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The Witness of Celibate Sexuality: A Challenge to Evangelical Theology and
Practice of Single Sexuality
Dayna Olson
APPL 633: A Christian Understanding of Human Sexuality
Regent College
Dr. Mark Davies
August 27, 2001
In the past several years, discussions about the relationships between
singleness, the church and the Christian faith have been particularly
heated among North American evangelicals. The 1997 publication of Joshua
Harris’s I Kissed Dating Good-bye by Multnomah Books initiated a flurry of
evangelical publications about dating and courtship, including Boundaries
in Dating by Henry Cloud and John Townsend, Dating and Waiting by William
Risk, and Jeramy Clark’s response to Harris, I Gave Dating a Chance.
Singleness has been so much at the forefront of evangelical concern that
Christianity Today recently devoted its cover article, along with a
considerable section of the journal, to the subject. The increased
attention to single people may stem from the rapidly growing population of
single adults in North America. According to the U.S. Census Bureau,
single adults and single parents are the country’s fastest-growing
household types. Since 1980, American households consisting of people
living alone have increased by 36 percent while married-couple households
have increased only 9 percent (Feinburg, 2001, 33).
Not only is the percentage of the North American population that identifies
itself as ‘single’ growing rapidly, but many singles are staying away from
the church. One expert has called single people “the most unchurched
population in America and therefore one of the greatest mission fields in
the world” (Feinburg, 2001, 33). However, even those singles actively
involved in evangelical churches are reporting that their experiences as
single people are often less than optimal. Mary Stuart Van Leeuwen (1990,
227) sums up the situation this way:
Society, of course, has been telling us for some time that active
sexuality is both a right and a necessity. But the church has not
done much better, implying in its organization, if not its theology,
that marriage and family are the norm and that singles (like “shut-
ins” perhaps?) are a marginal group whose “problems” will be taken
into consideration only if there is time and energy left over to
devote to them.
Evangelicals have most often attempted to address pre-marital sexuality by
containing it with prohibitions. Although biblical references supporting
the created goodness of sexuality may be referenced, much of the popular
teaching about sexuality for Christian singles focuses on restrictions and
deliberation over which specific levels of sexual contact are or are not
allowable for unmarried Christians. This approach reveals an immature,
overly simplistic and incomplete understanding of our spiritual lives as
sexual beings.
In addition, a comprehensive theology of Christian conversion involves far
more than applying a new set of rules to any area of life. In the New
Testament, Jesus repeatedly speaks about His disciples becoming part of a
new kingdom, and although new converts may begin by learning the rules of
the new kingdom, in order to become full participants they ultimately need
to embrace its values and the wholehearted pursuit of its purposes as well.
Mature Christian disciples don’t ask ‘What things that I would like to do
and I not allowed to do?’ but rather, ‘How can I best use the resources
that have been entrusted to me to further the purposes of the kingdom of
God?’ The latter is a much more complex question and will result in
answers that are as unique as the individuals asking it. It has no
formulaic answers, but Christians who wrestle with this question will
develop deeper ownership of their decisions than any set of rules could
ever give them. Ultimately, they will have a different goal-not simply
avoiding sin, but living a life of worship (Lamb, 1995, 39). Stanley
Hauerwas and Allen Verhey (1986, 181) address this contrast in their essay
‘From Conduct to Character – A Guide to Sexual Adventure.’
The issue is not whether genital activity is permitted after one month
or two years or after marriage. The issue is whether the narrative we
provide for ourselves actually forms a character ready to sustain the
common history God may call us to develop with another . . . To the
question ‘How far can we go?’ the response is, ‘What sort of story do
you want to tell of yourself and your sexuality? What sort of
character do you want to own as your own?
Strikingly absent from the recent evangelical discussions of singleness has
been any serious and well-developed exploration of the possibility of life-
long celibacy as a God-honoring way of living one’s sexual life. Celibacy
has never been the way that the majority of Christians live out their
sexual lives, yet the presence of even a few intentionally celibate people
in a Christian community could provide a prophetic witness to valuable
truths about sexuality, spirituality and the community of the Church that
have been all but lost among evangelicals. An examination of sexuality
lived out through vowed life-long Christian celibacy provides a challenge
to many of the cultural preconceptions that have hindered the evangelical
church’s ability to minister well to single people. In addition, the
Christian tradition of celibacy provides a holistic theology of sexuality
that allows single Christians to understand the integration of sexuality
and spirituality in a far deeper way than that provided by rule-based
ethics or debates over the various merits of dating and courting.
