Sex And Religion by Morton & Barbara Kelsey What is the source of our fear of talking about sexuality and sexual conduct? Why is the subject so delicate and forbidding for adults that they are uncomfortable discussing it with children? We believe the heresy of gnosticism that has permeated many of the sexual attitudes of the Christian Church is responsible for a great deal of the sexual negativity and unwholesomeness of our culture. http://thinkaboutit.homestead.com/religionsex.html

Major research on Sex in the Bible http://inkaboutit.homestead.com/index6.html

Below is Part of http://www.thefamily.org/dossier/books/book5/main.htm

"To understand the evolution from the early sex-affirming Hebraic culture to Christianity's persistent discomfort with sex and pleasure, we have to look at three interwoven threads: the dualistic cosmology of Plato (i.e. the soul and mind are at war with the body), the Stoic philosophy of early Greco-Roman culture (i.e., nothing should be done for the sake of pleasure), and the Persian Gnostic tradition (i.e., that demons created the world, sex and your body--in which your soul is trapped, and the key to salvation is to free the spirit from the bondage of the body by denying the flesh). Within three centuries after Jesus, these influences combined to seduce Christian thinkers into a rampant rejection of human sexuality and sexual pleasure."

The glaring inconsistencies between the anti-sexual version of Christianity, and the Godly origins of sex and salvation as revealed in Scripture, fortunately were never successfully obliterated, even under the most unbridled of Gnostic attacks to overthrow the natural order of God-ordained human sexuality. Men and women of God throughout Church history have, under inspiration of Scripture, struggled to lift the cruel, unscriptural yoke of sexual repression off the shoulders of their fellow Christians.

Of course, once she was pregnant they faced the task of figuring out how Jesus could be born without having to touch or pass through Mary's "parts of shame," explaining why some taught that Jesus emerged through Mary's breast or navel. Certain Gnostics insisted that Jesus had not been born of Mary at all but descended from Heaven fully formed, thus avoiding the whole question (Davies, 1984: 179).

The antidote to this anti-sexual assault on Christianity would have been to return to the liberating light of God's Word, but that was not to be for some centuries. As the dark clouds of Gnostic heresy and body-hatred gathered within Christianity, human sexuality was no longer viewed as a beautiful blessing, a Song of Songs, a gift from God, but rather a cruel seducing curse which was dragging all humankind into the very flames of Hell.

David Rice, a former priest, in his book, Shattered Vows, tells us that the early anti-sexual teachings and practices embraced by this rising celibate class of clerics were "steeped in gnosticism, one of the oldest and most persistent of all heresies, which sees the body as evil and only the spirit as good" (Rice, 1990: 139).

By the fourth century, this persecuted love movement called Christianity was drastically transforming. Under Emperor Constantine, Christianity became firstly tolerated and later installed as the imperial religion of Rome (Edict of Milan, A.D. 313). Heavily influenced by sex-negative Gnostic teachings, fractured into rival Christian groups that hurled accusations of bizarre sex practices at each other (7), and becoming all too eager to distance themselves from any sign of sexual impropriety, the great separation of human sexuality and spirituality began in earnest in Christianity.

Sex-negative teachings have been blamed for driving many sincere and searching individuals away from Christian churches, wearying the faithful as well as the clergy with needless sexual concerns, shame, guilt, confusion, loneliness and frustration. Many church-originated sex-negative teachings are now being ignored, challenged, re-evaluated and even blamed for the growing apostasy and antipathy to Christianity in society. Christianity as an institution is now suffering in part for having accepted the Gnostic teachings that human sexuality is basically bad.

Adam, Eve and the Serpent. Random House, New York, 1988.

Elaine Pagels received her doctorate from Harvard University in 1970. She taught at Barnard College, where she chaired the Department of Religion, and Columbia University. Professor Pagels is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. She is the author of The Gnostic Gospels, which won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and The Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis and The Gnostic Paul. Elaine Pagels notes that in the century following Christianity's rise under Constantine to become a respected institution, Christian teachings underwent a revolutionary change from a doctrine that celebrated human freedom to one that emphasized the universal bondage of original sin. Elaine Pagels is a mother and lives in New York city with her husband, Heinz Pagels, scientist and author.

(2) Gnosticism refers to the belief system of a variety of heretical Judeo-Christian sects in the early centuries after Jesus, which stressed salvation through a secret gnosis, or "knowledge." The central theme of Gnosticism was that the physical world was entirely evil and therefore had to be rejected. They had great contempt for the human body, discouraged marriage, and rejected the teaching that Jesus had a physical body that was resurrected. Some Gnostics were very immoral since everything was evil anyway, only themselves being above it all. Others adopted very austere patterns of living and bodily mortification. Some taught that woman was created by the Devil, and to have children was to multiply the souls bound by the powers of darkness.

St. Augustine had been a member of a Manichaean Gnostic sect that traced back to a Jewish-Christian baptist movement, the Elchasaites. In 1946 a cache of 13 Gnostic Coptic Codices was discovered near Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt. These contained 53 treatises that had been deposited about A.D. 400. Basically these are fictitious and apocryphal writings supposedly by Adam, Abraham, Zoroaster, Jesus, Philip, Thomas, John, and others.

Perhaps as an attempt by some conservative watchdogs of the faith and in reaction to a decadent Roman society, followers of the "golden rule" were increasingly taking a more "moral" stance. By the second century, Gnostic teachings(2) and strange apocryphal books and stories began to circulate among Christians.

...Asceticism: Matter is evil - spirit is good. This was the dualism of Gnosticism. Gnostics believed all the world's problems stemmed from matter because it was inherently evil. Redemption involved freeing the spirit from the body. Whenever the body is seen as evil, asceticism results. The gnostics' "harsh treatment of the body" is mentioned in Col 2:23. Denial of marriage and abstaining from meat are mentioned in 1 Tim 4:3. The gnostic teaching of asceticism had an influence in the development of monasticism and characterizes much 'spiritual discipline' in Catholicism and various cults. Christians throughout the centuries have confused asceticism with proper self-denial by confusing the flesh (physical body) with the flesh (sinful nature residing in the body)... http://dcn.davis.ca.us/~gvcc/theology_notes/Knowledge_of_God.html

This page was last updated on: September 17, 2002