The Fall… of Sex

The Fall and The Revolution

I wonder about the church’s current interest in the sexual revolution. What incites this interest, especially since the revolution began over half a century ago?

One simple answer is that the effects of the sexual revolution are being felt more than ever today. A much more complex answer is that society’s institutions have been reconstituted with terms that redress that which they previously upheld. That is, the principal social framing institutions like law, medicine, and education now reflect society’s desire for conceptions of sex that historically have been deemed transgressive.

One feels the force of this social restructuring, which identifies an inversion that is nearing completion: what was sexually transgressive is now a social good.

But even if this is the case, why is the church so interested in the sexual revolution? In short, those who interpret the inversion as moral decline seek answers regarding its genesis. By comprehending the original cause one can more adequately address the effects or at least lament the moment. And so a genealogical inquiry is needed to locate where it all went wrong. This inquiry leads many in the church to the sexual revolution as the cause of the present demise of sex.

However, framing the sexual revolution as the cause of the demise of sex harbours a theological misstep. When we narrate the sexual revolution as the cause of the demise of sex, we unwittingly explain the sexual revolution in ways that mimic the Fall, which, we will see, justifies a Christ-less, yet righteous crusade to save sex. The Fall, like the sexual revolution, is the genesis of the present evil age from which we all need saving. If the Fall names and locates the fall of humanity, then the sexual revolution names and locates the fall of sex. The implication is that society must be saved from the fall… of sex.

Let us be clear, the church is not interested in the sexual revolution, but sex, and in particular, the fall of sex.

The Desire for Paradise

Lamenting the Fall’s impact on the world reveals one’s desire for that which was lost by virtue of the Fall. Similarly, the present interest with the fall of sex points beyond itself. But whereas in Eden what preceded the fall was innocent and not shameful, indeed something to be desired, what precedes the sexual revolution is not sexual innocence and purity, but another era of fallen sex.

We are left with a dilemma: what does one desire if not that which was lost by virtue of the fall of sex? Furthermore, if what precedes the fall of sex is not desirable, what kind of fall was the fall of sex that is attributed to the sexual revolution? Such questions expose the confused nature of the church’s desire of sex.

Could one appeal to the pre-Fall to find firmer ground? That is, can we order a desire for sex to what God desires as found in a traditional reading of the creation account? Of course, and we should, but the train of thought we have followed does not permit such a move. The reason we cannot jump back to the creation narrative is because we are caught up, not in the Fall, but in the fall... of sex. We have already seen that desire has content and it is not for God’s desire. Our desire for sex is in fact the desire to be saved from the fall of sex.

Herein lies the theological misstep. By conflating the sexual revolution with the Fall, what has fallen and is in need of saving is not humanity, but sex. We desire a saviour, but not to save ourselves or the world from sin, but sex. This is the reason for the interest in sexual revolution—we learn that we need a saviour to save sex.

Deathly Silence

For all the hustle and bustle about sex (and gender) at the moment, and for all the boasting of gospel-centredness and Christ-focus that is said to characterise our various churches, books, blog posts, and sermons, there is one curious absence and silence—Jesus.

Where is Jesus the Christ? Where is Jesus’ penetrating voice? Why is the one by whom all things are created and sustained nowhere to be seen or heard? How can it be that Jesus is given so little a part to play in Church dialogue about sex and gender discussions, either amongst people of the Church or with wider society?

Two answers are revealing.

The first reveals the gravity of the theological misstep. Jesus finds himself in the outer or in the wrong game – because he came to save people, not sex. Jesus’ mission has to do with the Fall, not the fall of sex. Sex is caught up in Jesus’s saving work, but only as an aspect of what it means to be human. In short, we don’t hear about Jesus because Scripture does not identify Jesus as a saviour with the mission of undoing the fall of sex.

The second reason Jesus is largely absent from discussions about sex (and gender) is as disturbing as the first. It is true that Jesus is of little use to us for the reason above, but also because we have already found our saviours of sex in the people of Adam and Eve. If Jesus is the wrong kind of saviour, Adam and Eve are not.

Much should trouble us about these saviours, not least the fact that Adam and Eve are dead, literally. They died a long time ago and their bodies were returned to the earth to decompose. This means that the bodies of Adam and Eve, which we conjure up to address the fall of sex, are static images. In other words, Adam and Eve are held up to fallen humanity as the means of salvation even though they cannot hear, speak, touch, taste, or see. Why would we hold up such impotent images as the means of saving sex?

