THE CHRISTIAN SEXUAL FANTASY
5 February 2009
by Matt J. Stannard
"For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of
the church..." (Ephesians 5:23)
"Has anyone who has ever seen an image of Jesus on the cross,
wearing a barely there loin cloth , ever felt that it was erotic? Has
anyone ever felt just the least bit of sexual arousal, even just for a
nanosecond? What about the gay and bi men on this forum? Have you
ever felt that the image of Jesus on the cross was erotic in any way?"
(Anonymous poster on atheism.about.com)
1. Control of sexuality, as a supplement to material, institutional and
other ideological control, constitutes an iron rod of intimate and/or
social and political power. The private, intimate, semiconscious-to-fully
conscious eroticization of that control by the controlled is the subject of
this essay. This kind of subject matter usually only gets a hearing in
graduate seminars and PhD dissertation defenses. Such academic
exclusivity serves not only to sterilize discussion of sexual liberation, but
also to reinforce the hold that both puritanical churches and hyper-
sexualized media have on the working class as well as the yuppies and
managerial classes. Early in his career as a revolutionary
psychoanalyst, Wilhelm Reich promoted a vision of worker and student
cooperatives in neighborhoods, communities, whose job would be to
teach people how to come to sexual liberation. Reich's anti-capitalist,
anti-authoritarian vision necessarily included both class
consciousness and sexual liberation, because economic oppression
and sexual repression, --twin threats to human autonomy-- fed off of
each other. Specifically, on the question of authoritarianism, Reich
declared in his 1933 study The Mass Psychology of Fascism that "the
formation of the authoritarian structure takes place through the
anchoring of sexual inhibition and sexual anxiety." Of the relationship
between fascism, sexual inhibition, and class oppression, he wrote of
the German working class woman who votes fascist because "the anti-
sexual, moralistic structure of a conservative woman makes it
impossible for her to develop a consciousness of her social position, it
ties her to the church..."
A few years before her death, and in the immediate wake of the 2001
airplane attacks on New York City and Washington, critical journalist
Ellen Willis drew from Reich's impressive, albeit largely forgotten,
revolutionary text to write a short essay, "The Mass Psychology of
Terrorism." Willis offered up a contemporary version of Reich's 1933
hypothesis, arguing that "the historic institutions of the father-ruled
family and monotheistic religion" produced an ideological morality
stemming from a "drive to dominate nature, a project that requires
control over sexuality (nature within us)..."
Nature within us is the ever-erupting, self-shaping, primal urge for
sexual contact. A whole plethora of thought-systems culminated in
patriarchal Christianity: Platonism's subordination of the body to
changeless ideals (sexuality is motion, decay), Judaism's patriarchy
and fear of the unwashed, even the administrative style of Roman law
all found a home in Christianity's elaborate complication of sexuality.
Sexual satisfaction was to be found in adherence not only to "traditions"
as such, but to the contemporary institutions that carried the mantles of
those traditions.
For Willis, patriarchy promises protection from violence, but is itself full
of violence. She asks:
Can the high level of violence in patriarchal cultures be
attributed to people's chronic, if largely unconscious, rage over
the denial of their freedom and pleasure? To what extent is
sanctioned or unofficially condoned violence—from war and
capital punishment to lynching, wife-beating, and the rape of
"bad" women to harsh penalties for "immoral" activities like drug-
using and nonmarital sex to the religious or ideological
persecution of totalitarian states—in effect a socially approved
outlet for expressing that rage, as well as a way of relieving guilt
by projecting one's own unacceptable desires onto scapegoats?
What is true for Willis of the family (that it functions to promise
"communal solidarity, economic security, love, and a degree of sexual
satisfaction to those who obey its rules") is at least as true of
Christianity. But religious authority also promises to punish and wash
away guilt -- a power which allows it to reach even deeper into human
desire, for again, nature within us is ever-erupting. In extending such a
powerful ideological finger so deeply into our sexualities, Christianity
(and monotheism in general) has served to simultaneously stimulate
us and punish us for being stimulated. It is not merely the opiate of the
people; it is a kind of metaphysical pornography.
2. The Christian sexual fantasy is the eroticism of the absolute bond, a
willful giving over of one's life to another. This willfulness, desire,
hunger to serve God is the cry of approaching orgasm. This crying
voice, this desire-filled edge, can be heard in countless Christian pop
songs, which are love songs, and which subtly wave their Eros under
the titillating guise of innocence. Rebecca Saint James is a beautiful,
earthy Australian Christian singer whose press photographs
emphasize her full lips and firm, curvy body. When, for example, in
"Give Myself Away," she sings Here and now--I lay it all down/I take the
road that leads to you/I won't look back, I won't turn around/I give myself
away to you, she deploys the archetype of successful Christian pop:
beautiful women --and men-- submitting before Jesus, whose own
physical beauty has been the envy of superheroes and male models for
two millennia. Jaci Velazquez, the evangelical-educated Christian pop
singer who has sold over 3.5 million albums, is equally physically
stunning, and photo-marketed that way, her poses alternating between
sultry and innocent. Vulnerably and unironically, she sings of lowering
herself, getting on my knees/There I am before the love that changes
me. No Christian or Muslim has ever asked why prostrating or kneeling
is a gesture common to religion, monarchy and sexuality. If sex is
surrender in the quest for perfect connection, then the image-laden
world of Christianity is, on some level, indistinguishable from sexual
fantasy.
