Doing it.

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Running Head: DOING IT.

Doing It . (Or Religious Masturbation). ((Or Becoming and Un-becoming

Christian)): A Rhetorical Autoethnography of Identity Negotiation

Abstract. I wasn’t always sexually liberated from the confines of rhetorical structures that

deny my body pleasure. In fact, my sexual liberation did not occur until well into my

twenties, post Bachelor and Master degrees. But between the temporal space of my first

sexual experience and liberation, there is a moment of spiritual identity negotiation within an

intra-racial relationship with vast intercultural differences, specifically class and religion. In

this autopoetic narrative that begins and ends in a church, I tell a story from my sexual past.

A story that used to “remain at the bottom of the sexual [and theological] pyramid without a

voice” (Althaus-Reid, 2001, p. 145) or body because it challenges the traditional ideals of

Christian sexuality and what it means to become and perform Christianity. Using

autoethnographic techniques offers a space to engage sexuality with the body present,

helping tell the story, and offering a particular kind of complexity. Carolyn Ellis asserts “the

goal is to practice an artful, poetic, and empathetic social science in which readers can keep

in their minds and feel in their bodes the complexities of concrete moments of lived

experience” (Ellis, 2004, p. 30).

Doing it.

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Doing It . (Or Religious Masturbation). ((Or Becoming and Un-becoming

Christian)): A Rhetorical Autoethnography of Identity Negotiation

First, a moment of rhetorical conceptualization

from the Devil him(her)self.

The devil wrote a Christian Dictionary, you know?

Within the lines of the manuscript

are written truths that help situate

the complexity of being

Christian

Sexual

a teenager.

We begin this journey with five definitions,

or a definitive epigraph of sorts

And might I add,

something about appropriating a scholarly Devil

at the beginning of a scholarly essay

makes me re-member my body,

and giggle.

Repent (v., i.): To substitute one set of vices for another, as to replace smoking and

drinking with gossip and judgmentalism.

Sex (n.): Hey, we can’t talk about that here. This is a Christian Dictionary!

Sin 1(n.): What one calls the imperfections, mistakes, and misbehavior of others. 2 (v.,

i.): For others to engage in such activities.

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Sin, Unpardonable (n.): The act of questioning anything, especially the received

opinions or edicts of the received Tradition (q.v.), authority, or clique on the ruling

Board (q.v.); cf. Philosophize; Thought; cf. also Sex.

Temptation (n.) According to H. L. Mencken, “the operation of an irresistible force

upon a moveably body.” According to Mark Twain in “The Man who Corrupted

Hadleyburg,” a necessary precondition of virtue. The impulse, often blamed upon the

Devil but really only encouraged by him, to act according to nature. (Williams, 2008, p.

77; 83; 84; 87; 91).

I may have to repent after writing what some may consider a

theological text.

To talk about sex is to sin, both sexual and unpardonable,

but the temptation is too strong to resist.

Marcella Althaus-Reid (2001) asks us why do a theology of sexual stories, isn’t that

an issue for the private realm? Her response: no, because sexuality permeates economic,

political, and societal life. “Without a theology of sexual stories, the last moment of the

hermeneutical circle, that is, the moment of appropriation and action, will always have a

partiality and superficial approach to conflict resolution (Althaus-Reid, 2001, p. 131). “The

Argentinian theologian, [then] would like to remove her underwear to write theology with

feminist honesty, not forgetting what it is to be a woman dealing with the theological and

political categories” (Althaus-Reid, 2001, p. 2). She would go on to call such a theologian,

indecent, and her reflection, Indecent Theology (Althaus-Reid, 2001). While I may not have a

desire to remove my underwear like the lemon vendors of Buenos Aires that Marcella

Athuas-Ried so beautifully invokes, I am very aware of my vagina as I sit in this seat,

hovering within intimate distance over the keyboard, talking about sacred acts of the body.

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And just like those lemon vendors, I see this story as a space where “ideology, theology, and

sexuality can be rewritten from the margins of society, the church and systematic theologies”

(Althaus-Reid, 2001, p. 4). In this autopoetic narrative, I tell a story from a sexual past. A

story that used to “remain at the bottom of the sexual [and theological] pyramid without a

voice” (Althaus-Reid, 2001, p. 145) or body because it challenges the traditional ideals of

Christian sexuality and what it means to become and perform Christianity. Using

autoethnographic techniques offers a space to engage sexuality with the body present,

helping tell the story, and offering a particular kind of complexity. Carolyn Ellis asserts “the

goal is to practice an artful, poetic, and empathetic social science in which readers can keep

in their minds and feel in their bodes the complexities of concrete moments of lived

experience” (Ellis, 2004, p. 30).

