Sex & Religion Go to College

I went to the final lecture in the Cornell summer lecture series tonight. Titled "Sex and the Soul", it was an exploration of researcher/author Donna Freitas's book of the same name. Her interest was piqued when students in one of her classes began to complain about the "hookup culture" that they felt forced to participate in; the resulting study shows that an overwhelming majority of students want genuine relationships - but you'd never guess that by observing an American campus. Freitas also found that students are at a loss to reconcile their spirituality with their sexual attitudes and activities - hardly surprising given our cultural schizophrenia about these aspects of the human psyche.

Freitas didn't exactly miss the boat - she documented exactly what she set out to research - but I think her findings raise questions about spiritual and sexual mores in the broader American culture. Sex is in our faces every day: in song, story, art, advertising, media, and conversation, yet we never talk about the profound emotional and spiritual effect it can have on us. It's generally assumed that organized religion frowns upon sex, but we don't have a conversation about what that actually means or why that's the case...

Leaving us all to stumble around in the dark until we figure out what makes us truly happy.

The culturally sanctioned options (sleep around or get married / evangelize or keep silent about God) aren't making a majority of us happy.* Let's start a conversation about relationships and religion that is open, respectful, and that allows us to explore more fulfilling relationships.

*I mean that these dichotomies can be stifling, not that any of the options are individually unsatisfying.