Rhetorics of sexuality in faith communities

Here’s a fascinating interview with two scholars (Mark Jordan and Jay Michaelson) who are writing on the rhetorics we use in communities of faith to engage sexuality. The interview was interesting enough I’m going to track down their books, and gives a brief sense of what they’re working on. For instance, they trace through some of the rhetorical approaches that have been tried, but conclude:

So what we need, I think, is what religions do best: the creation of characters, forms of lives, stories—myths if you want—that don't just defend, but that call, that invite; that present what you're doing as a form of life that's holy and beautiful and worth living. In that sense I think it's not enough for progressive political organizations to get a kind of tincture of religion, just enough religion to fight with the conservatives. If they're going to do religion they're going to have to do religion. Which means they have to engage the creative power of religion—through ritual, through narrative, through liturgy and so on.

The interview goes on to delve into "negative theology" (what might more traditionally be called apophatic theology), and the ways in which we must always retain our humility in speaking of God. For instance:

I think I'm probably more passionate about writing than I am about sex. I think about it all the time. I think about it partly in terms of negative theology, that is, it's very important for me that we always remind ourselves of how our languages fail to talk about the divine. And by that I mean not only to talk about God but to talk about the divine in ourselves and each other. So that I'm constantly wanting to break language apart in the presence of the divine so that the divine has some chance of showing through.

But I also think that Christian theology has evaded the stylistic challenges of the last 150 years, much to its detriment. That is, Christian theology seems to me, especially official theology, to get worse and worse in its writing. That for me is a powerful loss.

Because what it does is transfer the force of the writing from persuasion or beauty to mere authority. So it becomes more and more the language just of: You have to do this because I said so. It's not beautiful, it's not attractive, it doesn't make sense, it doesn't persuade you. You have to do it. And so I'm always pulling back from that, wanting to say no. If religious language means anything it means you should come and live this way because it's beautiful.</blockquote>