Rhetorical Autoethnography as Identity Negotiation

Autoethnography is a way of living consciously, reflexively, and emotionally in the

world as survivors of the stories we are living (Ellis, 2013). As we break the silence

surrounding experience, we privilege subjectivity, personal voice, and emotional experience

in ways that encourage complex and fragile renderings of culture and cultural practices

(Holman Jones, Adams & Ellis, 2013). This story is not just about masturbation. It is not just

about the church, or sacred space, or a teenage love affair. It is about all of those things and

more. It is about revealing the multifarious yet limited possibilities of sexual discourse in a

way that invite the reader to question bodies within scholarship while simultaneously

questioning my own body, its frames, its desires, its positions. I use autoethnography to “see

myself twice, [talk] back to myself and others…[and move] from self to culture and back

again” (Boylorn, 2013, p. 174). In this sense, autoethnography creates a moment of identity

negotiation through reflexivity, enabling us as writers and storytellers to transform ourselves

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and be changed (Berry, 2013) Thus, reflexivity and autoethnography shape both research and

researchers, showing us fuller understandings of identities, the ways in which they are

formed, and the ways we go about negotiating them (Berry, 2013).

Several scholars address issues of identity negotiation as communication and

performance. Mary Jane Collier and Milt Thomas (1988) contend that identity negotiation is

mediated by discursive management whereby ones cultural identities are products of scope,

salience, and intensity of attributed and avowed identities. Stella Ting-Toomey (1989) further

added that identity is refined and modified through processes of dyadic verbal and nonverbal

negotiation. We are constantly in a state of negotiating who we are based on who we are

talking with (Hello white man), the identities we avow (I’m Black), and the manner in which

that individual attributes identities to our bodies (you are a woman). While Ting-Toomey’s

theories emphasized intercultural communication, identity negotiation takes places in intra-

cultural (Sitaram and Cogdell, 1976), and co-cultural settings where group members uncover

commonalities in order to function within dominant society while validating the vast

multiplicity of experiences between and among groups (Orbe, 2004). This type of identity

negotiation does not just take place between and among groups, but also at the individual

level. According to Michael Hecht’s Communication Theory of Identity (CTI) (1993), identity

negotiation occurs at multiple levels of interaction, including on the personal level, relational

layer, in performance as enactment, and at the communal level. Within each of these levels is

space to manipulate (albeit conscious or not) the way we perform our bodies in real time,

resulting in new identities, new ways of understanding, and, thus, possibility.

The story I tell in this manuscript evolves around the concept of intra-racial identity

negotiation. Far too often, scholarship takes for granted the commonalities between people

of the same race. However, intersectional theory argues that it is not about a single identity

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or the ways in which multiple identities attach to one body, but how those identity

intersections influence experience. In this autoethnographic narrative, I look to identity

negotiation as an intrapersonal, interpersonal, and intercultural process, focusing on the ways

in which my body, his body, and the readers bodies’ infiltrate the pages, blend with the

words, engage the spectacles of desire and longing, guilt and shame, sacred and secular in a

never ending process of knowing what it means to be a sexual person. As Althaus-Reid (2001)

contends, “sexuality is an unnatural conceptualization of identities in struggle (p. 6).

1“Sex is unspoken like sin

yet ubiquitous” 2

“holding heart

[and/or penis]

in hand

is a good way to catch the blues,

defined different by each person who catches what they can’t

get rid of”3

In many ways I write this confessional tale

To get rid of it

To repent

and indulge in a lesson

made “available for personal, community, cultural, and scholarly use”4

to teach us about the body

1 I have included APA source citations that would normally appear in-text as footnotes to avoid disruption of the flow of poetry. This occurs in one other area of the manuscript. 2 (Boylorn, 2013, p. 181). 3 (Weems, 2013, p. 317). 4 (Pelias, 2013, p. 385).

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about teenage sexuality

about temptation

about masturbation

about sacred space

and open doors

new understandings

of what it means

to feel guilt, shame, desire, fear, heaven, hell, condemnation.

The body is knotty, dense, intricate

The language and experiences of the body

“share a slippery relationship,

and no account of any experience is innocent”5

“…Poesis asks us to consider autoethnography as a creation that makes something

happen—a poetics and way of relating to self and culture that shows how we make meaning

and construct relationships on the page and in the world (Holman Jones, 2013, p. 39). In this

text, there is a focus on both text and experience as text, engaging the language of experience

as an observer, the moments of self-reflexivity and rhetorical power as researcher, and the

body as an active agent inserted within the very poetic lines dancing on these pages. As a

rhetorical auto-ethnographer, I invite I/we to experience the body as poetic-text and hope

these narratives create an open space that engages the possibility of enfleshed knowledge

(McLaren, 1993). Drawing on Michael Kirby’s (1979) notion of autoperformance and what

Susan Edgerton (1993) describes as poetic pedagogy, Alexander and Warren (2002) crafted

5 (Pelias, 2013, p. 387).

