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Christianity Today, August, 2008 |

A Safe Place to Talk About Sex

Sex and the Soul argues that universities—Christian and otherwise—desperately need this.

Review by Lisa Graham McMinn | posted 8/26/2008 08:50AM

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Freitas criticizes spiritual schools' failure to help students think about sex or spirituality. Still, she believes that evangelical and spiritual schools have something to offer each other. Freitas believes that premarital abstinence is too limiting; the spiritual schools offer an ethic of sexual freedom that gives students the possibility of saying "yes" to responsible sexual experiences.

I'm stodgy enough (so Freitas might say) to imagine that if evangelical schools embrace sex in the context of committed and loving relationships before marriage, we wouldn't move toward the balance Freitas seeks. Instead, we would move toward the very hookup culture she criticizes. But more significantly, evangelical schools believe that faith has an implicit connection to sexual behavior. This is why evangelical schools are evangelical. If they adjusted scriptural understandings of sexuality to the latest recommendations, they would lose the essence of the faith that characterizes them.

Freitas is right: Evangelical schools do need to create more safe places for conversations about sexuality and faith; we need to find ways to talk about truth and extend grace to each other. A challenge for Christian students is to figure out how to be sexual while single. We need to help students realize that embracing relationships that have nothing to do with sex is part of being created for relationship. And we need to better prepare our children by giving them a sexuality rooted in faith—not as a boundary to obey, but as a relational longing reflecting God's very nature.

Lisa Graham McMinn is a professor at George Fox University. She is the author of many books, including Growing Strong Daughters (2007) and Sexuality and Holy Longing (2004).

Related Elsewhere:

Christianity Today interviewed Freitas about sex and campus culture.

Sex and the Soul is available from ChristianBook.com and other retailers.

More articles on sexuality and gender are on our website.

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August 2008, Vol. 52, No. 8

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Daniel

Posted: August 29, 2008 11:01 AM

What were the schools? When the number of schools you pick in each category are so small, then the author practically accuses herself of selection on the dependent variable. The statistics and Franciscan University and Georgetown University and Catholic University in America are all going to be very different, as are the statistics at Calvin versus Union versus Gordon, as are the statistics at the University of Minnesota versus the University of Virginia versus UC Berkeley. So.... I will not be reading this book because the data will ultimately be meaningless.

Isaiah Tor

Posted: August 26, 2008 5:34 PM

Whilst their is a place of such safe places of "confession", we must realize that could only be a pained attempt in the aftermath to rescue if possible, a young person, after he or she has already participated in sexual behaviour that has severely shattered his or her relationship with the Lord. Sexual sins are very much hated by God, to the extent that even David's sin in robbing Bathsheba who had been the wife of Uriah was still recorded in Matthew 1. Perhaps one may say it is absolutely impossible to be pure in this age. Regarding this I point the Christian to 2 Timothy 2:21-22. We all need His mercy and grace in this, in the realization that we are all sinners in desperate need of His grace not only in mighty deliverances from severe temptation, but much more a daily salvation from this most damaging of sins that we would live in His presence unceasingly until we meet Him at the end of this age at His second coming. May the young people of America would so love God seek Him purely

AKR	Posted: August 26, 2008 4:46 PM

Call me a prude but the statistics are a bit shocking to me. Having grown up in evangelical church in the 90's, and attended a public university and then graduate school, I'm often stumped by how little anyone of "authority" is willing to discuss sexuality honestly. It's often left to professors, who honestly are really not equipped to counsel wisely, and many of them strident with their politics only serve to alienate the students even more. It saddens me that we are at a point in history where we are looking at numbers to verify what a new generation is experiencing in their sexuality, but it's even sad that we are at a point where over 70% of students in most schools have experienced sex of some kind, and have no faith to lean upon. The stats on the Catholic schools are even more surprising, and why such a disparity when compared to evangelical schools? What's the difference?

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