3. The Christian sexual fantasy is the eroticism of sacrifice and
submission. This is subject to harmless, even productive sexual play,
but in the hands of authorities and disproportionately powerful people, it
can also result in terrifying brutality. The fear and the desire to be
punished form a sadomasochistic dialectic. During the first half of the
20th century, we can assume that virtually all patriotic, self-professed
Christian families practiced corporal punishment. The smacking,
whipping or paddling of the buttocks of both girls and boys--often into
adolescence-- is trans-historical and cross-cultural, but was given
renewed vigor in early 20th century American Christianity, since it
represented an embrace of pre-modern family tradition. Scientifically
speaking, the sexual sensation produced by spanking is beyond
dispute. This means countless millions of Christian boys and girls
were indirectly taught sexuality through having their bottoms hit.
In addition to seeing the long-term effects of such childrearing on
popular media (Madonna, Catholic schoolgirl fantasies, and occasional
treatments of spanking-play in mainstream movies or on television), a
sincere and authentic rebellion manifests itself in elaborate fetish-
fantasies among otherwise perfectly ordinary Americans. For example,
many couples practice "domestic discipline," a form of role-play where
the wife submits herself to spankings by the husband for real or
contrived transgressions. Most of these couples call themselves
Christians, although (true to our present culture of ironic excess) it is
unclear whether it's part of the fantasy, or a sincere attempt to overcome
the cognitive dissonance associated with acting out a naughty sexual
fantasy and being a Bible-believing Christian.
Spanking fantasies are not considered "heavy BDSM" -- but that, too,
enjoys a place in the dark underside of Christianity, and even
occasionally makes it to the surface of Christian popular culture in
irrepressible and unmistakable ways. Mel Gibson's The Passion of the
Christ provided masturbation material for countless sadists and
masochists. I would not be surprised if they constitute a significant
portion of the movie's DVD sales. Mainstream critics called it Christian
flagellation pornography. Gibson's last few movies, The Passion
included, tend to strip away rational dialogue and replace it with
empathetic sensation, using the brutality of the body to appeal to
viewer's emotions and nerves rather than their minds. In this way, at
least, he is no different from any hellfire and brimstone preacher who
capitalizes on the fearful desire of worshippers to experience small bits
and pieces of humiliation and punishment, and to connect those
moments of ecstatic pain to the brutal whipping and nailing of Jesus, or
the eternal burning of the naked bodies in Hell. The sensuality of the
Christian fear-appeal sidesteps reason, then attributes that
abandonment of reason to the soul making a leap of faith, rather than
the genitalia stealing blood from the brain.
Both Reich's and Willis's main point is that the out-of-control brutality of
patriarchal authoritarianism, which manifests itself in acts of violence
spanning from terrorism to rape, is the inevitable consequence of,
among other things, repressed sexual desire. The Passion, as a
cultural artifact, emerges from a society where children are told not to
masturbate, and young couples are pressured to ignore their desires
until the Church sanctions their sexual bonds. Who can disobey her
preacher or parents, when Jesus suffered under the whip like that?
(Meanwhile, the state, the secular church, retains a sovereign power
over violence and the body not unrelated to the control of sexuality.)
4. But now we live in late capitalism, a world where religion has
become commodified (perhaps so that it may eventually be
socialized?) and authority and tradition are less explicitly, ritualistically
asserted. Get on the internet and, in addition to finding the web sites
devoted to the aforementioned Christian Domestic Discipline, you can
also go to a site dedicated to Christian apologetics for oral and anal
sex, threesomes, and fisting. Another site is devoted to "Christian
swingers." The apologetics site offers the following advice to the still-
chaste Christian teenage girl:
...for a young woman who has never engaged in sexual
intercourse, having anal sex allows her to preserve her virginity
(i.e., maintain an intact hymen) until marriage. There is no
greater gift that a bride can give than to offer her pure, unsullied
maidenhead to her husband on their wedding night.
...and to the curious churchgoing couple:
Before attempting fisting, a Christian husband and wife should
pray together and ask for divine guidance. The husband should
ask that God guide his hand and work through him...
The public exposition of Christianity's erotic fantasy constitutes a
genuine act of progressive liberation; a deathblow to traditional,
Platonic notions of sexuality in Western society, and also threatens to
render the Christian Church (which is already fragmented beyond
reunification) an openly burlesque carnival of winking, self-aware self-
parody. What will be left when religious authorities find themselves no
longer able to control people (and get off, literally get off, on that
control)? Christian ideology will fly into pieces, like tickertape raining
down on a parade of newly free believers, free to grab their piece of
doctrine or none at all, and free to express love through love's material
foundation, the body...
...at least until capitalism, in its choking death throes, having already
colonized both religion and sexuality, has its last, ravenous turn at our
bodies. Perhaps an appropriate sequel to this essay would feature
images of half-naked corporate executives (shirts and ties on, pants off)
spanking each other with rolls of hundred dollar bills while the city
burns outside the office window.
Matt J. Stannard is Editor of Shared Sacrifice.
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