's New Form of Moral Flourishing
- Empathic Open Theism
- The Victim Needs No Conversion
- The Hormonal God
- Covenantal Substitutionary Atonement
- The Satanic Church
- Mousetrap
- Easter Shouldn't Be Good News
- The Gospel According to Lady Gaga
- Your God is Too Big

From the Prison Bible Study
- The Philosopher
- God's Unconditional Love
- There is a Balm in Gilead
- In Prison With Ann Voskamp
- To Make the Love of God Credible
- Piss Christ in Prison
- Advent: A Prison Story
- Faithful in Little Things
- The Prayer of Jabez
- The Prayer of Willy Brown
- Those Old Time Gospel Songs
- I'll Fly Away
- Singing and Resistence
- Where the Gospel Matters
- Monday Night Bible Study (A Poem)
- Living in Babylon: Reading Revelation in Prison
- Reading the Beatitudes in Prision
- John 13: A Story from the Prision Study
- The Word

Series/Essays Based on my Research
The Theology of Calvin and Hobbes
The Theology of Peanuts
Reflections on Gender and the Church
- Can Patriarchalists Pray the Lord's Prayer?
- Power and Gender: Among Us It Shall Be Different
- Call No Man on Earth Father
- Head Coverings: Why Female Hair is a Testicle
- A Letter to My Church on Women's Roles
- Pragmatics or Power in Patriarchy?
- Whores: A Meditation on Gender and the Bible
- On Masculine Christianity and Powerplays
- Thoughts on Mark Driscoll While I'm Knitting
- Ambivalent Sexism
- Direct Your Hearts to Her
- Gender, Submission and Ecosystems of Abuse

The Snake Handling Churches of Appalachia
Eccentric Christianity
- Part 1: A Peculiar People
- Part 2: The Eccentric God, Transcendence and the Prophetic Imagination
- Part 3: Welcoming God in the Stranger
- Part 4: Enchantment, the Porous Self and the Spirit
- Part 5: Doubt, Gratitude and an Eccentric Faith
- Part 6: The Eccentric Economy of Love
- Part 7: The Eccentric Kingdom

The Fuller Integration Lectures
Blogging about the Bible
- Unicorns in the Bible
- "Let My People Go!": On Worship, Work and Laziness
- The True Troubler
- Stumbling At Just One Point
- The Faith of Demons
- The Lord Saw That She Was Not Loved
- The Subversion of the Creator God
- Hell On Earth: The Church as the Baptism of Fire and the Holy Spirit
- The Things That Make for Peace
- The Lord of the Flies
- On Preterism, the Second Coming and Hell
- Commitment and Violence: A Reading of the Akedah
- Gain Versus Gift in Ecclesiastes
- Redemption and the Goel
- The Psalms as Liberation Theology
- Control Your Vessel
- Circumcised Ears
- Forgive Us Our Trespasses
- Doing Beautiful Things
- The Most Remarkable Sequence in the Bible
- Targeting the Dove Sellers
- Christus Victor in Galatians
- Devoted to Destruction: Reading Cherem Non-Violently
- The Triumph of the Cross
- The Threshing Floor of Araunah
- Hold Others Above Yourself
- Blessed are the Tricksters
- Adam's First Wife
- I Am a Worm
- Christus Victor in the Lord's Prayer
- Let Them Both Grow Together
- Repent
- Here I Am
- Becoming the Jubilee
- Sermon on the Mount: Study Guide
- Treat Them as a Pagan or Tax Collector
- Going Outside the Camp
- Welcoming Children
- The Song of Lamech and the Song of the Lamb
- The Nephilim
- Shaming Jesus
- Pseudepigrapha and the Christian Witness
- The Exclusion and Inclusion of Eunuchs
- The Second Moses
- The New Manna
- Salvation in the First Sermons of the Church
- "A Bloody Husband"
- Song of the Vineyard

