I need to read NBW direct rather than at second hand but I know that will be hard to do because I am already resistant to her message. So I want to explore here the armour I put on before I engage with her work more closely in order to work out which parts of the armour I can take off.
I feel I need to strengthen my arm before engaging with someone like NBW and so I pick up Sarah Coakley first and read herThe New Asceticism: Sexuality, Gender and the Quest for God.
And so my first wondering is whether NBW takes up arms against the church and we need to hear that she isn’t throwing off God. She is probably right to remind us all that as His hands and feet, we get it wrong. If she is angry with the Church and calls for the Church to throw off restraint, I wonder, though, whether this will be misheard and people will throw off God. I wish she could be more cautious; more subtle. But then subtlety doesn’t draw a crowd, does it?
If, traditionally, there has been ecclesiastical control of sexuality and the body, does this necessarily mean that what God has to say about our bodies can only lead to our ‘shame,’ which is what NBW is very passionate about redressing. Her book is called ‘shameless’ but in her public presentation of its main ideas, she seems to throw off all shame. Perhaps when our consciences are prompted by the Holy Spirit, this can lead us into fullness and not shame; the Holy Spirit can remind us that our desires can be re-located rather than negated & repressed.
Sarah Coakley describes how this is a real question we are exploring: ‘Is bodily sexual desire, in particular, a phenomenon which demands physical satisfaction, such that its denial would not only potentially threaten sanity but represent a refusal of a fundamental human ‘right to happiness’? Or is some necessary restraint required if law, order and cultural stability are to endure?’
Can contemporary society call us to unhealthy polarities – extreme and self-indulgent fixes or restraint? If so, this is nothing new because Paul cautioned against both these extremes. It is about where, whom or towards what ends our motivation runs (1 Cor. chs 5– 11). There is a difference, I note, between the generations with Gen Z kicking back against the generations before them who experimented and threw off restraint – today’s teens, at least, in my own experience of daughters, is towards self-restraint, learning from the sins of the previous generations, to find balance and health and well-being. There seems less of a need to push the boundaries and yet they live in a society where boundaries are so porous. Parents are more concerned that their children are over-working or becoming obsessively vegan, in my experience. Less concern is expressed about alcohol consumption and casual sex.
The Church Bod 