It is worthwhile reflecting on the images of Adam and Eve as they exhibit God’s created perfect, good, innocent, and pure sex. Surely it is becoming clear that their perfection does not bring salvation to fallen sex. What the perfect images do is reveal that sex is fallen. Was this not the point of Jesus’ use of Adam and Eve in the gospel of Matthew: to show the cagey Pharisees that fallen marriage wasn’t always fallen?

The punch line hits where it hurts the Christian the most. It’s a charge of idolatry, ironically, of perverted desire. Gazing on Adam and Eve’s bodies as a means of saving sex cannot be construed in any other way than the worship of created things. Here is the deadly misstep: the salvation of sex is underwritten by the worship of two particular humans. To save sex one must replace the creator for the created beings, which means that Jesus is not only unable to participate in saving sex due to his coming to save people from their sins, but is actively removed and replaced by other created humans who are given the mission to save people from fallen sex. Sex is fallen and instead of looking to God for its salvation, we look to created images to save it.

However mute the images of Adam and Eve are, they are not indifferent to the fall of sex. Their principal function should not be underestimated or underrepresented. As perfect images of man and woman, Adam and Eve have no capacity to save sex. What Adam and Eve are able to do as perfect images is operate as a law that condemns. The law of Adam and Eve are a perfect law and without speaking a word, they judge sex as fallen. They do not bring life, only condemnation. Adam and Eve do not save, but identify the need of a saviour.

We must reflect further on why we continue to return to the sexual revolution. The sexual revolution was a fall of sorts, but it represents the Fall no more or less than the era from which it emerged, and no more or less than the era it spawned. Sex is fallen, but only because the world is fallen. By (re)locating the fall of sex in the Fall, the church finds the theological ground to resist the desire to save sex through its own feeble means, but instead has cause to hear the alive and risen Jesus. Only in Christ, is sex redeemed, which means that our use of Adam and Eve to save sex tends towards being an attempt to justify ourselves, while condemning others.

Jesus’ voice has been sorely missed.

The Sexual Revolution: A Cause or Effect?

A Cause

The sexual revolution is often identified as the place where it all began.

For some, the sexual revolution is the birthplace of modern liberal sexual ethics. From this perspective the revolution was a positive event that lead to freedom and autonomy not only for sexual minorities, but for all people. For others, the sexual revolution is the beginning of a steep decline of sexual morality. The revolution precipitated the erosion of society’s moral conscience.

We can say that the reception of the sexual revolution is polarised: it represents the day society lost a moral compass—or found one.

This summary treats the sexual revolution simply as a cause. The two perspectives represent two sides of the same coin: on one side, the revolution has caused sexual liberalism, which for the other side, is an end of particular forms of moral sexuality. Regardless of which side of the coin one finds his or her own view, the sexual revolution is surely, in some sense, a cause of the present.

An Effect

Yet by definition the sexual revolution is an effect. A revolution is a revolt against something, a sudden change in how people live. A revolution points beyond itself to the conditions from which it springs, against that which it revolts. This means that the sexual revolution does not emerge ex nihilo, but is a contingent event and therefore an historical effect.

When we think of the sexual revolution as an effect, we are pointed not to the present, but to the past. We are provoked to think of the conditions that lead to the revolution, rather than dwell principally on the transgressive behaviour that typically characterised it.

The Revolution

In the 1964 Riddell Memorial Lectures, which were published three years later as Secularization and Moral Change, Alasdair MacIntyre traces the destruction of community life as a result of the industrial revolution. His analysis is illuminating for thinking about the sexual revolution as well. One must not think mistakenly that the industrial revolution neatly maps onto the sexual revolution. Rather, MacIntyre’s analysis of the industrial revolution presents us with a frame for thinking about the sexual revolution first as an effect.

According to MacIntyre, the industrial revolution marks a revolt from, and rapid destruction of, older forms of community. This is not a claim that an agrarian community is morally superior to the community that appears as a result of the revolution. A more basic claim is being made: revolutions destroy older forms of communities.

This basic claim is important to note because the destruction of the traditional community leads to the loss of features of that previous community, which MacIntyre claims Christianity gave symbolic expression. MacIntyre notes three features that are destroyed: a ground or natural order that orders all lives, stability that results from the continuity between order and nature, and finally, norms that justify the prosecution of transgressive behaviour.