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the term autopoetic to describe creative and critical articulations of lived experience as

scholarly inquiry.

The poetic and the autoethnographic can come together to speak from the heart,

from the body’s joys and sorrows, from the most exalted to the most tragic. They

can join together to name, to write into the commonality of the human condition, to

note the differences that matter (Pelias, 2012, p. 389).

Using autopoetic narrative, I summon my own lived experiences through textual and

rhetorical performance and the meticulous process of self-reflexivity as identity negotiation.

The body as a site of knowing evokes cultural memories tied to broader conversations of

race, class, gender, and other markers of identity, as well as the possibility for new identities

to develop. My goals here are to trouble boundaries of binary labels attached to gender, class,

religion, sexuality, authenticity and desire. To trouble is to allow both the researcher and

reader to render new identities, memories, emotions, and possibility. I hope to explicate

notions of fluid negotiation by troubling the boundaries of identity markers through my own

narrative of passing, changing, silence, ritual, and becoming, and further explore Boylorn’s

(2011) position that matters of identity are incessant and in constant negotiation, even when

unspoken.6

Doing it .

I wasn’t always sexually liberated from the confines of rhetorical structures that deny

my body pleasure. In fact, my sexual liberation did not occur until well into my twenties,

post Bachelor and Master degrees. But between the temporal space of my first sexual

6 It is important to differentiate between not having a voice due to external forces and choosing not to speak about particular identities. Both of those spaces of silence can yield important information about our identities, but they are not necessarily the same, nor are they necessarily perceived in the same ways.

Doing it.

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experience and liberation, there is a moment of spiritual identity negotiation that frames the

whys and hows of my body and the spirit that moves it.

Let’s talk about it.

What is it?

The story begins and ends in a church.

My first memories of church. City of Angels Church of Religious Science. I

remember waking every Sunday morning, wanting to wear the same dress. Black, long torso,

short puffy ruffle on the bottom. Textured, soft cotton. Every Sunday. Same dress. I am a

creature of consistency. So what is about to unfold is a big deal.

In church every Sunday we learn about ways to be a good person, affirmation, how

to seek abundance. We meditate. Sitting crisscross apple sauce, my hands open, palms facing

up to receive God’s divine energy, my little 6 year old butt and legs betray me. They fidget

the entire meditation. One eye opening every 10-15 seconds searching for the other

disobedient meditators. I wonder if God can see me. Sitting here, not listening, wishing it

would just be over so we could go in the big church, stand on the big stage, and sing “Let

There be Peace on Earth” in front of the entire congregation.

As I age, I eventually learn to sit still. I join the choir. I grow into my own

understanding of faith. I tithe. I volunteer. I go away to college on a scholarship from the

church. I return. I never stop participating. I practice faithfully at my church whenever I am

in town. Part-time religion. Full-time spiritual. Until age 19, when a boy happens to my faith.

Just do it .

It is summer of 2000. I am visiting my hometown when I reunite with a boy I went

to elementary and middle school with. The history of our friendship and playful puppy love

precedes every conversation.

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He, the dedicated teacher, the faithful preacher, the firm believer, the Christian.

Cocoa brown skin. Deep, kind brown eyes. Sparkling smile. Extremely handsome. And

thoughtful. And funny. And goofy. Serious only when required. A real catch.

Me. The blossoming feminist, the careful womanist, the religious scientist. Our

commonality, merely an awareness of the fairytale that could be us.

So in love with the thought of being married to that fairytale, he pops the question

after three weeks of dating. So in love with the idea of the fairytale, I say yes.

Forget the (un)parallels.

He takes me to his mother. She shows me the 5-carat, diamond ring. Family

heirloom. Pear shaped. I don’t like it, but it is a gift. He takes me to the townhome that

would be ours free of charge. More gifts. Uses his pretty words and his pretty mouth, his

smiling eyes to build a fantasy life for me as his future preacher’s wife. Invites me to his

church. Introduces me as his fiancé and lifts my arm to stand as the entire congregation of

Baptist believers clap. This is my future. Always standing for something I don’t completely

believe in. Waiving my hand in unison with him. A fake smile plastered across my face to

conceal the embarrassment coursing through my veins.

I know it is a mistake;

but the fairytale is just too juicy.

My grandmother takes me dress shopping. A date is set. We are going to do it. My mother

makes sure this was what I want. In my head it makes sense. We are meant to be together.

To young kids, growing up, always on the honor roll together, family play dates, Cosby type

shit. The perfect way to do it.

But do it,

we did not.

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He was very clear that even though neither of us was a virgin, we would wait to have

sex together after marriage.

Though there was this one time…

Oooh. You did i t .

