Sex and the church

Dr Lisa Severine Nolland, writer, lay chaplain and consultant to Anglican Mainstream, has worked with children, adolescents and families for years.

Before same-sex marriage was legalised, she says, younger people didn't care about the issue. Older people, especially Christian leaders, would say "just preach the gospel," or "run another Christianity Explored or Alpha - that should sort things." Such approaches, she says, are understandable, but naive at best and ignorantly culpable at worst.

She warns that we are in a sexual revolution of the first order, which is affecting us all, inside and outside the church. Now same-sex marriage has been legalised, other alternative sexual lifestyles, including plural partnerships, are demanding the same rights on the same basis - "This is me and my identity, I was born this way, I am not hurting anyone, society discriminates against me, I am not putting up with it any more."

There is a danger, she says, that the antediluvian views of those who still believe in traditional marriage will go the way of the dinosaur, at least in public. Preachers will steer ever more clear of these minefields, majoring on "love and acceptance." Children will be taught to affirm all family forms, which are no better and no worse than any other, and that to believe to the contrary is evil.

But it is not too late to respond to these challenges. Here, says Dr Nolland, is what we can do:

1.   Blow the whistle on the myth that Jesus did not speak much about sex issues. He did. Sex matters a lot to Jesus. Sex was good, but only in a monogamous heterosexual marriage.  

2.   Stand up for the view that living and thinking in a distinctively Christian manner in relation to sex and marriage is a vital part of Christian discipleship. Ask your church leadership to do the same.

3.   Get yourself educated on the dangers of all sex outside this framework and the benefit to children of married heterosexual parents, and teach your children the uncensored, real version. Ask your church leadership to do the same

4.   Become culturally and politically engaged through groups like Christian Concern, Christian Institute or C4M in the UK, or National Organization for Marriage or other conservative groups in the US.

5.  Pray individually and corporately about these matters. 

The need is desperate.