Growing up, my family attended Black Church, which is not to be confused with a regular church. In Black Church, praise and worship (aka the singing portion) lasts for at least an hour, followed by an hourlong sermon, followed by another hour of praise and worship, followed by a potluck brunch in the reception area, where we frequently found ourselves back in another session of praise and worship to round off the roughly six-hour process.
In my early childhood, we knew we’d be going to church on Sundays with the same assurance as going to school on Monday. Church was more than church; it was like a social club where the theme was Jesus every day.
I was in fifth grade the first time sex came up in Black Church. We were in the middle of Sunday School, and our teacher, Ms. Anita, had just finished warning us against even considering touching a genital before marriage, including our own.
“However,” she said with a smirk, “once you’re married, you can go all night long!” Then, and I remember this almost too vividly, she hiked her left leg up on the wooden door frame and rolled her body up and down as if it were a stripper pole, gyrating right there in the Lord’s house. I was instantly enthralled.
I knew I had to wait until marriage to experiment with sex, but that felt so far away! What if I didn’t make it? My prayers at the time went something like this: “Please, God, bring me a nice Christian man so we can get Christian married and have Christian sex. I need to know what the fuss is about. I need to see a penis, Lord. Please.”
I went on to attend four years at Baylor University, a Southern Baptist school in Waco, Texas, where I did not see a penis, but I did hear every justification and loophole that could be utilised by those who were having sex to excuse their transgressions. For instance: Apparently God’s cool with premarital anal because it leaves the p-in-v virginity intact for a future spouse. Noted!
An alternative tactic was to go ahead and have vaginal sex, which wasn’t an issue because you were still saving one hole for marriage. It felt particularly ridiculous to imagine a bride telling her new husband, “I can’t offer you my vaginal virginity on this magical night, but no worries. I have a backup plan.”
I’d love to say retaining my virginity was a conscious decision that I made to honour God, but it really wasn’t. Despite my initial interest, it just wasn’t a concern of mine. I played on the Baylor soccer team and not only were we extremely busy and frequently traveling, but my teammates were my best friends and the only social interaction I was interested in.
I finally did lose my dusty virginity when I was 21, while spending my final semester interning in New York City. It was essentially a one-night stand with a very nice guy I met at a swanky hotel rooftop party. I was far away from home, living in a city that was the polar opposite of Texas and living a life that, for the first time ever, didn’t revolve around soccer. It just felt like it was time.
Was I realistically going to wait until my wedding night? What if I don’t even want to get married? And wasn’t forgiving our sins the entire point of Jesus dying on the cross? If the sex I haven’t had yet is already forgiven either way, what was I even waiting for?
So I slept with a man whom I wasn’t married to and honestly had a blast. Afterward, there was a small part of me that was waiting to be smited by our Lord and Saviour, as promised by Ms. Anita, but nothing happened. (Except for realising how vague the “smiting” actually was.) To my surprise, I didn’t even feel ashamed. The only thing I really felt guilty about was that I didn’t feel as guilty as I thought I should.
Still, over the following week, I worried that my impulsive choice meant I would be forever excluded from the Promised Land, which led me to consider becoming a “born again virgin” for a very short stint of time. I ultimately decided that declaring yourself a born again virgin rightfully warrants the same level of excitement as a grand reopening of your local neighbourhood Applebee’s: No one cares.
As time went on, and God kept on not smiting me, I eventually decided to have sex again. This time with a friend of a friend who was visiting from out of town. Again, I enjoyed myself and nothing bad happened. At that point, the jig was kinda up.
Growing up, I never really questioned what I was taught. In Waco, I was surrounded by like-minded people who prayed before and after games, wrote Bible verses on their cleats, took turns hosting pre-game devotionals and went to church on Sundays. I appreciated it, but once I left the bubble, I started to uncover a lot of plot holes in the Christian Rules I had internalised without a second thought.
A lot of the lessons I’d learned in church started to seem too black and white to apply to the real world situations I was now experiencing, and just praying super hard didn’t always help navigate the grey areas. Gradually, I began to view my religion as more of a tether, a guiding principle that kept me personally rooted in love, compassion and grace.
For the first part of my life, the sins of sexuality were pounded into me (and not in a fun way). While I wouldn’t say I’m some certified freak today, I do feel I rounded out my 20s just fine in that department and, all in all, I’m pleased with my count. I still find solace in my spirituality and don’t really see a need to make the two mutually exclusive.
Every now and then, I still feel a pinch of guilt for abandoning this one facet of the Christianity I was taught, but I’ve discovered the many dualities that can exist within Christianity, particularly in regard to our God-given sexuality in all its forms. Jesus knows my heart, and I really don’t foresee getting denied entry at The Pearly Gates because I got too much action.
To me, Jesus calls us to love and not to judge. It’s been incredibly disappointing to see not God but the church place particular boundaries on who is welcomed, who gets to be celebrated and even who is allowed to love and be loved. I haven’t physically been to church in the past few years or more, mostly because I don’t want to be aligned with a belief system that is not my own.
Ultimately, I think God intended for our relationship with him to be a place of comfort and grounding, as opposed to guilt and shame. And perhaps I’m the one who has it all wrong, but my personal justifications make a lot more sense to me than thinking anal is the Bible’s “Get out of jail free” card.