“The glory of God is humans fully alive”, St Irenaeus teaches us. A crucial, indispensable part of that life is sexuality. (Although some individuals can and do voluntarily forgo it for a life of celibacy, this is not so for the overwhelmingly majority, and is absolutely not feasible for us collectively.) Unfortunately, for most of us, the only time we hear the churches talking about sexuality it is in the context of prohibitions, or grounded in understandings of sexuality so rooted in inappropriate historical and cultural circumstances, and oblivious to the findings of medical or social science, that it comes across as nothing more than a string of prohibitions against specific acts. This has nothing whatever to do with “humans fully alive”.
Reading a report this morning from Religious Dispatches, I was delighted to learn of an organization of the name “Religious Institute” (on Sexual Justice, Morality and Healing) to correct this imbalance. Ten years ago, they issued a “Religious Declaration on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing”, which strikes me as a sensible starting point for any discussion of faith and sex, and which I reproduce in full below, highlighting some portions that I believe are particularly important.
