Christian Narratives of Female Sexuality

By Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig | September 30, 2014

Horrors abound in the ongoing demise of Mars Hill’s Mark Driscoll.

Driscoll, 43, stepped down as pastor of the megachurch this August, amidst an ever-mounting tide of allegations regarding his mishandling of just about everything that comes with being a pastor. Through bizarre, vulgar, oddly focused sermons on sexuality and an interpersonal manner that appears to have been nigh intolerable, Driscoll fostered a toxic church culture and environment. His theology outside the church was, it seems, was just as aggressively off-color, including statements such as:

Ultimately, God created you and it is his penis. You are simply borrowing it for a while. Knowing that His penis would need a home, God created a woman to be your wife and when you marry her and look down you will notice that your wife is shaped differently than you and makes a very nice home. Therefore, if you are single you must remember that your penis is homeless and needs a home. But, though you may believe your hand is shaped like a home, it is not … And, if you look at a man it is quite obvious that what a homeless man does not need is another man without a home.

Whether or not you imagine the creation of women to be theologically explicable in terms of divine penile vagrancy, it’s probably clear how statements like this one immediately elevate the status of some readers and lower that of others. It’s almost custom-designed to guarantee inaccessibility to women, a performative measure Driscoll seems to have enjoyed taking in service of his mission to reverse the “Pussification” of Christianity. It’s probably easy to condemn Driscoll for this, and to imagine that this brand of behavior is confined to a relatively small cohort of similar figures. But language on the subject of sex that displaces women readers and contributes to queasy cultures of exclusion and other forms of ill virtue is, depressingly, quite common.

No single writer is ever responsible for the sparking of trends, and of those authors who do participate in the production of a trend, motives and contributions are all (at least slightly) different. For that reason, I’ve chosen not to cite directly from any particular essay in the vein of work I’m discussing. I don’t intend to cast personal aspersions on anyone who might have written in this stream, and I certainly don’t mean to attribute sole responsibility for its outcome to anybody in particular—so I’ll be writing in general terms. But please do take on faith (or call upon your own imagination to verify) that I have specific pieces in mind.

The vein of writing I refer to is made up of a corner of popular Christian writing on sex that aims not so much to lay out what Christian marital or sexual ethics are, or to argue for a specific position on them, but to demonstrate that Christian martial or sexual ethics are good. This isn’t an unworthy project, as one of the chief complaints registered in popular discourse regarding Christianity has to do with its allegedly puritanical, oppressive sexual ethic. So contrary to the image of the Christian life as inherently bloodless and perfunctory, these essays tend to use personal narratives to propose the superiority of Christian sexual ethics to non-Christian ones (typically indefinite and libertine) on their own grounds. That is, these pieces aim to show that living the Christian life is not incompatible with experiencing sexual pleasure or contentment, but actually leads to those things in a more thorough, authentic sense. They tend to focus on the good of fertility compared to artificial birth control; the good of connubial relations compared to porn; or the good of reserving sex for marriage compared to not.

This is a totally respectable goal. Yet it’s worth questioning if it isn’t inflected with a pair of less respectable intentions. In contemporary culture, for example, sexual chastity is construed as a feminine quality, leading folks like Driscoll to try to reclaim a more masculine, virile edge for the faith; secondly, noble motives can quickly lapse into the lascivious when the right subject is at hand. None of these pieces read precisely like Penthouse Forum letters, but it’s sometimes more a matter of where they draw the line on the narrative than how it would play out given its logical conclusion. These points are, I think, enough reason to contemplate the best argumentative tactics before pressing on with essays like these.

But even with the best of intentions, the register of pieces in this stream tends to have unintended impacts on women readers. If the Christian publishing sphere is imagined as a literary, online representation of the Church community itself, then these articles are the equivalent of the winks and glances and whistles women get every day, combined with the vaguely lewd remarks one overhears that produce a slightly disconcerting tenor. Women, in other words, are used to being viewed as automatically sexual regardless of how we might want to engage; the very fact of our being women and present seems to occasion, quite uncomfortably, grounds for considering female sexuality. It’s an unsettling experience to enter into a space or conversation expecting to learn or discuss and instead find the topic of your most personal anatomy and experience up for consideration.

This points us to the chief issue: Essays like these, authored by men, are still principally about women, but only as objects of assessment. Similar pieces by women—say, an article by a Christian woman detailing the loveliness of her husband’s masculine sexual prowess and virility—would probably not get such a warm reception, and, indeed, such pieces are comparatively rare, and don’t get much of a hearing in traditional spaces. This suggests that there is perhaps something questionable at work in the structure of these pieces: are we really arguing that Christian sexual ethics are superior on the merits, or are we arguing that one can maintain the tendency to sexually objectify women while still following the rules, so to speak? The line blurs.

What’s excellent about Christian marriage is that it resists the tendency to view people as means to ends, that it insists on the utter unique personal-ness of marital sex, and that it maintains the same sexual expectations of men and women in both of those directives. We therefore stray a little, it seems, when we turn personal marital sexual narratives into public arguments for the superiority of an ethic that would suggest such things should remain at least somewhat private and unknown to others. Further, and worse, it seems to me that such literary efforts can result in the same sidelining of women via othering and objectification that the Christian sexual ethic, with its restriction of sex to marriage, has the powerful potential to prevent.

When engaging with a secular culture that’s hostile to Christian sexual ethics, it’s tempting to adopt the language of the opposition to win on its own turf. But in this case doing so seems to push Christian women out of the conversation precisely because the language of secular sexual pop culture typically has misogynistic themes built in. A little less heavy then, on the poetically etherealized female form, and a little heavier on the generalizable merits would be a welcome shift in this growing genre of Christian literature.