The same day I visit his mother and she shows me the 5-carat diamond ring that

would become my own, we lay around in his bedroom. We kiss, pet, and talk about this

thing called waiting. Why we are waiting. Why it is so important to wait. What it means to

have pre-marital sex.

Talking about sex does something to our bodies. Made the sin less sinful and more

about pleasure. Walking the fine line between thought, body, process, intellectualize,

I grow hungry.

Talking about not being able to have sex does even more.

Teasing the groin with anticipation, our bodies don’t know how to rationalize

through the desire. We want to please our bodies. Avoiding sin becomes less and less

important.

We wonder, what if we got married even sooner,

just to give in to the pleasure,

as if that makes sense.

Marrying to marry our genitals. Simple. We are horny teenagers. Nothing makes

sense. And my body doesn’t feel his Christian guilt. My mind understands his desire to wait.

But my body doesn’t give into the fear of sin. My body wasn’t taught about sin back then,

fidgeting on that mat. My body was taught to be good. Do good. Feel good. Affirm good.

Create heaven on earth. Sounds like an orgasm waiting to happen. So we negotiate. We

negotiate what counts as sex and what doesn’t, complete with illustration.

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Does this count?

My hand finds its way down his loose linen pants. Substantial to the touch. Hard. Ready.

Does this count?

His hand finds my shorts. Fingers sliding up the flesh of my thigh, hot wet stickiness on the

inside. He starts to pant a little harder.

Does this count?

I unzip his pants, watch him spring forth, begging in consternation. Wondering,

again

because I need to learn to actually care

if I want to be a good preacher’s wife

perhaps I need to adopt his Christian guilt

can one adopt this thing called guilt?

can one adopt a feeling?

Does it need to be organic? Is it taught?

can I learn?

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John, 14:15).

How will I ever become a good preacher’s wife if I can’t answer these questions,

keep those commandments. Teach and counsel those commandments.

This is tricky. My thoughts are sinful.

Wondering, again, if you think about committing a sin, doesn’t that count as sinning?

His fingers linger a little too long. He pulls them from inside me, smells them, then

something changes,

again.

My shorts come down just enough, and his flesh finds my own.

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Barely touching the skin that guards my vagina,

He did it.

Had it not been for the immediate ejaculation, I am sure we would have done it together.

Instead, I was left with a pregnancy scare. Let the church say, “scandal.” Thank God it was

negative. We vowed to never make-out again. Him, most likely because he didn’t want deal

with potential future embarrassment of being a ½ second man. Me, to please him with my

understanding of my place as his good, soon to be Christian, fiancé. I pretend it is ok. I

comfort him.

It happens to everyone.

This is God’s intervention.

I am sure once we are married

and the guilt is not our foreplay,

you will last all night long.

Eventually, I did i t .

Two weeks after the ejaculation incident, I returned to St Louis in September to

complete my second to last semester as an undergraduate. I began accompanying my great

grandmother to church. Sitting in the second row, taking in the lessons, this is practice. I

watch the pastor’s wife, the way she moves, the way she speaks to her church members. The

way she dresses. I study what will become my future role(s). I start doing it. The

performance. I stop cursing. I stop drinking. I become proper. Imagine that. In my body. In

my mind. In my faith. Proper. Knowing I need to really do it, I ask my great grandmother

about baptism. I am ready for the commitment.

A month later, in October, I adorn a white robe, stand in line with three children,

and watch them as they eagerly wait their turn to swim in the holy water. I am old.

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Uninvited. But I feel the spirit. It is moving me. With each breath I grow more and more

emotional. I begin to cry despite the internal battles brewing inside. Why am I so late? The

Christian guilt is becoming second nature. I feel guilty for waiting too long to be baptized.

Even though technically it was only two months, it feels like a lifetime. And something about

being with children who most likely didn’t choose to be Christian, but were goaded by their

parents who have their digital cameras ready to capture the moment makes me feel fake. Out

of place. Itchy under this robe. Hot. Then comes the shower cap. Now I just feel like a

dunce. Crying. With three children looking up at me. Wondering. What’s her problem?

The pastor takes me by the shoulders. Braces his hands on my back. I want to run,

but I am not sure what happens to bad Christians who walk away from a blessing and holy

water.

His mouth speaks, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

I cave into the moment. I feel my body lose itself to gravity. Feel the coolness of the water.

His hands raise me from the watery grave into this new life as a Christian. I did it. Now it is

permanent. I am a part of (h)His narrative(s). Soon to be preacher’s wife, baptized at 20 next

to three children who had no choice. Soon to be preacher’s wife taking lessons every Sunday.

My observations. I need a church hat (or two) and one of those stiff dresses that show off

my curves in a very subtle way. I must show the other women of the congregation who is

first lady. And I should straighten my hair. Maybe.

