Sex, God and Rock & Roll

If you’re like most people, you think about sex but never talk about it. Whether it’s your own sexuality, someone else’s or the sexy television commercial you just saw, you’ve got sex on the brain. Don’t believe me? You should if you have clothes on right now. Unless you’re reading this outside in the freezing cold, you wear clothes to hide your nakedness (well, that and you’ll get throw in jail if you don’t). One of the most fundamental aspects of human culture - clothing - exists to hide sexuality. Whether you’re wearing a garbage bag or designer threads, you put on clothes because you’ve got something to hide. Ever since Adam and Eve scrambled for some flora to cover their fauna, human beings have been masking their sexuality. We spend enormous amounts of time, money and energy running from our sexuality. A lot has been written about how much our sexual urges dominate us, but they don’t have half the power of our need to hide those urges.

However, Western culture doesn’t insist on hiding sexuality as much as it used to. Sexual images are everywhere, from suggestive advertisements to easy access pornography. We live in a culture that’s becoming more and more eager to spill the secret of sexuality. That might not be so bad if it weren’t for a very big problem: it’s done outside of the presence of God.

Mixing God and sex is awkward at best, forbidden at worst. Some churches manage a seminar or retreat on sex once in a while, but even then it’s usually discussed with great caution in a limited context. Frank discussions about sexuality among Christians are rare. When we do talk about sex, we usually focus on sexual sin. We talk about the emotional and spiritual damage premarital sex causes. We advocate pure thoughts and a pure bed until marriage. We teach men coping skills for staying away from dirty sites on the Internet, and we teach women to be modest with their bodies. We’re good at letting each other and the world know the trouble that sexuality can bring. It’s crucial that we make a point about the consequences of sexuality separate from God’s will, but that’s never been a problem for us. In fact, we went so far in talking about how the depravity of sex, that we inadvertently created rock and roll.

Here’s how it happened: In the 1930’s and 40’s, black gospel singers in the American South used the term “rocking” to describe spiritual rapture during a song. If someone was “rocking,” they were filled with the Holy Spirit and having a blast in the name of the Lord. Though we now associate “rocking” with head-banging convulsions while the car stereo rattles the windows, it was once a term of worship.

That changed in 1946, when blues singer Roy Brown wrote a song called, “Good Rockin’ Tonight.” He never had success performing the song, but, in 1951, a young man named Elvis Presley recorded the song. Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed started playing the song on the radio and coined the phrase “rock and roll” to describe this frenetic new music. The rest, as they say, is history.

Though Christians were quick to label rock and roll the devil’s music, Roy Brown began as a gospel singer and borrowed the notion of “rocking” from his experiences in church. In “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” he used the word as a double-entendre, relating the ecstasy someone can experience in worship to sexual orgasm. Now here’s my question: why couldn’t he have written the same song for church?

We all know the answer. You can’t make that kind of comparison in church. But why wouldn’t God want the greatest expression of physical intimacy to approximate spiritual ecstasy? If drawing close to God is exhilarating, shouldn’t we be comfortable comparing that to the experience that God created to bring man and woman physically closer than anything else? Unfortunately Christians got the idea that sexuality and spirituality don’t mix at some point. Perhaps it started with the Gnostics talking about the depravation of the body. Maybe it was Augustine, who fretted endlessly about the trouble his sexuality caused him. Regardless, no one’s singing songs about sex in Church.

I wonder what would have happened if Roy Brown could have kept his music in the church. What if he could have sung about the spiritual rapture of sex in the presence of his fellow Christians? Maybe he wouldn’t have had to wander through nightclubs and juke joints trying to make a living. Maybe Christians would have revered his music, just as we revere The Song of Songs in scripture. Maybe there’d be no such thing as Christian rock, because all rock and roll music would come from the Church’s celebration of sexuality. I sometimes wonder if we missed a huge opportunity because we’re too squeamish about mixing God and sex.

But maybe it’s not too late. There’s been a lot of talk about “revolution” in evangelical circles lately, especially among younger folks. They’re usually talking about work with the poor and social justice, but maybe it’s time for a sexual revolution, too. No, I don’t mean that we should all start throwing down and having orgies. But we need to bring sexuality back into the church. We need to start talking about it again, addressing more than just sexual sin. We need to find a way to make sexuality and spirituality go together again. This means that we’re open about being sexual people. It means that we talk about how cool that is, whether someone is married or single. It means we find ways to celebrate the blessing of our sexual nature.

Posted on May 28, 2007 12:00 AM