Despite the fact that there is ample biblical support for the celibate life
as a valuable form of Christian discipleship and service, both in the
teaching and example of the apostle Paul and in the example of Jesus,
Protestants have traditionally given it little attention. This is
partially due to the legacy of the Protestant Reformation: Luther’s
condemnation of the corruption of the Roman Catholic church included an
attack on the tradition of the celibate priesthood and monasticism, and an
insistence on clergy’s right to marry. In the Protestant church, marriage
came to be strongly preferred over celibacy, either because it was seen as
a superior context for Christian life or as a necessary concession to
contain sexuality. Among Protestants, with few exceptions, the tradition
of vowed celibacy was lost (Leonard, 1977, 21).
In addition, North American evangelicals have embraced an idolatry of
family that has replaced the primary locus of Christian community, the
Church, with marriage and the nuclear two-parent family. While Jesus
taught that his followers must leave “father and mother and sister and
brother” for his sake, North American evangelicalism has made the primacy
of biological families nearly inviolate. In contrast, Mary Stuart Van
Leeuwen (1990, 173) summarizes a New Testament understanding of family this
way:
Jesus’ own life and teachings underscore that marriage and family now
take a back seat to the universal proclamation of God’s salvation and
the formation of a new “first family”-a world-wide kingdom-building
company, in which membership depends not at all on bloodlines, but on
faith in the Messiah.
This idolatry has led to a de facto exclusion of single people, and
sometimes even to the implication that singleness indicates some emotional
or psychological defect, in the very community where single people should
expect to find acceptance and embrace.
Evangelical singles have increasingly expressed dissatisfaction with the
inadequacy and simplistic nature of the teaching they often receive about
their sexuality. As one single woman put it,
The issue is not whether or not to cave in to cultural pressures and
toss the church’s teaching about sexuality out the window; instead
it’s why many single Christians do not give those teachings the time
of day, and what we can do to help people live chastely after, say,
college (Winner, 2001, 32).
One apologetic frequently cited for the value of sexual abstinence before
marriage is the evidence that monogamous married sex is more satisfying
than sex in a more open relationship. Although research indicates that
this assertion is indeed scientifically supportable (Laumann, Gagnon,
Michael and Michaels, 1994, quoted in Balswick and Balswick, 1999, 150), it
is essentially an inadequate argument for a Christian sex ethic, and one
that bypasses a genuinely Christian understanding of sexuality. As Rodney
Clapp points out in his essay ‘Why Christians Have Lousy Sex Lives,’ when
evangelicals rely on this argument to promote abstinence, they reveal how
wholeheartedly they have adopted the standards of popular culture to
measure the value of their sexual experiences and their romantic
relationships, as well as the meaning of their lives.
. . . Christians aspire to stake our lives on the master story of the
God revealed in the history of Israel and Jesus Christ. But it may
well be that the master story of Western culture-and of many actual
Christian lives-is the myth of romantic love (Clapp, 1995, 7).
Proponents of this argument reason that good sex is measured by the
intensity of physical pleasure and of the romantic emotions associated with
the encounter. Because intercourse in the context of an intimate
covenantal relationship tends to be far more conducive to pleasure, both
physical and emotional, they declare it ‘better.’ However, a truly
Christian understanding of sex, although it will place a high value on
physical and emotional pleasure, will have a much more holistic and nuanced
measure of goodness, and will place sexuality in the context of a life that
finds its ultimate measure, not in sexual relationships, but in
relationship with God. God’s great calling is not to have great sex, but
to the pursuit of knowing and worshipping Him.
This argument also makes the assumption that the individuals who practice
abstinence will someday marry and experience the rewards of their decision
to delay sexual gratification. The implication is that single people need
to marry in order to experience fulfillment. While many single people will
find fulfillment in marriage, some will not, and those who accept this
argument and then never marry will likely experience unnecessary
disappointment and bitterness about their continued state of singleness.
Implicit in this argument is a reinforcement of popular American culture’s
distorted conception of the source of meaning and fulfillment. A Christian
embodiment of sexuality should stand in stark contrast to the popular
belief that intensity of romantic emotion or physical desire hold ultimate
meaning. Instead, Christian faith should lead Christians to declare with
their whole lives, including their sexuality, that ultimate meaning lies
only in the love of the God who created and redeemed them and who endowed
them with the capacity to experience pleasure.
In contrast to the prohibitive ethic of abstinence, celibacy is an ethic of
positive embrace. Celibate people choose neither to participate in genital
sexual activity nor to pursue marriage, not because they reject sex and
marriage, but because they actively choose to respond to a calling that
precludes sexual activity. The choice to live a celibate life is not
rejection of sexual activity, but the pursuit of faithfulness to a calling
that is best supported by a choice to embody sexuality in non-exclusive and
non-genital ways. The choice to be celibate for the sake of pursuing a
calling is much more about using one’s sexuality in a particular way to
worship God and serve others than it is about abstaining from sex.
