Current Journal

Engaging the Taboo: Gender, Sexuality, and the Body in Our Religious Traditions

This paper outlines past and current teaching on celibacy and marital sexuality within the Roman Catholic tradition, and explores the interconnections between these approaches to sexuality.  Given the view of fallen human nature, historically most Roman Catholic theologians viewed celibacy very highly and regarded sexual desire and pleasure as distorted and corrupting.  In contrast, Roman Catholic theology today tends to regard both marital sexuality and celibacy to be of positive spiritual benefit.  This paper examines both the spiritual significance and dangers of sexual activity and celibate practices in Roman Catholicism, and illustrates briefly some possible parallels and relevance for other religious traditions.

Christian teachings about human sexuality emerge from fundamental beliefs about human nature and human development. A critical study of these teachings, or any part of these teachings, e.g. celibacy and marriage, should begin with an exploration of the Church’s understanding of the dignity of the human person and the Christian vocation to responsive love.

Of course, Islam has had its share of ascetics and contemplatives, both loners and those in mystical orders. Some Muslim renunciants have remained celibate despite the prohibition against “monkery,” but they have always been a minority. Muslim jurists oscillate between strongly recommending marriage and deeming it obligatory; that it could be undesirable as a general matter is inconceivable (Abou El Fadl 2001: 195). Still, scholars acknowledge that some people are unsuited for married life.

Hindu monks take the vow of poverty and celibacy. The Sanskrit word for celibacy is brahmacharya, “dwelling in Brahman.” What do I mean by Brahman? What does “dwelling in” mean and how is it to be practiced? To answer these questions, it is necessary to understand the Hindu worldview.

When does dialogue move toward seeking an agreement on matters of shared concern, such as for example human rights in relation to sexuality, and then an insistence on plumbing together the religious depths from which injustice may be emerging?

The purpose of this article is to explore briefly the way in which iconic representations of divine embodiment serve analogous and yet distinct purposes in different traditions. In the Byzantine East, images of the glorified body of Christ and the saints prefigure the deification of the practitioners that will be accomplished at the end of time. For the Tibetan master Bokar Rinpoche, the mental visualization of the Tantric deity Chenrezig enables one to retrieve the nirvanic dimension of one’s body, which is usually obfuscated by ignorance and emotion. The comparison illumines the tradition’s different conceptions of temporality, individuality, and soteriology.

Although the Black Church has historically responded to social problems, collective action to combat HIV/AIDS has been limited. Focus group conversations from Black Church leaders are used to examine attitudes and actions on the subject. Of particular interest is whether framing of the discourse is influenced by Black Church culture. Findings suggest the tendency to associate HIV/AIDS with homosexuality and conflate it with other social challenges. Tensions arose concerning how to reconcile HIV/AIDS without violating Christian tenets as well as inactivity that violates the Christian calling to serve the Black community. Yet regardless of views about theology, humanity, morality, and sexuality, strategies for redress reflected the Black Church self-help tradition.

This paper explores positive religious views of spirituality as embodied, active, and physical, through examination of performance in kabbalah and hatha yoga. Several Zohar passages on prayer movement are presented to explore how traditional prayer movements were interpreted. This examination includes rabbinic and Zohar commentary as well as comparison to hatha yoga texts and practices. Importantly, underlying concepts of initiating justice through ritual motion are examined.

This contribution outlines the status quo, the basic difficulties, and the implications of the category of gender being introduced to traditional Roman Catholic theology. In contrast to the anxiety the introduction of gender has provoked in official documents of the Catholic Church, my contribution aims to emphasize the positive inspiration which goes along with this new hermeneutical and analytical category, seen from a liberal feminist point of view. It entails the rediscovery of the meaning of the vulnerable body and the need for the protection of its integrity as a universal starting point for cross-cultural and inter-religious dialogue.