Faithful Fornication

Christians inherited the Jewish origin stories, recorded in the book of Genesis, shaping their understanding of Jesus, and how to follow his teachings.

Humanity today has a vastly expanded origin story, thanks to the insights of cosmologists, geologists, evolutionists, geneticists, ecologists and so on. And thank God for that!

This evolutionary story shows that sexuality and relationships have always been evolving in response to changes to the environment, and when we look closely at the Bible we see evidence of the same dymanic even there!

If you were edged out of church, or drifted away, because your sexual practice didn't fit the narrow prescriptiveness of your congregation, perhaps this will provide a way back, or at least nurture your faith and discipleship as part of the church diaspora.

If you sit within the half of the church who think that sex before marriage is sometimes or always permissible, this book will provide a solid basis and some good talking points when you engage with the other half, drawing not only on the scientific origin story, but also a close reading of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. This can be tricky, as preserving a 'traditional' approach to marriage and family is ranked as more important to most Australian Christians than tackling poverty.

Moreso, I hope it will create a space for your own reflection, in small groups or alone, on what faithful relationships look like for you in your particular environment. To open up discussion the book explores pre/post and extra-marital sex; divorce; prostitution; aboration; the church's very unhelpful, even outright dangerous teachings about masturbation; pornography; and the relatively new environment most of us live in, where there is greater gender equality, certainly than in the Jewish Law and later Christian scriptures from which many in the church claim to draw their sexual ethics, and sometimes try to impose them on others.

If you are not sure what to make of what this book uncovers, the book ends with some questions that might make a useful starting point.

I hope that if church has never been your thing, that you will still find the science fascinating, and the biblical passages an interesting case study.

If you are part of another faith tradition I hope my examination of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures might inspire you to do your own work on your tradition's spiritual resources.

Jason is a minister in the Uniting Church in Australia who has spent most of his ministry advocating for a better relationship between humans and the rest of Creation. This passion, and his PhD on the implications of evolutionary biology for Christianity, have been turned into several books and a collection of spoken word poems, accessible through ecofaith.org