"Doing it Right"

  Last night I went to Amy Johnson Frykholm's talk on sex, christianity, and the media in America.   I must say that now I am interested in buying her book, See me Naked.  Her talk, as she said herself, wasn't so much meant to answer questions or force a perception of sex/christianity.  Rather, she sought to "open up a discussion" on what she feels is a topic too rarely and inadequately discussed in American Christian life: the relationship between a Christian life and sexuality. 
 She professed the value in "unpacking" dense facts as a means of looking at large topics in new ways, and this is precisely what she did in her lecture, by examining first a clip from a documentary on Evangelicals following the 2000 presidential election. She found that the manner in which Evangelicals talked about sex in their marriages was idealized, emphasizing both male capacity to have sex and the woman's pleasure. I found her comments very interesting on this matter, because she explained that these two criteria for "good sex"   have rarely, if ever been mentioned in a religious interpretation of sex within a marriage, and now Evangelicals, what many would consider quite the conservative branch of Christianity, are drawing upon these points.   But she claims that the real problem with this is that they are describing sex as an experience which is absolutely perfect because of God, and that this view of sex is an idealization equal, a "twin monster" to that of pornography or sexy magazines.   It distorts the complex, personal issues, questions, and struggles people have and makes sexuality into something very perfect and , sex, therefore unattainable because people are not perfect.   The relationship is being downplayed, in this instance. 
     I found all of her lecture to be intruiging, however, I think perhaps her best point was that Christians, to reverse this idealization, need to start talking about sexuality.  And while I don't believe that all Christian groups are as committed or vocal about "ideal sex" as the Evangelicals, I think that a large problem in Christian communities is silence against sexuality, so that no one really knows how to relate their spirituality to their sexuality. Starting to talk about the subject within our religious communities can help this, and help to reduce the size of one of the monsters in American society.