Bonhoeffer's Letters from Prision
Civil Rights History and Race Relations
- The Gospel According to Ta-Nehisi Coates (Six Part Series)
- Bus Ride to Justice: Toward Racial Reconciliation in the Churches of Christ
- Black Heroism and White Sympathy: A Reflection on the Charleston Shooting
- Selma 50th Anniversary
- More Than Three Minutes
- The Passion of White America
- Remembering James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman
- Will Campbell
- Sitting in the Pews of Ebeneser Baptist Church
- MLK Bedtime Prayer
- Freedom Rider
- Mountiantop
- Freedom Summer
- Civil Rights Family Trip 1: Memphis
- Civil Rights Family Trip 2: Atlanta
- Civil Rights Family Trip 3: Birmingham
- Civil Rights Family Trip 4: Selma
- Civil Rights Family Trip 5: Montgomery

Hip Christianity
The Charism of the Charismatics
Would Jesus Break a Window?: The Hermeneutics of the Temple Action
Being Church
- Instead of a Coffee Shop How About a Laundromat?
- A Million Boring Little Things
- A Prayer for ISIS
- "The People At Our Church Die A Lot"
- The Angel of Freedom
- Washing Dishes at Freedom Fellowship
- Where David Plays the Tambourine
- On Interruptibility
- Mattering
- This Ritual of Hallowing
- Faith as Honoring
- The Beautiful
- The Sensory Boundary
- The Missional and Apostolic Nature of Holiness
- Open Commuion: Warning!
- The Impurity of Love
- A Community Called Forgiveness
- Love is the Allocation of Our Dying
- Freedom Fellowship
- Wednesday Night Church
- The Hands of Christ
- Barbara, Stanley and Andrea: Thoughts on Love, Training and Social Psychology
- Gerald's Gift
- Wiping the Blood Away
- This Morning Jesus Put On Dark Sunglasses
- The Only Way I Know How to Save the World
- Renunciation
- The Reason We Gather
- Anointing With Oil
- Incarnations of God's Mercy

Exploring Preterism
Scripture and Discernment
- Owning Your Protestantism: We Follow Our Conscience, Not the Bible
- Emotional Intelligence and Sola Scriptura
- Songbooks vs. the Psalms
- Biblical as Sociological Stress Test
- Cookie Cutting the Bible: A Case Study
- Pawn to King 4
- Allowing God to Rage
- Poetry of a Murderer
- On Christian Communion: Killing vs. Sexuality
- Heretics and Disagreement
- Atonement: A Primer
- "The Bible says..."
- The "Yes, but..." Church
- Human Experience and the Bible
- Discernment, Part 1
- Discernment, Part 2
- Rabbinic Hedges
- Fuzzy Logic

Interacting with Good Books
- Christian Political Witness
- The Road
- Powers and Submissions
- City of God
- Playing God
- Torture and Eucharist
- How Much is Enough?
- From Willow Creek to Sacred Heart
- The Catonsville Nine
- Daring Greatly
- On Job (Gutiérrez)
- The Selfless Way of Christ
- World Upside Down
- Are Christians Hate-Filled Hypocrites?
- Christ and Horrors
- The King Jesus Gospel
- Insurrection
- The Bible Made Impossible
- The Deliverance of God
- To Change the World
- Sexuality and the Christian Body
- I Told Me So
- The Teaching of the Twelve
- Evolving in Monkey Town
- Saved from Sacrifice: A Series
- Darwin's Sacred Cause
- Outliers
- A Secular Age
- The God Who Risks

Moral Psychology
- The Dark Spell the Devil Casts: Refugees and Our Slavery to the Fear of Death
- Philia Over Phobia
- Elizabeth Smart and the Psychology of the Christian Purity Culture
- On Love and the Yuck Factor
- Ethnocentrism and Politics
- Flies, Attention and Morality
- The Banality of Evil
- Regarding Sex
- The Ovens at Buchenwald
- Violence and Traffic Lights
- Defending Individualism
- Guilt and Atonement
- The Varieties of Love and Hate
- The Wicked
- Moral Foundations
- Primum non nocere
- The Moral Emotions
- The Moral Circle, Part 1
- The Moral Circle, Part 2
- Taboo Psychology
- The Morality of Mentality
- Moral Conviction
- Infrahumanization
- Holiness and Moral Grammars

