Second Thoughts
Sex for Christians' After Twenty Years
David Orgon Coolidge
July 1, 1995
Sex for Christians: The Limits and Liberties of Sexual Living by Lewis B. Smedes. Revised ed. (Eerdmans, 1994), 244 pp.
In 1976, Eerdmans published Sex for Christians, a popularly written work on the theology and ethics of sexuality by Fuller Seminary professor Lewis Smedes. Christianity Today said, "Lewis
Smedes sets the standard for a Christian sexual ethic." Last fall, Eerdmans issued a "revised version"-actually something of a misnomer since the "revision" is only an appendix tacked onto the back of the book. But the appendix is provocatively titled "Second Thoughts." I think the tide is appropriate. After almost twenty years-during which I have moved from the "evangelical left" to being what one might call an "evangelical Catholic"-I have some second thoughts of my own.
Am I the only RQ reader who remembers when Sex for Christians came out in 1976? I was a sophomore in college, looking for ways to integrate my faith and my sexual life. Here, finally, was a thoughtful and really honest book with none of the legalism and prudery in other Christian books on sex I'd read. Smedes, who still teaches at Fuller, related sexuality to "self-knowledge," left room for "responsible petting," and presented sexuality as a reality of everyday experience, a kind of natural electricity to be enjoyed rather than feared or avoided.
This was good news for me. I had grown up in a minimally religious household and converted in a charismatic high school group. I am still grateful to that fellowship for introducing me to Jesus Christ, but a healthy approach to sexuality was not part of its life. This was 1971, when the sexual revolution was in full swing and everyone else was reading The Joy of Sex and The Sensuous Woman. Our high school group ...
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