Oh God! A Black Woman's Guide to Sex and Spirituality

The Sexual Truth Shall Set You Free Can we talk? It is time for black women of faith to have an honest discussion about who we are sexually and spiritually. This generation of women must begin to confess that we love God, and we love sex, too! George Bernard Shaw said, "All great truths begin as blasphemies." Well, many in the church would call this statement blasphemous. But it is true. God created us with wonderful, healthy, natural drivessleep, hunger, thirst, and sex"and God saw that it was good." On this journey of reconciling our sexual selves and our spiritual selves, we must be honest about who we are and what we desire, and we must learn how to live fuller, richer lives as spiritual women in the twenty-first century. Women who love God and are able to express themselves fully as sexual beings should be able to do so without shame or guilt. Pam is a former party girl who accepted Jesus Christ as her Savior two years ago. She is a very attractive black woman who owns a home and earns a six-figure salary. Though active in her church and community, Pam is struggling with reconciling her sexual desires with the teachings of her faith. She wants answers to this dilemma. Is masturbation an acceptable sexual activity? Am I damned if I make love to my boyfriend because we are not married? Donna is another woman of faith struggling with her sexual desires and the teachings of her church. Donna is forty-eight years old, widowed, and suddenly single again. After twenty-five years of marriage, the single life is foreign to her. She is confronted with a culture that includes HIV/AIDS, cybersex, Internet dating, and personal ads in the paper. She's too mature to go to clubs, but she doesn't want another husband. In the past, she had a wonderful marriage with the love of her life; now, she wants a companion and lover. Childhood 101 Where do women get the idea that sex is wrong, that it should cause feelings of guilt and shame? When did we first learn about sex and how did we feel about it? A good place to start exploring answers to these questions is our childhood. I remember sitting in my fifth-grade class at John Quincy Adams Elementary School, in Washington, D.C., when the school nurse came in with an 8mm reel movieit was time for our hygiene session. But today was different. She and the teacher had very somber, mournful expressions on their faces the entire time they set up the projector and screen. Watching them thread the film through the grooves on the projector reminded me of some ancient death ritual I'd seen on television. As the lights lowered and the movie began, we heard a serious male voice describing to us what our eyes could not believe. On the screen we saw diagrams of a man's penis and a woman's uterus and fallopian tubes. Then all of a suddenwithout any of those "slasher movie" warningswe were confronted with the image of the man's penis inside of the woman's vagina and thousands of sperm being catapulted into her body. Some of the kids in the room let out nervous laughter. Others sat there with our mouths open and our eyes bugging out of our heads. We were all shocked. Nothing could have prepared us for this scene. We sat there in the dark, watching millions of sperm swim into the vaginal canal and up the fallopian tubes, where one gold-medal swimmer united with an egg and rested in "the fertile lining of the woman's uterus." We sat in the dark, watching a bright movie screen as the words the end stared back at us, a group of eleven-year-olds. The nurse gave the girls little pink booklets about menstruation and told us to refrain from sex so we would not get pregnant and have babies. The boys did not get anything, as if it were solely girls' responsibiNewman, Susan is the author of 'Oh God! A Black Woman's Guide to Sex and Spirituality', published 2002 under ISBN 9780345450777 and ISBN 0345450779.