Sex
A tech-savvy Christian sexual ethic
Kate Ott challenges us to practice erotically attuned love everywhere, even online.
Maggie Nelson finds freedom in the emphatic middle
Her new essay collection examines how Americans thread the needle between care and constraint.
The conversation about faith and sex that The Bachelorette sparked
And that conversation’s inevitable limits
Can a fleabag clean up her act?
The sarcastic and sacrilegious two-season show has a moral center.
Talking with my children about sex without shame
I wanted to give them better than what I had. It wasn't easy.
A tough age for girls
Teenage girls navigate a tough landscape. There are tools the church can offer them.
What I know about knowing and being known
In a Century cover story, Katherine Willis Pershey mentions that she infuriated a friend with her beliefs about sex before marriage. That friend was me.
On knowing (yes, in the biblical sense)
When I first had sex, it wasn't just teenage hormones. I wanted to know and be known.
Saving Sex, by Amy DeRogatis
The old stereotype is that evangelicals are unable or unwilling to talk about sex. Lately, the reality is the opposite.
reviewed by Amy Frykholm
Erin Lane and Enuma Okoro: Talking Taboo
I’ve been interested in the idea of “taboos” for a long time—those intricate rules that overarch our society and ideas of the sacred. They can be tools to keep people from harming others or themselves. They can be used as social conditioning, arbitrarily enforcing certain behaviors as a means of control.
More on Savage and monogamy
Our August 23 cover story on monogamy and Dan Savage has
gotten a lot of feedback, both positive and negative. Benjamin Dueholm offers a
nuanced take on the ways the popular sex columnist is beating pastors at their
own game--and the ways Savage's ethical worldview falls short. Some readers
seem too stuck on the first point--"the Christian
Century believes we should be instructed by an advice columnist," crows Joe Carter at First Things--to hear Dueholm out on the second.
Our whole selves
The current issue of Marie Claire contains an interview with a young, unmarried pastor whose calling impacts her sex life--because her ordination vows include celibacy in singleness.