RaymondNicholas

Wow, I know I must be getting old (in my sixties)! I think I understand what you are saying, but have absolutely no reference points. The reason is that I disengaged the secular pop culture decades ago. I have “known” only two women in my life: my first wife, who died young, and my second wife. So I don’t know nothing.

But I would suggest regarding this genre you call Christian literature, that Catholic artists consider the notion that we are created beings and that our lives are geared toward the perfection of being as God desires of us. As Paul said, “We are born again into a new life.” Shouldn’t we learn from all our temptations, sins, and repeated failures, which drag us down into the muck, that doing more of the same doesn’t work? How that is done artistically is not an easy task, when we live in a period of low culture, wherein the only acceptable form of art is low art.
Bill Maniotis

I need more time to fashion a better response, but I think is is important to note that you choose a poor “reference” point-what amounts to a straw man, in my eyes-from which to “launch” your argument. Rather than worry about what the Mark Driscolls of the world have said about human sexuality, you would be better served to look at Saint John Paul the Great’s writings. He counters the secular narrative with a delicacy, depth, and breadth sorely lacking in the remarks by Driscoll you cite here, while making some similar points. First, that men and women ARE different. Second, that the differences are not tied to any sort of “superiority” or “inferiority,” but permeate our very being. I would focus more on drawing out what JP II meant by the “feminine genius,” and worry less about the remarks of some crackpot minister who doesn’t speak with the grandeur and authority of the Catholic Church…
James Wyss

I really like what you said about the difference between men and women and how they are not related to superiority or inferiority. I think too often audiences will see or hear something related to the differences between genders and automatically assume that one is superior and the other is not. I think this belies our conduct as Christians, namely that we are the body of Christ and not a collection of individuals with identity issues.

It’s almost as if the Body has an auto immune disease, or at the very least some kind of allergy. We spend too much time in conflict over these identity issues and not enough time embracing our identity as saints.
gsk

Fascinating piece, although your “charitable” reticence to name names makes it difficult to have a stronger debate on the issue. I take it to mean that you’re thinking more of Catholic TOB writers than of Protestants, and you only trotted out that quote for its bizarre qualities. I agree with your points — well done! The perpetual boiling down of the Christian saga to the marriage bed is frustrating, when the complementarity between men and women (not to mention Christ and the Church) is so much more than body parts.
Christopher Hall

This sentence alone would justify the entire article: “Whether or not you imagine the creation of women to be theologically explicable in terms of divine penile vagrancy, it’s probably clear how statements like this one immediately elevate the status of some readers and lower that of others.”

“[D]ivine penile vagrancy” is snark gold.
Christopher Hall

But Mrs. Stoker Breunig said nothing about men and women not being different. I’m not sure what you’re aiming at, there.

Other than that, your comment seems to me to read as little more than saying, “Don’t focus on the yucky, focus on the good.” That’s good advice, as things go, but it can also be lamentably restrictive. Sometimes you have to focus on the yucky to point where a problem lies, and if you don’t sometimes stop to point out problems people are liable stray right into them.
Bill Maniotis

I’ll try to respond more fully later, Christopher. I can see how you would think I was merely saying “don’t focus on the yucky, focus on the good.” What I intuitively picked up in Ms. Stoker-Breunig’s lament is a concern with men who comment on the natural differences between men and women, and perhaps a subtle denial of those differences. By citing Driscoll as some sort of “representative” voice for Christianity in general, she implies that his view is some sort of a stand-in for most “Christian” views these days, particularly those espoused by Christian leaders. That may be so in fundamentalist circles, but it is certainly not so when we examine the beautiful work of John Paul II in works like LOVE AND RESPONSIBILITY and THE JEWELER’S SHOP. In fact, the vast majority of work on love and relationships that is part of the Catholic canon and Catholic intellectual tradition makes Mr. Driscoll’s musings look like child’s play. One last thought on “yucky” vs. “good.” Because we have lost the ability in our postmodern world to recognize that the true, the good, and the beautiful even exists, all we have to left to focus on is the bland, because nothing seems to matter, especially the most important thing about Christian sexual ethics-that it is about recognizing, respecting, and living the sacred.
Christopher Hall

I just don’t see any evidence that she is citing Driscoll as “a representative voice for Christianity in general”, and hence I don’t see the need (immediately) to bring up the teaching of St. John Paul II as a sed contra. He’s not being indicted. There’s not even a hint of this in the article. I think you’re inferring here. She seems clearly to be talking about a certain way of approaching sexual ethics that happens in certain Christian circles. She doesn’t name them, no, but I’m not so sure that’s a major problem, actually. (Did St. Thomas name his adversaries in the De Aeternitate Mundi?)

There’s a certain vagueness to the article (one to which the author admits), but that doesn’t really bother me, either, perhaps because I’ve seen a lot of stuff she discusses-even in Catholic circles.

Here’s a taste:

http://www.amazon.com/Holy-Sex-Toe-Curling-Mind-Blowing-Infallible/dp/product-description/0824524713

The only complaints I’d make against the article (if complaints they are) are 1) that Driscoll is an easy target, so it’s a bit like shooting fish in a barrel; and 2) that these sorts of shenanigans have powerful and often overlooked negative effects upon men, as well. (I’m saving this commentary for my own purposes, though.) But perhaps the author doesn’t address the latter issues because of a certain praiseworthy hesitancy about telling men what their problems are.
JamesClarke

Sure Driscoll may be out of line but this article seems like a parody of feminism.