Celibacy is an essentially prophetic discipline. Like other manifestations
of Christian discipleship such as intentional economic or social downward
mobility, radical generosity or Sabbath-keeping, it challenges cultural
beliefs about personal worth, identity and success. That an emotionally
and physically healthy adult would deliberately choose a way of life that
precludes the pursuit of sexual relationships is nearly incomprehensible to
most American adults, even those who are Christians. As Clapp points out,
the myth of romantic love has become the dominant narrative of Western
culture. We tell ourselves the story of our lives through the narrative of
a quest for bliss in the form of the love of a perfect lover (Clapp, 1995,
7). That anyone capable of undertaking this quest would intentionally opt
out of it is deeply counter-cultural.
Monasticism, and with it monastic celibacy, first sprang up as a Christian
lifestyle very early in the history of the church. As the persecution by
the Roman Empire began to decline, some Christians who were seeking a
tangible way to live out self-sacrifice and cultivate their spiritual lives
began to form monastic communities (Leonard, 1977, 27). As martyrs, many
of the first Christians gave themselves in a prophetic way that gave
witness to the hope and power of the Cross and allowed them to identify
uniquely with the suffering and death of Christ. Celibacy as a Christian
discipline, combined with the monastic vows of poverty and obedience,
provided a way to continue to live as prophetic witnesses to the self-
sacrificing love of Christ. That self-sacrificing love is at the heart of
the Christian life and is essential to any understanding of Christian
ethics. As theological Miroslav Volf states,
Indisputably, the self-giving love manifested on the cross and
demanded by it lies at the core of the Christian faith . . . A
genuinely Christian reflection on social issues must be rooted in the
self-giving love of the divine Trinity as manifested on the cross of
Christ . . . (Volf, 1996, 25).
Celibacy continues to be, in some ways, analogous to martyrdom. Just as
persecuted Christians died willingly for the cause of the One who suffered
ultimate pain and abandonment on their behalf, celibates seek to embrace
the unfulfilled longing and loss their choice entails as an act of self-
giving and an opportunity for prophetic ministry. A Christian commitment
to celibacy is based on understanding love not as mutual possession, but as
radical generosity made possible by the self-giving love of Christ.
Celibacy, when lived out well, is a way of embodying the self-sacrificing
other-centered love of the Cross through one’s sexuality. Joan Chittister,
writing about celibacy in the Benedictine tradition says,
The Benedictine spirituality of community is based on life with other
persons in the spirit of Christ: to support them, to empower them, and
to learn from them. The radical monastic testimony to this commitment
to universal human love is celibacy, the public declaration that the
monastic will belong to everyone and to no one at the same time.
Celibacy says that human community is built on a great deal more than
the sexual, that it transcends sexual love, and pours itself out with
no expectation of outpouring in return (Chittister, OSB, 1990, 42).
Celibacy not only provides the possibility of gaining a more complete
understanding of the nature of love, but also a deeper understanding of
one’s self and one’s sexuality. Celibates are often perceived as
repressed, immature or at least profoundly unfulfilled, but an
investigation into the psychological dynamics of celibate sexuality reveals
that mature celibacy results in a life characterized by just the opposite.
Healthy celibate sexuality requires gaining an awareness of the complexity
of the psychological and emotional needs that are often the root of the
experience of sexual desire. In his book, The Sexual Celibate, the
Catholic theologian Donald Goergen applies psychologist Abraham Maslow’s
theory of “multiple motivation” to sexual desire: The experience of sexual
desire, he says, is often triggered by other subconscious needs such as the
need for intimacy, identity, or self-acceptance. Ultimately, it is
intimacy, and not genital sexual activity, that is essential for human
mental health and emotional maturation:
We experience sexual desire and think it is genital satisfaction that
we need when actually the sexual desire represents the need for
intimacy. For Maslow, the higher need in man is the need for
intimacy. If this need is met and satisfied, the need for
physiological genital experience is lessened (Goergen, 1974, 62.)
In fact, Goergen reports that Maslow found that the degree to which
celibacy is healthy or harmful for a particular individual rests largely on
that individual’s attitude towards genital sexual abstinence and celibacy.
Maslow’s theory ranks human needs in descending order of primacy, with the
highest need being the desire to fulfill our human potential, or self-
actualize. Those celibates who fit Maslow’s description of self-
actualizers experience celibacy primarily as an opportunity to pursue a
higher calling. Self-actualizers are not only unharmed by celibacy, they
are characterized by an unusual freedom from the sexual compulsions that
often stem from repression. In contrast, Maslow found that those who view
celibacy as primarily deprivation are more likely to suffer from it.
