Christians: Please Put the Youth Group “Sex Talk” to Bed.

Recently, I attended a talk on the subject of sexuality.

A reading from nearly a decade ago accompanied the talk, predictably dated and situated in purity culture.

The main concerns of the talk were the importance of not having sex before/outside of marriage and the problems of pornography.

For anyone who has attended an Evangelical youth group in the last few decades, this should be sounding familiar. “Wait till marriage.” “Don’t have affairs.” “Porn is bad.” “Don’t do anything you wouldn’t want your Grandma seeing.” If there were ever an overriding theme of Christian sexuality talks, it would be: “thou shalt not…”

More recently, there have been attempts to put a positive spin on this mantra. Thou “shalt not” because thou “shalt want” a healthy marriage. God designed sex inside monogamous marriage. This is ordained. Mandated. Biblical. Men and women are just different.

Procreation. Complementary. And so on. And while these newer narratives are transparently “marriage positive” to emphasise a negative stance, they are nevertheless still seen as the way to talk about sexuality that is going to convince the masses to remain sexually “pure”.

As I, a grown-ass married person, sat in yet another youth group styled “sex talk”, I lamented again the lack of depth and breadth in Christian discussions on sexuality. The speaker was white and married, the content avoided queer voices, the tone was preachy, and the theology was mainstream-evangelical (despite the many mainstream-evangelical theologians getting called out for sexual misdemeanors currently).

Surely, if this type of talk were working, we would see fewer Christian leaders in headlines for all the wrong reasons.

For a while now, I have wanted a fresh take on this subject. I would like to know what is being talked about in wider discussions of sex that doesn’t include the line: “secular culture is sexualised, individualistic and this is bad”. I am very tired of “the world” being blamed for breaking down families, deconstructing God’s design, bringing about the apocalypse of healthy sex. Why are we so afraid of what people who aren’t Christians might say about sex? The world is my neighbour. Must we always cross to the other side of the road every time a hint of the world comes up?

As a result of fearing outside corruption of our views of sexuality, here’s what we never seem to talk about in the typical youth group “sex talk”:

- Consent, how to express it and how to respect it. Particularly in a marriage. Marital rape apparently doesn’t happen in Christian circles. - The impact of colonisation on sexuality, and how colonisation is seen in the church. - Disability and sexuality. - Sexual diversity: the similarities and differences in monogamous relationships. - What good communication/listening between partners actually is, and how this impacts sexuality. - Mental health and sexuality. - Diet culture (the shaming of fatness and celebrating thinness) and sexuality. - Patriarchy and sexuality. - The different kinds of attraction: sexual, aesthetic, romantic, emotional, intellectual etc. - The different kinds of identity: gender identity, expression, biological sex, presentation, orientation. - What appropriate sharing of sexual experiences is, especially when in positions of pastoral responsibility. - Boundaries that are a little more nuanced than dividing the room into “guys” and “girls”. - Singleness and healthy sexuality (and not just the “you can do other things with your sexuality, like get involved in super cool hobbies like knitting or gardening!” comment).

But perhaps the biggest thing that the youth group style “sex talk” does not talk about is how Christians are contributing to the problem.

I am waiting for a “sex talk” that addresses how some of our theologies of personhood and God have created some problems. We see it when yet another battered person returns to an abusive marriage on pastoral advice, when we hear of “heads of the household” demanding sex, when extreme body/sex shame becomes a common feature in Christian circles.

Let’s face it. The youth group “sex talk” needs to be put to bed. Not only is it tired, it does not adequately engage with the complexities of our culture. We need to start thinking about whether our narratives on sex are actually helping our communities, or just cutting ourselves off entirely.

We need to stop crossing the road all the time. We might be missing our neighbours. We owe it to each other, and to ourselves.

The author of this piece has a Master in Theology, and is currently training to become an ordained Minister within the Church.