Doing i t .

I join the church. I am feeling more and more like a part of the community. After

the first month, I receive my first tithing record. My name printed on formal paper. 70.00

dollars. I feel proud. Included. Invited. No longer a guest.

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I invite my fiancé to visit me at my Grandmother’s home in St Louis. He visits for a

week. My grandmother, of course, enforces one rule—no sleeping in the same bed. He

never falls asleep next to me, but he does find his way to the top of the stairs at different

times throughout the night.

“And how shall they preach, except they be sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet

of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things” (Romans,

10:15).

His beautiful feet carry him up the single flight of stairs,

walk his body over to my bed.

His beautiful feet lift him up to lay beside me,

invading my sacred space as I sleep.

Each visit, I wake up to a steady movement.

What is he doing?

The bed rocks in a steady motion.

This can’t be.

Not his beautiful feet and hands, and body called to the pulpit.

This makes no sense.

What is that noise?

frap frap frap…

I open my eyes to find him, laying on his side, semi-hovering over my unsuspecting body,

masturbating.

Middle of the night, early in the morning, doesn’t matter. There he is. With his

beautiful feet. An addiction. He masturbates religiously.

Like a good Christian woman,

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I am offended.

The Christian boy, addicted to lusting after a women while touching himself.

Sinful.

The visualization of lust?

Sinful.

We should have just gotten over it and fucked.

Instead, I spent two months learning to be a good preacher’s wife so I can wake up to a bad

Christian boy masturbating in my bed.

To make matters worse, on one of the sessions, he comes up around midnight, right

when my grandmother decides to use the restroom. He is not sleeping in his bed so she

assumes he is sleeping with me. I wish I can tell her what is happening. But I don’t know

how to be a good Christian woman who fell in love with a bad Christian boy addicted to

masturbating. So I listen as she calls me a liar. I wonder, again, which is the lesser of the sins.

I actually did i t .

I end my engagement to him at the end of that visit. Watching the contradictions

written on his body make me question everything I have learned in the past two months.

What does it really mean to be a Christian who loves her body, knowing that it was created

in God’s image, yet dammed by the church for her desires? What does it mean to question

the historical framing of sex as dirty and unclean, and instead treat it as sacred? As testament

and celebration of the beauty God created? What does it mean to value virginity over

decision-making or assume the virginal life is superior to the life of one who acts on her

desires, which can be framed as being rooted in sacrament? Why are some sins more sinful

than others? Marrying just to get laid seems pretty ridiculous and sinful to me, especially in

terms of upholding the sanctity of marriage. What is it about Christianity that breeds guilt? I

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think about the serial repenting person. The one who gets drunk every Saturday and repents

every Sunday morning. “‘Forgiveness that is premature can be just another violation — it is

a form of denial,’ she declared in that sermon. ‘If it’s held out like a carrot for victims as that

which makes them true Christians — if it’s the only litmus test we offer them for healing —

then it is false forgiveness and it covers up the problem instead of transforming the

situation.” (Shoop, 2012, n.p.). I think of this as religious masturbation as well, or the act of

seeking forgiveness as a means to continue to sin. Embedded within this context then, I

wonder what does it mean to denounce certain sins while performing others? What does it

mean to pretend to be faithful? I also wonder, does God really care what I practice so long

as I believe in praxis? Is there a difference between spirituality and religion? Do I need them

both to go to heaven? Why has heaven become so important all of a sudden? Is that where

good preacher wives go? I don’t know.

I actually did i t again.

My relationship with him isn’t the only one I terminate this October. The following

week, the pastor of my new church home decides to preach about homosexuality. With the

same mouth that spoke the words that brought forth my new life as a Christian, he damns

those bodies that exist in the margins. I cringe. The microphone that magnifies the hatred

spewing from his mouth he holds with the same hands that placed my body in the holy

water and washed it clean, promised my body to God, helped me accept Jesus Christ as my

Lord and Savior. Made me a Christian. But what he preaches is not Christian. It is hate. It

hurts. It is isolating. More contradictions embossed on this Christian body. And although I

don’t identify as gay, yet, something about his words hurt me deeply. Perhaps because my

body knew that queer desires were brewing deep inside and would soon surface once I

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opened my mind to possibility. I walk out of the church. Ironically, it is my first female lover

who gets me to return to church over a decade later.

Doing i t 13 years later.