These losses, MacIntyre argues, underwrite the erosion of moral unity and the rise of autonomy of the secular life. In sum, when people were stripped of their traditional structures, “they were finally torn from a form of community in which it could be intelligibly and credibly claimed that the norms which govern social life had universal and cosmic significance, and were God-given. They were planted instead in a form of community in which the officially endorsed norms so clearly are of utility only to certain partial and partisan human interests that is impossible to clothe them with universal and cosmic significance.”

The reaction of church folk appears more instinctive than rigorously thought through. In May 1818, there was a debate concerning the merit of building more churches to discipline the masses. Having given examples of attempts by the church to intervene in society’s moral situation, MacIntyre remarks, “Thus the presentation of Christianity is too often, and too publicly, a device to secure the class interest of the ruling classes.”

If you smell a rat, then your senses might be on song. MacIntyre’s reading of the industrial revolution in these lectures is along Marxist class wars lines. His thesis is that the industrial revolution precipitates conflicted social relations in which the church is caught up. The decline of church influence (church attendance) correlates with its loss of touch with the worker, which has to do with the migration of people from the village community to a context of isolated autonomy in the city. In this urbanised setting the swelling working class finds itself outside of the narrative power of the church’s message. More critically, the message served the interest of those who worked the workers.

The church’s message, MacIntyre argues, ceased to have critical purchase in one’s experience of life. With this waning influence, new narratives are created to vindicate lives. Here we find the secular life and a changing moral milieu.

The Sexual Revolution

MacIntyre is very aware that he paints a fairly reductionist and homogenous before and after picture. Nonetheless, he thinks the broad brush strokes frame the social context of the time accurately enough to get a glimpse of the rise of secularism that results from the church losing contact with the experiences of everyday lives. The industrial revolution first did not undermine the church’s voice and sway, rather, the moral landscape that characterised the industrial revolution first was the result of the church having lost those she desired to hear her voice and to be swayed. The industrial revolution was not the beginning of the end, but the consummation of it.

I wonder whether such an interpretation of the industrial revolution can illuminate our thinking about the sexual revolution? Why hasn’t the sexual revolution first pointed us to the prior conditions that lead to the sexual revolution?

MacIntyre’s account leads us to consider whether the sexual revolution first is not to be understood as precipitating a change in the social landscape and therefore the undermining of the church’s ability to affect the social conscience. But rather that the sexual revolution was, at least in some sense, an effect of the church’s inability to theologically narrate sexuality and gendered lives in light of not only Adam and Eve, but also the fall, redemption, and our future glorification in Christ? Did post-war social conservatism co-opt Christianity (or were they in bed together?) to proffer notions of sexuality and gender that were deeply incongruent with wider society’s experiences and thinking about sex and gender?

It is easy to point the finger at the sinner—the gunja toking, acid tripping, braless hippie, rocking out to Jimmy under the sun—that got us on this slippery slope in the first place... if that is indeed the case. It’s much harder to take seriously the sexual revolution as one event that emerged, in part, as a result of the church’s poor sight and inarticulate voice.

Such a reading of the sexual revolution understands that society at the time had already revolted against the status quo as narrated historically by the church, and that what was to follow was the outworking of that widespread disquiet. In other words, society had revolted against the narrative of “right” sexuality and gender that structured society, and the revolution was merely an attempt to install a new narrative or social structure that better represented (and regulated) their experiences of gender and sexuality.

And so in the 1960’s sexual revolution, sex came of age. It lost its purity. Sex was no longer sacred because society re-narrated sex as secular. This means that the sexual revolution was not the beginning of the end, but the consummation of it. The sexual revolution is now society’s boast, like the conquered subject of footy change-room banter.

But to be clear, the point of this post is not society’s conquest of sex, which is the disenchantment of sex—I take this as given. Rather, it is the confronting inglorious realisation that its foundation is one that we cannot wholly disown. However causal the sexual revolution/secularisation of sex is, the church must realise that the sexual revolution/secularisation of sex was first an effect that emerged from a context of disquiet.

The disquiet that wracked post-war sexual conservatism names the personal revolt against the status quo that seeks social vindication through revolution. Herein lies the mistake: not realising that the quiet was in fact disquiet.