Sex and the Bible

by

July 5, 2022

Issues of religion and sexuality are as potent as ever. The overturning of abortion rights, church division over LGBTQ rights, and the morality of sexual relations outside of marriage turn on questions of right and wrong, which for Christians are grounded in scripture. Yet no area requires that we contextualize biblical guidance more than sexuality and marriage.

Medical and social sciences have expanded our understandings of sex and gender and provided reliable birth control. Modern social structures include changes in gender roles and declining social stigma around single parenting. Marriage today involves two persons willingly joining their lives and choosing when—or if—to have children. This is a vastly different social landscape than the ancient world reflected in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.

Biblical Ethics

There is no single understanding of marriage in the Bible, a “library” of dozens of books, which originated over 1500 years in patriarchal societies that included agrarian nomads, monarchies, exile, occupation, and empires. Marriage was a contract between men based on economic interests, which evolved from a handshake to a more formal contract. Through most of the Hebrew scriptures, men were free to take multiple wives.

Women were expected to be virgins when they married, and if they were not, men could break the marriage contract. Men were free to have sex with prostitutes, but not with women who belonged to other men. Throughout biblical history, women had little agency, and sexuality and marriage were inseparable from economics, politics, idolatry, ritual purity, and individual and group survival.1

Many Christians view the ethics of the Christian scriptures as being more relevant than those in Hebrew scriptures, especially the Levitical codes. However, as the title of William Countryman’s book Dirt, Greed, and Sex indicates, sexual ethics in the New Testament continued to be based on issues of ownership and purity.2

Given such diverse social contexts, scriptural laws about sexuality cannot be applied today without contextualization. Even those who claim to read scripture literally must acknowledge a changing ethic over the time period covered by the books of the Bible and choose which to follow.

Sex and Marriage

Biblical ethics inform how we view sex outside of marriage, and those views have changed over time. Although it is widely accepted in the U.S., I have recently heard people in their 80s and 90s lament that their 50- and 60-year-old unmarried children are living with someone. At the same time, Evangelical Christian college students who feel out of step with their peers often ask if the Bible condemns pre-marital sex. Both situations require interpreting scripture that was written to address a different social context.

In addition to cultural differences from biblical times, there are biological differences to consider. Young people mature sexually at a younger age than even a century ago and marry much later. Expecting unmarried, sexually mature people to remain celibate may lead those who are sexually active to feel guilty or ashamed. That same ethic may lead some couples to marry before they are emotionally ready, believing that it is the only acceptable way to have sex. Older couples especially may have financial or family obligations that prevent them from marrying, and divorced persons may be hesitant to remarry.

Biblical references to same-sex intimacy are all negative, but to the ancient writers of these books, such relationships appeared to be abnormal and contrary to God’s order. We now know that attraction to one’s own sex is natural for some people, and for them to be in a heterosexual marriage is as unnatural as same-sex relationships appeared to biblical writers.

Abortion

If biblical advice on sex and marriage needs to be contextualized, scriptural reference to abortion is nonexistent. In the absence of a biblical mandate, pro-life Christians point to passages that speak of created life beginning in the womb (Psalm 139:13-15) and protecting the life of innocent children (Matthew 18:10-14).3 These same verses should prompt us to make sure that children have a safe home, enough food, access to health care, and reliable care, yet Republicans continually block social programs that would provide for the needs of children who are not aborted.

A viral post by United Methodist pastor Dave Barnhart points out that it is easy to advocate for the unborn because they make no demands and present no complications, unlike prisoners, immigrants, poor people, widows, and orphans. The latter groups are consistently lifted up in scripture and are just as consistently marginalized by conservatives. Or as comedian George Carlin put it: “[Conservatives] will do anything for the unborn. But once you’re born, you’re on your own.”

Whose/Who’s Right?

In leading a Bible study on sexuality and embodiment in the book of 1 Corinthians, I began with the question, “Suppose someone hands you a letter and tells you that it was written 2000 years ago to a church in Greece and that it would answer questions you have about dating, marriage, sexuality, and your body. What do you think?” The most conservative student in the group immediately said, “It wouldn’t be very relevant.”

With that as our starting point, we explored the context of first-century Corinth and some specific situations the Corinthians had asked Paul to address. We then considered how his advice might speak to young people in the twenty-first century U.S. Some students felt called to follow the biblical advice on its face value, but many experienced this as an encounter with the living Word, whose deeper messages of love, justice, and compassion could align with different behaviors.

Even though scripture was inspired by God, we cannot ignore the human lens of the writer and the varied lenses through which we read it. Many Methodists follow founder John Wesley’s practice of reading scripture in light of Christian tradition, reason, and individual and communal experience. Doing so forces us to see how different our world is from the ancient world that the Hebrew and Christian scriptures addressed.

Although Jesus answered questions about marriage and divorce, he did not speak directly to any of the issues that divide us today. However, he continually spoke against blind adherence to the law and commanded us to love God first and neighbor second. Loving God may mean recognizing that the range of faithful expressions of sexuality may extend beyond what society has conditioned us to accept. Loving others means allowing them to interpret scripture for themselves on issues that are not clearly defined.

Conservatives will say that this represents an erosion of biblical values by permissive, secular culture, and will consider me as hypocritical as I view them. The difference is that I do not want to impose my sexual ethics on the entire country, and they view theirs as absolutes that everyone must be forced to abide by.

The Supreme Court has recently ruled favorably on several religious freedom cases, almost all of them supporting Christianity. However, their decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade infringes on the religious rights of some Jewish women. The American Jewish Committee expressed its disappointment in the ruling, noting “Jewish tradition prioritizes the safety of women carrying a child.”

For her book God Gave Us the Right: Conservative Catholic, Evangelical Protestant, and Orthodox Jewish Women Grapple with Feminism (1999, Rutgers University Press), Christel Manning found that almost all the women she interviewed rejected abortion and same-sex intimacy, but only the Evangelical women consistently wanted to see their beliefs enshrined in law. As a religious minority, Jewish women in particular did not want to impose their beliefs on others. The minority of Evangelical Christians in this country want to force their particular reading of scripture on the rest of us, and the current conservative majority of the Supreme Court seemed poised to let them do it.4

  1. For more on the sexual ethics in the Bible, see “It’s All About a Missing Rib: Human Sexuality in the Bible,” by James L. Crenshaw, in Perspectives in Religious Studies (2010).
  2. Dirt, Greed, and Sex: Sexual Ethics in the New Testament and Their Implications for Today, by L. William Countryman (Fortress Press: 1988)
  3. The Republican alliance with the pro-life movement that led to the current Supreme Court can be traced to strategists who encouraged Nixon in 1972 and Ford in 1976 to adopt such a position to gain Catholic votes and appeal to social conservatives who were concerned about feminism and the sexual revolution.
  4. Justice Clarence Thomas has already signaled the court’s willingness to reconsider marriage equality.

The Rev. Jane Ellen Nickell is a retired clergy member of the West Virginia Annual Conference. To reproduce this content elsewhere, contact the author via her blog.