Writing this story as a sexually liberated, spiritual but no longer religious, queer,

woman, mother, and wife raises many challenges, questions, and concerns. I think about why

I was offended. I think about the stories my mother shared with me about masturbation

long before I ever tried it. In my home, masturbation was a normal part of life. Something

pre-teen and teenage boys girls should do to learn their bodies, know how they work, and be

able to articulate desires from a position of agency. The church never taught me how to love,

caress, and cherish my body, but my mother did. Therefore, I don’t think it was solely his

masturbating that was the problem. But as a new Christian back then, the things I was

learning in the church contradicted some of the lessons I learned at home. A part of

negotiating my identity including treating the body as unclean and sinful. However,

negotiating this experience now, in my adult body, I attribute my disgust to him violating my

space and privacy. His refusal to acknowledge my personal space as sacred, his tendency to

hover in my space, and his assumption that I would assimilate to his desires in the same way

I assimilated to his religious faith left me feeling I had no jurisdiction over my own space,

body, faith, and life. And within the controlling space of our relationship where I was asked

to negotiate my identity to fit his, I realize that he was negotiating his own body. His own

desires were not welcome in his church. Not in name nor doing. His physical masturbation,

the stroking of his genitals, becomes a metaphor for a type of religious masturbation

whereby an actor engages matters of the church for the sake of being considered a good

church-goer. I do not think he believed in the sanctity of marriage as much as he believed in

sinless sex. He was marrying in order to avoid fornication. And that was apparent in the way

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he addressed the topic of marriage, the way he proposed, the way he rushed through the

engagement, the way he focused on sexual acts outside of church more than anything else. I

wonder how the church can prevent his brand of religious masturbation by including the

body and its desires as sacred instead of ignoring the body and its desires, reducing them to

sinful, and implicating a certain type of jurisdiction over intimacy. We weren’t wrong, or bad,

or sinful. We were two teenagers who wanted to share an intimate experience, yet felt guilty

about those desires, and charted a plan to marry in order to avoid the guilt, conversations,

and lust. What does that say about theological teachings on the body and sin? What does

that suggest about the space we need to carve out to teach matters of the body in the

church?

The Absent Body in Church

Before we can begin discussing how to re-introduce the body to church, we must map

out why the body was ever absent. According to Marcia Mount Shoop (2010), outside of the

Lord’s Supper, which seems to dis-member rather than re-member the body, most worship

practices and patterns silence the body. When the body is mentioned, “talk tends to focus

mostly on lessons of control and moderation” (Mount Shoop, 2010, p. 3). Mount Shoop

continues:

The obscuring of suffering and the neglect of the complexity of embodied experience

can, at its extreme, fuel an intense focus on purity. When this focus is dangerously

coupled with an individualistic control-oriented approach to living as a body, the body

becomes a battleground for moral purity. The rational, faithful self struggles against all

the physical urges of the sinful body (Mount Shoop, 2010 p. 4).

When this occurs, instead of focusing on embodied knowledge, compassion, and love, we

recycle rhetoric of “judgment, deserved punishment, and forgiveness” (Mount Shoop, 2010,

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p. 5). Instead of ignoring the body, and policing embodiment, we have to free the discourse

of the body, and subsequently the physical body.

There is potential in freeing the body within church, especially if we believe that

bodies are made in God’s image. As Wright contends:

Given the radical message of the gospels and the Genesis 1 assertion that both women

and men are made in God’s image, the Church is well placed to challenge the residual

patriarchal ideology, as well as contemporary consumerist values; to offer prophetic

voice for chance and also resources for spiritual and social nourishment and growth.

Despite this, however, the institutional church is often complicit rather than prophetic,

buying into and reinforcing prevailing norms (Wright, 2008, p. 2)

Our bodies are not free in church, instead, they “move, speak, act, [and] gesture within a

particular cultural context” (Wright, 2008, p. 14). Because of the absent body and the focus

on purity, it is no wonder I associated Christianity with policing the secular body. I felt the

need to stop using curse words, consuming alcohol, partying, and dancing. I felt the desire to

dress in manners consistent with other first ladies of the church. To appear orderly by

straightening [read taming] my hair and wearing stiff dresses the hang just below the knee

with matching church hats. Conformed policing. I find this behavior consistent with many

of my Christian friends and family members. Much of the call to faith is a call to

performance. To engage in rituals that police the secular body versus rituals that strengthen

the spiritual connection.

If we are ever to embrace embodied knowledge and bring bodies and bodily

discourse back to church, we must stop policing secular bodies and drawing distinctions

between good and bad behavior and sacred and secular praxis in ways that shuns bodily

functions required to live and survive. Those distinctions erase the body’s purpose and core

Doing it.

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functions. The body is a magnificent instrument designed to cleanse itself, allow us to feel,

create intimate connections among souls and spirits. The body provides the life to be

spiritual, giving flesh to the soul through breath, the ingesting of food, the passing of waste.

