Michael Ingham's address to the Whole Message Conference

can be found here.

Sex and Christianity: Re-thinking the Relationship


I made my first visit to India over 30 years ago. I have been back several times since then, but my first visit was unforgettable.

I was in my early 20s, and studying Theology at the University of Edinburgh. During a summer break I went to live in India for about three months. One weekend I went with a group of other students to the ancient caves of Ajanta and Elora near Bombay. This is one of Hinduism’s sacred sites. It’s a series of caves hollowed out of the face of a cliff, forming a natural temple in the side of a vast rock face. If you’ve seen the movie “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” you get the idea. The walls are ornately carved and sculpted. You walk through gallery after gallery of carvings dating back many centuries, and a deep sense of the holy pervades the place from the prayers of millions of pilgrims stretching back through time.

In one room I looked closely at the sculptures, and saw figures of men and women engaged in various acts of sexual intercourse. There were dozens of different poses, some of them quite imaginative. Many seemed physically impossible, though quite acrobatically interesting. Looking at them as a Christian, as someone standing outside the Hindu tradition, I experienced what the first Christian missionaries must have felt when they travelled to India to preach the Gospel. I was embarrassed, and then shocked, to see such an open display of sexuality in a sacred place of worship. I immediately pronounced judgment on it to myself as paganism.

Today, looking back from the vantage point of thirty years of experience, I think quite differently about it. Now I give thanks for an ancient people and an ancient tradition that saw the intimate connection between sexuality and spirituality, and understood both of them to be dimensions of human wholeness. I can appreciate now, more than I did then, the importance of a healthy honesty about matters sexual, and how significant it is that they were unafraid to depict this powerful connection in their sacred iconography.

Comments

[Scott Gilbreath]

It ain't there, Joe. The link goes to a "404 - Page not found" error. I searched the site and can't find it. They've either moved it to an undisclosed location or taken it down altogther.

[joseph]

Scott, try it again; I think it's fixed now

[Leslie]

Our sexuality is essential to who we are.

There is almost nothing in the teaching of Jesus about sex. It seems he was not really interested in the subject

So busy walking on water he missed the boat, I guess.

Joe, I'm out of the loop, what is the Whole Message Conference?

[Scott Gilbreath]

Thanks, Joe. Got it.

Leslie, More info on the conference here.