Ohio's CedarCreek Church launches sex education campaign for teens
Since a lot of the recent headlines around battles over sex education seem to pit religious conservatives against sex education on general principle, I wanted to take the opportunity to spotlight an interesting and surprisingly sex-positive new church-based sex ed campaign with an explicitly Christian approach.
MyGodMadeSex.com is a new sex education effort from the CedarCreek Church, a three-campus megachurch in Ohio built around the question "What does the Bible say about sex?" The campaign was featured this week on TheBody.com, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's online HIV/AIDS resource.
The campaign includes a series of videos starring participants in the CedarCreek Church Student Ministries. Here's the first one:
The campaign materials quote Corinthians (“Your body was not made for sexual immorality...”), and advocate abstinence until marriage as the core message, but it's also implicit in the materials that "Your Body was made FOR SEX!" and that "Sexuality is to be thoroughly enjoyed between a husband and wife... often!"
I imagine I'm leaving leave more room for interpretation in phrases like "outside of God's intended purpose" than the church leaders might be intending (regular readers of this column will know that I advocate for comprehensive sex education materials that are not religion-based, do not exclude lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning students, and do not presume all teens will be receptive to a no-sex-before-marriage message), but overall the campaign presents a refreshingly sex-positive message for a Christian group.
The emphasis is, of course, on holding out for marital sex, and while I don't necessarily agree with some of the campaign's messages about "purity" or its implication that the joys of sex are explicitly intended for married heterosexual couples, I do find the campaign compelling, especially at it's most fundamental points: Sex is something we as teachers, parents, and community leaders should be talking about with teenagers, and that teenagers should be able to talk about amongst themselves. Sex is not a shameful act, it is not evil, and it is not a topic of conversation that should be avoided.
In his letter to parents about the sex education program, CedarCreek Church Student Ministries Director Steven Whitlow writes,
One of the most hotly debated topics for students is sex. Unfortunately, the statistics concerning sex for students, non-Christian and Christian are pretty concerning:
- United States has the highest levels of teen pregnancy among developed nations - 75 percent of teenagers have had intercourse by the time they turn 20; only 15 percent report remaining virgins until the age of 21
- The Guttmacher Institute found that 50 percent of teens between the ages of 15 and 19 in the US have had oral sex.
As a church, we want to partner with you to support you area. We want to be, with you, the leading voice on sexual issues for students. Truth is, regardless of the precautions we might take; students about sex from a variety of different sources. Someone isarea and we believe that the number one influence should be the family and the church working together to provide Biblical instruction.
I found this logic, from the "Sex Is Better Than You Think" discussion outline, to be a particularly interesting and refreshing message for young people inclined towards a Christian worldview:
If you have a cultural relationship with God - you will have a cultural view/experience of sex. If you have a religious relationship with God you will have a religious view/experience of sex. If you view God only through your parents' experience you will lack the personal relationship with God that you need to bring wisdom into your life. If you only do life through what you hear your peers at school doing you will be living their life, not the life that God created for you. However, if you have a personal, intimate, biblical relationship with God – you will have a personal, intimate, biblical relapersonal, intimate, biblical view/experience with sex.
Comments
It all seems like pretty standard Christian sex spiel to me: Abstain. Keep your "purity" for yourself/God/your future spouse. Homosexuality = bad. Sex before marriage? Slut. At least they're talking about sex, though, and admitting that it can be great under the right circumstances and not merely as a path to procreation! Baby steps...
RE: that list bit you quoted there at the end -- I submit that if you have a personal, intimate, biblical relationship with God and don't just blindly accept what your church teaches, maybe He would admit to you that he's changed his mind some on things like homosexuality since that old book about him was first published! I like to think that even God can come around to common sense after a few thousand years when it comes to his creations! Still... a church making a point to talk openly with teens about sex and sexuality? I say "Amen" to that.
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