All of these things are sacred, including intimate touching, sexual intercourse, and the body’s

desires—all sacred and germane to survival. However, instead of pushing against the

problematic framing of Christian body politics and sexual ethics, we clean and cover up our

bodies and push away certain thoughts while our bodies linger un-used and dis-membered in

church. I even think of the way we usher small children out of church and into Sunday

school so little, unruly, can’t sit still bodies don’t remind us that our bodies are there, can

move, can worship, can love, can touch, can be present. Embodied worship. What does that

look like? To forget the body is to privilege a dysfunctional morality. We cannot be without

our bodies.

Embodied Worship

Juggling three contradicting torches at once

How can I have sex,

become Christian,

and be the First lady simultaneously?

Is that possible?

Will one torch fall and set the ground a blaze resembling my own personal hell?

Where did the contradiction come from?

Policing the body.

Once we stop policing practice,

we can bring bodies into the church more fully.

Allowing the body to be present

Doing it.

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because

“A body remembers”7

“The everyday lives of people

always provide us with a starting point

for a process of doing a contextual theology

without exclusions,

in this case without the exclusion of

sexuality

struggling in the midst of misery”8

Our bodies held hostage

Policed

Secular

Wrong.

“The fact is that we all

need to learn and discern

our lives and circumstances,

a task which most of the time

is achieved by a gradual work

of unmasking ideological constraints

and deeply ingrained beliefs”9

This a moment of self-reflexivity,

where one sees the ideological underpinnings,

7 (Mount Shoop, 2010, p. 36). 8 Althaus- Reid, 2001, p. 4). 9 (Althaus-Reid, 2001, p. 126.)

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23

however painful or liberatory,

that precede her thoughts.

It is both a rhetorical and theological moment,

a sacred and profane moment,

a revelation

and a cover up.

(maybe)

It is about learning,

re-learning,

reshaping.

Re-membering bodies, physically and within discourse.

Drawing Connections, Making an Impact: The Case for Teenage Sexuality

The way the church polices teenage bodies generates major concern. I like to think

that the story written within this manuscript creates a space to begin talking back to the

church about the desires of the pubescent body, how those desires consume thoughts, make

young people want to act up, act out, give in, make irrational decisions, sometimes, and good

decisions others time. Desire control a lot of what happens to a teenagers body. I hope that

acknowledging this will make it easier to talk about teenage sexuality in more healthy, open

and honest ways. And also open doors to discuss darker subjects that occur

on/within/around the body like sexual assault within and outside the church.

John Cobb, in his book Matters of Life and Death, urges readers to question how we

teach sexuality to teenagers and adolescents. He claims that, “Christian reflection about

sexuality before marriage will be irrelevant and inappropriate unless it keeps in mind the

changes that have come about since the time when the traditional Christian ideal was

Doing it.

24

formed” (Cobb, 1991, p. 98). He begins painting a scenario of what sexual education

currently resembles:

Hence, now when the church says to young people, “Just say no,” it often does so

without giving convincing reasons for this abstinence. To those who decide that they

will not obey this apparently arbitrary rile, the church gives little guidance in sorting

out the actual complexities and difficulties that are involved in adolescent sexual

activity. The church’s contribution is only to declare that all of their sexual intercourse

is wrong. It makes no distinction. Adolescents are left to work out their own code and

expectations without much help from adults in general, and with almost none from the

church. The result is often self-destructive. The church can then point the negative

consequences of premature and irresponsible sex and say, “We told you so.” Surely the

church can do better than this!” (Cobb, 1991, p. 98).

Cobb asserts that times have changed greatly since traditional Christian ideals were

founded. Some of those changes include: (1) the time between sexual maturation and

marriage is longer due to marriage occurring later, earlier biological maturation, longer

periods of education, and the discouragement of marrying young; (2) sex is intrinsically good

and not viewed as evil anymore, thus, we are asking young people to forgo something that is

pleasurable; (3) sexual activity can be largely free from pregnancy risks, diseases, and viruses

so long as youth are taught how to prevent these things with the advent of contraception; (4)

the purpose of marriage has changed greatly, no longer focusing on property and

procreation; (5) divorce is more acceptable; (6) dual standards of female virginity and male

experimentation no longer makes sense. All of these changes are true for heterosexual and

bisexual youth. The list of changes lengthens even more with respect to non-normative

sexualities. For instance, marriage is a heteronormative institution that is not desired by

Doing it.

25

many youth, pregnancy is not a consequence of certain types of sexual behavior, monogamy

is not the only acceptable sexual custom, polyamory and casual sex are becoming

increasingly more common, sexual and gender labels are becoming more contested.

