Megan and I recently gave away four boxes of books and sold two others to secondhand book dealers. Taking old beloved books off our shelves was a painstaking process. Most of the books we ended up giving away were from college and seminary (if you were wondering: science books resell for a whole lot more than religion books). One book I did not give away — maybe will never give away — is Our Sexuality, assigned for a college course on human sexuality.

Human Sexuality, taught by a UCC pastor turned sociologist, was one of the most personally affecting courses I took at St. Olaf College. It’s been seven years now since I soaked up lectures on everything from sexual physiology to the economics of the pornography industry, but an oft-spoken line of the professor remains with me: “Understanding your sexuality is the foremost component to understanding yourself.”

Many words come to mind to describe that wonderful course and the atmosphere created by the professor’s thoughtful pedagogy — non-judgmental, liberating, embodied, reflective, hilarious, sacred — but it’s that last one that sticks with me.

Looking back, I’m not sure how he did it. Somehow, though, without his even talking about faith much at all, I was convinced that the professor’s deep respect for his students as sexual beings came from his Christian convictions. Despite that fact that he gave several lectures bemoaning the sexist history of the church, I also got the distinct impression that when our professor enjoyed sexual intimacy with his wife (which he was open to discussing), he understood sex as a holy gift from God and within God’s love.

Pivot now to two sets of recent articles. First, Saturday’s NY Times has eight commentators discussing “The Gingrich Question: Cheating vs. Open Marriage.” As I flipped through the short essays weighing-in on open marriage, divorce, sexual intimacy, etc. I was struck that the Times had failed to ask any clergy for their perspective. Which got me thinking: was the snub an oversight by the Times, or did it simply reflect the fact that clergy are not skilled (equipped?, open?) to speak publicly about sex.

Mind you it’d be a cinch to find a preacher who’d use the Times’ bully pulpit to argue in loud monotone for marriage between one man and one woman. Many of the Times’ writers, however, demonstrate much more careful words and thoughtful consideration than that, and I wondered what pastors might say publicly beyond, “marriage is good.” (I’m not saying it isn’t, by the way, just that I long for a deeper, richer, more theological conversation than most pastors react with, or at least those covered by the mainstream media.)

Thankfully, then, I later caught up on my Christian Century reading to find just that: several campus pastors reflecting on the complicated culture of dating, sex, drinking, and hook-ups at their colleges (including, my alma mater).

I recommend the series of articles, “Sex on Campus: College chaplains on the hookup culture”  at The Christian Century’s website (may require subscription). It’s all just tidbits from a larger conversation we need to have, but I’m heartened that it’s out there. I long for more holy places like my college human sexuality course to discuss sexuality, sexual ethics, culture, and faith.

I’ll close with the hopeful words of Tara Woodard-Lehman, Executive Director of the Westminster Foundation at Princeton University. Words of which, my former human sexuality professor, would be proud:

I attempt to help students cultivate a prophetic, holy imagination—one that helps them imagine a self and life that is integrated. I invite them to affirm what Rowan Williams calls “the body’s grace,” a vision of sex as an identification of one’s own body with another’s body as mutually given sources of joy and desire. I invite them to see their bodies through the sacred lens of their Creator, who names them as good, very good. Even if they can’t quite believe that it’s true, I hope that they want it to be true. And I trust that over time, by God’s grace, they will live more fully and faithfully into that new reality.

image by Matthew Bowden