The Purity Psychology of Progressive Christianity
The Theology of Everyday Life
- Self-Esteem Through Shaming
- Let Us Be the Heart Of the Church Rather Than the Amygdala
- Online Debates and Stages of Change
- The Devil on a Wiffle Ball Field
- Incarnational Theology and Mental Illness
- Social Media as Sacrament
- The Impossibility of Calvinistic Psychotherapy
- Hating Pixels
- Dress, Divinity and Dumbfounding
- The Kingdom of God Will Not Be Tweeted
- Tattoos
- The Ethics of :-)
- On Snobbery
- Jokes
- The F-word
- Hypocrisy
- Can you sin on a deserted island?
- Everything I learned about life I learned coaching tee-ball
- Gossip, Part 1: The Food of the Brain
- Gossip, Part 2: Evolutionary Stable Strategies
- Gossip, Part 3: The Pay it Forward World
- Sinning in Your Heart?, Part 1: The Morality of Mentality
- Human Nature
- Welcome
- On Humility

Jesus, You're Making Me Tired: Scarcity and Spiritual Formation
A Progressive Vision of the Benedict Option
Universal Reconciliation
- Love and Freedom
- On Hell and Holocausts: Comparing Annihilationism and Universalism
- Being Hopeful and Dogmatic
- Holiness in Heaven?
- Universalism and the New Perspective on Paul
- A Googolplexian Hell
- The Best Ending to the Christian Story: An Exchange with Daniel Kirk
- Universalism and the Bondage of the Will
- Universalism and the Prophetic Imagination
- Universalism and Theodicy
- Universalism FAQ & Answers
- Universalism: A Summary Defense
- Why I Am a Universalist Series (and Resources)

George MacDonald
Jesus & the Jolly Roger: The Kingdom of God is Like a Pirate
Alone, Suburban & Sorted
The Theology of Monsters
Original Sin: A New View
The Theology of Ugly
Orthodox Iconography
A Walk with William James
- Part 1: The Jamesian Situation
- Part 2: Habit
- Part 3: Belief as Vote
- Part 4: Pragmatism and the Emerging Church
- Part 5: Theology is a Fork
- Part 6: Ontological Emotion
- Part 7: Religious Surrender
- Part 8: Introverts at Church
- Part 9: Bubbles in the Sun
- Part 10: Ghostbusting
- Part 11: The Empirical Trace
- Part 12: Saintliness

Preparing for the Cartesian Storm (Free Will & Souls in the Age of Neuroscience)
Musings On Faith, Belief, and Doubt
- The Meanings Only Faith Can Reveal
- Pragmatism and Progressive Christianity
- Doubt and Cognitive Rumination
- A/theism and the Transcendent
- Kingdom A/theism
- The Ontological Argument
- Cheap Praise and Costly Praise
- god
- Wired to Suffer
- A New Apologetics
- Orthodox Alexithymia
- High and Low: The Psalms and Suffering
- The Buddhist Phase
- Skilled Christianity
- The Two Families of God
- The Bait and Switch of Contemporary Christianity
- Theodicy and No Country for Old Men
- Doubt: A Diagnosis
- Faith and Modernity
- Faith after "The Cognitive Turn"
- Salvation
- The Gifts of Doubt
- A Beautiful Life
- Is Santa Claus Real?
- The Feeling of Knowing
- Practicing Christianity
- In Praise of Doubt
- Skepticism and Conviction
- Pragmatic Belief
- N-Order Complaint and Need for Cognition