Goergen writes:
Deprivation become pathogenic only when a pathogenic undercurrent
surfaces-deprivation felt as rejection by the opposite sex, as
inferiority, as lack of worth, or as isolation. It is not genital
abstinence in itself but one’s attitude toward it and how one
experiences it that is significant (Goergen, 1974, 61).
Although there is little psychological research investigating the
experience of celibate sexuality, those studies that have been done appear
to support these conclusions. One study found that, among celibate and
formerly celibate Catholic men, those who had resigned from their religious
orders tended to emphasize behavioral limits when describing their
expression of sexuality as celibates. They also tended to have been much
more highly focused on extrapunitive and intrapunitive motivations to avoid
breaking their vows (66% vs. 14% of those who continued as celibates), and
tended to show signs of repression or denial of their sexuality (40% vs.
12%). In contrast, those members of the study who had chosen to persist in
a life of celibacy also tended to show fewer signs of repression. These
men cited positive motivating factors for their celibacy such as values,
personal integrity or freedom of choice, and saw celibacy as having a
strong positive impact on their lives, including on their relationships
with women, their relationships with their bodies and their sexual
identities (Manuel, 1989, 285).
Many celibates also report a similar experiential knowledge of healthy
celibacy as a positive embrace of both self-giving love and personal
sexuality. One Benedictine nun, reflecting on her celibacy has said,
“First of all, it mean not focusing on ‘what I gave up,’ but on what being
freed by what I gave up has allowed me to do in terms of service to the
church and other people” (Norris, 1996, 262). An Anglican priest describes
the importance of embracing sexuality this way:
Celibacy . . . must flow from an acceptance of one’s sexual nature and
a rejoicing in the goodness of it. It would not be a true calling of
God if it were only a neurotic hiding in fear from the pressures and
demands that come with sexual relationships. A celibate needs to have
a deep and honest knowledge of his or her own sexuality, an
appreciation of how it enriches the personality . . . Celibacy lies on
the other side of sexual awareness (Mudge, OHC, 1978, 7).
Another study that analyzed lengthy interviews with Catholic priests found
that those who were able to experience celibacy as a healthy and fulfilling
way of life were those who had intimate friendships that provided them with
support, encouragement and feed-back about their lives and personal growth
and maturity (Hoenkamp-Bisschops, 1992, 335). In fact, the most cited
positive effect of celibacy is the increased depth and breadth of
interpersonal relationships that it can bring (Manuel, 1989, 283). When
asked about what he most appreciates and enjoys about celibacy, one monk
replied, “I think the fact that I can share with people on a very wide
spectrum how much I love them and that I can do that in a way that I’m not
bonding the person to me but freeing the person and communicating life to
the person . . .” (Manuel, 1989, 284).
Interestingly, possibly because of their self-awareness, maturity and
ability to experience relational intimacy apart from sexual activity,
individuals who fit Maslow’s description of self-actualizers also tend to
be most capable of experiencing intense pleasure in sexual relationships.
In reference to sexual activity, Goergen says,
[Self-actualizers] do not need genital experience but enjoy it when it
comes and enjoy it more intensely than the average adult, yet it
remains less important for the self-actualizing person within his
total frame of reference. The self-actualizing person is less driven
to love affairs, yet free to admit of and talk about his or her sexual
attractions for other people (Goergen, 1974, 61).
These individuals are also characterized by a deep understanding of the
spiritual nature of sexuality and a freedom from the need to engage in
genital sexual activity. Maslow writes:
If love is a yearning for the perfect and for complete fusion, then
the orgasm as sometimes reported by self-actualizing people becomes
the attainment of it . . . it is a profound and almost mystical
experience, and yet the absence of sexuality is more easily tolerated
by these people. . . These people do not need sensuality, they simply
enjoy it when it occurs (Maslow, quoted in Goergen, 1974, 62).
This kind of freedom to fully enjoy, but not to be controlled by, pleasure
is strikingly similar to the kind of freedom the Apostle Paul calls
Christians to in his New Testament letters. In his letter to the
Galatians, he sums up Christian freedom this way: “You, my bothers, were
called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful
nature; rather, serve one another in love” (Galatians 5:13). It is this
freedom of service and love that characterizes mature Christian sexuality,
whether in the context of singleness, celibacy or marriage.