With these changes, Cobb (1991) offers three options: (1) maintain the tradition

(which does not work), (2) revitalize the tradition in a new context, or (3) develop a new

model of responsible Christian sexuality. Cobbs’ new model includes surveying the actual

practices of youth engaging in sexual activity, distinguishing between healthier and unhealthy

practices, and supporting the healthiest and most responsible forms of sexuality. He also

suggests asking youth to wait until 17 or 18 to engage in sexual behavior is more reasonable

than asking them to wait for a marriage, which is a normative institution that may never

happen for various reasons. While I agree with Cobbs’ initial processes, I question how a

Church is able to deem certain behaviors responsible or irresponsible if it can’t engage

matters of the bodies in a way that is not condemning to those bodies that practice sexuality

outside of normative, heterosexual, monogamous practice. The Church needs to welcome

the opportunity to name what undomesticated sexuality can actually mean in practice. There

is possibility in figuring our sexual placement for youth, but the Church has to be honest

about the types of bodies that exist within its walls, within discourse, both private and

public, and it has to be willing to address issues of ethics, morality, purity, sin, and profanity

from new spaces, hopefully informed by the very bodies that have been condemned in the

past.

Doing i t Again. A Moment of Concluding Reflections

Reflecting back, I wonder why I was the one negotiating. Why was I the one making

huge life changes and adopting his religious tradition that felt so foreign to my body? My

body didn’t understand the idea of sin, the idea of waiting for heaven, the idea of formality. I

Doing it.

26

was raised differently. I wasn’t taught to pray to a person, but to a divine energy. An energy

that knew no gender, or salvation, or Eucharist. His religion was not freeing to me. Not like

my religion was. My religion allowed me to be who I am. Christianity asked me to change

that, or so I thought, because of the pressure to be proper. And to negotiate my body into

that space for the sake of creating a fairytale literally blows my mind. I am not surprised that

the engagement and subsequent Christian adoption lasted for only four months total. I could

only pretend to be something for so long.

I also wonder about his body and his negotiations. In the beginning I only saw my

changes, but I am forced to see his as I re-read through my own words and reflect back on

my body. It is clear that he had an addiction to masturbation, but where that stems from is

fuzzy. I wonder what part of his Christian sexual ethic put him in a position where he

thought he had to negotiate sexual behavior to a degree that allowed him to perform the

lesser of two sins, sexual intercourse with a person versus touching the self with sinful

thoughts of sexual intercourse with a person. I wonder what types of teachable moments

about religious language and theological thinking are embedded within this text. Any

theologies wrestling with sexuality issues means a lot of undoing that has to be done of

dysfunctional morality with sexuality. Christian tradition imposes realities on people that

force them to execute positive or negative reactions to their sexuality. How do we confront

that and begin re-imagining Christian sexuality in ways that foster safe space, dialogue, the

facilitation of change.

I am also watching the words I type on the screen and way I police his body. Why

am I policing his body? What are the ramifications for me denying him the ability to please

himself? I side step. I am afraid I have created a moment of judgment. I side step again, only

coming back to the beginning. Inserting the body into space is a good thing. Loving the

Doing it.

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body is a good thing. But as Paula Giddings (2007) asserts, where and when we enter is

important. Sleep is just as sacred as sex, whether it be sex with oneself, a partner, or multiple

partners. The bodily acts we engage in are sacred because the body itself is sacred. In these

moments during witching hour, in the dead of night where magnificent things happen in the

body, I didn’t feel safe knowing at any moment I may wake to him invading my space with

his own sacred acts. I slept without ease and comfort knowing I would be woken up at some

point. I side step again. I wonder how the story would shift if he woke me up prior to

beginning and asked me to join him in mutual masturbation, or if we were able to have a

conversation about masturbation, time, place, and frequency so that I could understand his

addiction, how it worked, and when he felt most compelled to engage in self sexual acts.

Talking through things change things. It reduces our uncertainty (Berger & Calabrese, 1975)

The uncertainty of the moment alongside the violation of space created the conflict, not the

masturbation itself. I wonder again, if he woke up in the middle of the night laying in my bed

painting portraits of my sleeping body, I like to think that I would be just as creeped out. My

sleep, and my sleep space, are both very sacred. I side step again. I do not want to shut down

any forms of desire based on what is wrong or write as defined by spaces that police bodies,

and instead trouble the re-inscription of desire through a rhetorical re-framing of our

experience. It is the deliberate mixing up of the term it that allows us to move beyond

masturbation and focus on other things bodies may be doing in this narrative. What was

your it? How did that it shift as the story progressed? Masturbation makes this paper sexy,

but masturbation is not the always the it, neither is sex. But our minds have been trained to

speak of sexual intimacy as an it—a dirty it, a secular it, a bad it, a private it, a policed it. The

problem is the way we police desire, turn sacred acts into secular ones, and push those

secular acts into the margins where bad Christians perform unfit rituals. That process must

Doing it.

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shift so that our bodies feel safe, comfortable, and sacred at all times, even as young horny

teenagers who want to explore moments of intimacy as the sacred acts they are.

Doing it.

29

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