The Theology of Humor
Game Theory and the Kingdom of God
Holiday Musings
- Everything I Learned about Christmas I Learned from TV
- Advent: Learning to Wait
- A Christmas Carol as Resistance Literature: Part 1
- A Christmas Carol as Resistance Literature: Part 2
- It's Still Christmas
- Easter Shouldn't Be Good News
- The Deeper Magic: A Good Friday Meditation
- Palm Sunday with the Orthodox
- Growing Up Catholic: A Lenten Meditation
- The Liturgical Year for Dummies
- "Watching Their Flocks at Night": An Advent Meditation
- Pentecost and Babel
- Epiphany
- Ambivalence about Lent
- On Easter and Astronomy
- Sex Sandals and Advent
- Freud and Valentine's Day
- Existentialism and Halloween
- Halloween Redux: Talking with the Dead

The Offbeat
- Batman and the Joker
- The Theology of Ugly Dolls
- Jesus Would Be a Hufflepuff
- The Moral Example of Captain Jack Sparrow
- Weddings Real, Imagined and Yet to Come
- Michelangelo and Neuroanatomy
- Believing in Bigfoot
- The Kingdom of God as Improv and Flash Mob
- 2012 and the End of the World
- Chocolate Jesus
- The Polar Express and the Uncanny Valley
- Why the Anti-Christ Is an Idiot
- On Harry Potter and Vampire Movies

Excellent -- you have certainly piqued my interest for the rest of the paper.
Richard,
I'm a reader from Germany and I don't have the opportunity to get a copy of the Leaven.
It'll be great if you could sent the article to Arnachie[at]googlemail.com
(After the issue is out...)
Thanks
Arne
Richard, would also love to see it if you get a chance.
Peter.Boumgarden (at) gmail.com
Me too! Quite intriguing! spaceloom (at) gmail dot com
Look forward to the rest of the issue.
Thanks all. When the paper comes out I'll forward you all a copy.
I've enjoyed browsing through your site and am interested in the article. Could you send it to me?
kdhurne@gmail.com
I'll line up in the queue as well:
boeskov (at) gmail dot com
Thanks!
As a youth minister who shares your concern for simplistic understandings of "drawing the line" I would like to read your article when published.
I know I'm late to the party - but Leaven appears to be unavailable. Can you shoot me a copy? Thanks! Love your writing.
larry dot marturano (at) gmail dot com
If Larry was late I may well have missed the bus =)
But if the bus is still oprational I'd love a copy of the article. This may help me in some interesting conversations of late around Christian Sexual Practice pre and post marriage... how do we deal with issues created around the common aproach of turning "off" sexually pre-marriage only to be told to turn "on" post marriage. If if successful in "turning off" it seems there are growing issues in "turning back on again" for marital bliss.
ccyrep@gmail.com
Again, a belated request for more. This is fascinating stuff, as indeed is everything that you share here. Thank you so much for your grace and erudition.
andrewworthley@yahoo.co.uk
Dr. Beck,
I am a recent arrival to your blog so am playing catch up. I would love to have a copy of your Leaven article (abelcoc@rgv.rr.com). Thank you for sharing.
Dr. Beck,
Would you please email me a copy of your article. Thank you. (wsmith00d@gmail.com)
Just found the blog - has some great stuff on it. Would be really interested in reading the article. Would you please be able to email me a copy? (wrightd33[at]gmail.com)
I apologize for being one of those latecomers popping on to your blog, but if you're able to, I'd love to receive a copy of your paper. Your teaser was pretty tantalizing! docsabato at gmail dot com
Thank you!
I know this is coming very late, but if possible I'd be interested to see a copy of the article. CrunchyUrbainte[a]gmail.com
Dr. Beck,
I'm a new reader of your blog and so far I love it! I realize that this a bit late, but if possible would you please email me a copy of the article?
johnson.haley11[at]gmail.com
I'd love a copy as well!
angela(at)angelahart.info
thank you!
Hello Dr. Beck. I am one of your students and if it is still possible I would like to receive a copy of your article mtf10a@acu.edu
Hello, if I still can, I'd like a copy of this article as well (sparklypixie [at] gmail). Thank you!
Dr Beck, was curious if you could send me a copy please, matthew.j.haden [at] gmail.com
Thanks
Would it be possible to have the full article sent to me? I realize I'm five years behind, but it would be lovely to read. laurenellisonjames [at] gmail.com. Many thanks!