Religion and Sexual Health: Ethical, Theological, and Clinical Perspectives

Religious beliefs and attitudes have long been recognized as playing an important role in sexual functioning, but the relationship between religion and sexual behavior has rarely been studied in a comprehensive way. The essays in this volume bring the views of sex counsellors, therapists. theologians, and bioethicists to bear on the relationship between religion and sexuality. A major theme emerging from these essays is that religion and counselling need to learn from one another. Religious traditions, at the popular or theological levels, are often marked by ignorance and misinformation about sexuality and can benefit by the insights of those who work closely with patients in medical and counselling settings. Counsellors, in turn, need to develop a sensitivity to past and present religious attitudes toward sexuality in order to assist their patients achieve sexual health.

Section I: Religion and Sexual Ethics.- Christianity and Sexuality.- Sexual Ethics in the Roman Catholic Tradition.- Body Theology and Human Sexuality.- Whose Sexuality? Whose Tradition? Women, Experience, and Roman Catholic Sexual Ethics.- Contempt or Communion? Biblical Theology Faces Homosexual Inclusion.- Western Religion and the Patriarchal Family.- Section II: The Experience of Churchgoers.- Expanding the Range of Clinical Concerns in Sexual Development.- Section III: Clinical Encounters with Religion.- Sexual Adjustment and Religious Training: A Sex Therapist’s Perspective.- The Influence of Religion on Sexuality: Implications for Sex Therapy.- Sexual Transgressions of Clergy.- Issues of Religion, Sexual Adjustment, and the Role of the Pastoral Counselor.- Conflicts in Crisis: Effects of Religious Belief Systems on Sexual Health.- To Where Have We Come: Noisy Philosophical Ponderings of a Quiet Mind. An Epiphany.- Notes on Contributors.