Healthy celibate sexuality appears to depend on understanding one’s choice
of sexual lifestyle as integral to a pursuit of a purpose that maximizes
one’s potential, embracing one’s sexuality, learning to differentiate
between genital desire and psychological and emotional needs, and
practicing celibacy in the context of a community of supportive and
committed intimate friendships. Understanding this can change the way that
we think about single sexuality in the Christian church. Although most
Christian singles are more likely to pursue opportunities to take vows of
marriage than those of celibacy, the principles that characterize healthy
and satisfying celibate sexuality have implications for the lives of single
Christians who have not taken vows of celibacy.
Understanding celibate sexuality will change the way we teach singles to
think about sexuality. Celibacy demonstrates the importance of having a
purpose for the use of one’s sexuality that is greater than one’s own
satisfaction and fulfillment. To say ‘no’ to something as powerfully
magnetic as sex requires something even more powerful to which one is
saying ‘yes.’ Rather than upholding marriage as the ultimate purpose of
human sexuality, we will see sexuality as designed for the glory of God and
the service of others, whether or not one ever marries or participates in
sexual intercourse. Rather than arguing for abstinence based on its power
to enhance marital sexuality, we could begin to call single Christians to
live out the pursuit of the greater goal of loving and serving God with
their whole lives.
Celibate sexuality also challenges us to call singles to an embrace of
their sexuality rather than to avoidance or repression motivated by fear
and shame. This would lead to a freedom largely unknown by singles in the
evangelical world: a freedom to accept themselves fully as sexual people,
to speak openly and honestly about their sexuality, and to choose to live
holy sexual lives motivated by a love of God and other people, rather than
by a fear of condemnation or negative consequences. Single sexuality, when
lived out in this way, would be marked by an appealing freedom from
compulsion and a deep self-acceptance quite different from the self-
rejection and guilt often created by trying to govern sexuality through
rules.
Celibacy also challenges our assumptions about the private nature of our
sexual lives. Although evangelical Christians do declare their vows to
love and serve each other publicly in the marriage ceremony, in reality,
the assumptions underlying the way that we relate to each other on a daily
basis most often support the idea that sexual lives and marriages are off
limits for input or challenge to everyone except spouses. Christian
celibates also make public vows concerning their intentions to devote their
lives, including their sexuality, to loving and generous service. But
because these vows are to both God and to a community, the way they are
lived out necessitates both the ongoing accountability and the support of a
wider community.
In a church that assumes the married state to be normative, single people
are often left without this kind of accountability and support. Without
it, their needs for intimacy, affirmation and character formation often go
unmet, making the single life difficult and intensely lonely, and the
potential benefits of their relational availability go untapped by the
church. Such privatization of sexuality also can lead single people to
hold unrealistically romantic views of sexuality after marriage. As
Hauerwas and Verhey have argued,
In Christ sexual relations are neither a necessary nor sufficient
condition for human fulfillment. Short of theological and biblical
claims, we need simply to say in candor that sex is as frequently
messy and boring as it is spiritually fulfilling. If we said that
more plainly, extravagant expectations would be lowered, the
possibility and plausibility of saying ‘no’ could be nurtured as well
as commanded, and the harm of unfulfilled expectations lowered
(Hauerwas and Verhey, 1986, 180).
Finally, celibacy challenges us to think about our lives from the
perspective of a passionate relationship with God that is not only
beginning here and now, but will come to complete fulfillment in the
future. Celibacy, when lived out well, stands as a testament to the
integral interconnectedness of our sexual and spiritual longings. When we
live as if this life is our only hope for fulfillment, even the most joyful
and intimate sexual relationship is sure to leave us longing for something
elusive and unattainable. Celibates declare by their lives their hope for
another world and for fulfillment in the future to which even the best
human sexual relationship cannot compare. Perhaps this argument is not so
different from the one most frequently used in evangelical circles to
encourage abstinence before marriage-’just wait, and you’ll be glad you
did’-but the ecstasy that we are waiting for could already begin to be made
real in our lives and is an ecstasy far more powerful and lasting than that
of human lovers: it is the ecstasy of union with God.
References
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An Integrated Approach. Downer’s Grove: InterVarsity Press.
Chittister, Joan, OSB. 1990. Wisdom Distilled From the Daily: Living the
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Benedict Today. San Francisco: HarperCollins.
Clapp, Rodney. Why Christians Have Lousy Sex Lives. ReGeneration Quarterly,
summer 1995, 7-10.
Feinburg, Margaret. A Singular Mission Field. Christianity Today, June
2001, 33.
Goergen, Donald. 1974. The Sexual Celibate. New York: The Seabury Press.
Hauerwas, Stanley and Allen Verhey. 1986. From Conduct to Character – A
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