Shameless: A Sexual Reformation

I don't know quite how to give stars to this book. I was anxious to read it and found it interesting. I was surprised at her wholesale trashing of traditional sexual values. Being one of those people who believed premarital sex was not part of God's best plan and being one with zero hangups about sex on my wedding night I don't identify with some of her rationale. I regret the grief caused by the church in the name of Christ about sex. I also regret that she didn't give more value to the joys of monogamous, faithful sex. I think she bends scripture to fit her view that any kind of sex that doesn't hurt someone else is just fine. This is the third book by Nadia Bolz Weber that I have read. I personally find no value added by her vulgar language. I can't get away from Ephesians 4:29 -- Don't use foul or abusive language. Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them. (NLT)

My marriages were pretty disastrous. Counselors, both Christian and secular, told me to just allow my husband all the sex he wanted, whenever and however he wanted it - and all would be better. Trite tips on how to parrot his requests to improve communication. I was always the aggressor, refusing to back down in my admonition that communication and sex weren't the real problems. My first husband was addicted to pornography. My second was mentally ill. But somehow, they were victims.I researched and did all the self-help - secular and churchy. I dove down that evangelical rabbit hole. I've been divorced (gasp!) and church members just wanted to pray for reconciliation (no!). I thought purity culture might be the answer. (It's not.)I tried to be the perfect Christian wife. I am not a quiet meek little mouse. I was ostracized, criticized, alienated for being myself. A cis straight white woman - homemaker and homeschooler. I can't even imagine what others face.I'm just really tired of it all. Something has to change.I have three daughters and a son. What narrative about sexuality do I want them to learn? From whom do I want them to learn about it? It's important to do more than have The Talk. How do I help my kids make sense of it all? I want them to have healthy relationships. It has to be an ongoing conversation and I have to learn alongside my kids and have no fear.Sex sells. Sex permeates our society. Sex affects all our relationships - with coworkers, acquaintances, authority figures. People who see everything in black and white say just always avoid being alone with someone of the opposite sex, as if that protects everyone from abuse, assault, accusation.We need a sexual reformation in the church.I preordered the book and received a galley copy from the publisher, Convergent/Penguin Random House.

Like others, I too ordered and read this book looking for wisdom. Yes, we need to have new conversations about sexuality and what it means to follow Jesus. But, I found no serious or critical interaction with either scripture or culture. Instead, the book reads like a (not so) thinly veiled justification of her own behavior, an apologetic for her own journey. Sadly, while she claims to offer freedom and healing, I believe she will lead people along a pathway toward deeper pain. She promises healing of the broken places, but some of us live downstream and have already seen the sadness and misery wrought by the way she advocates. (I hear deep sadness in her story and feel genuine love, compassion, and heartbreak for her.) If you are looking for a serious and thoughtful study, please try reading either Divine Sex by Jonathan Grant or A Better Story by Glynn Harrison.

20 years ago we started homeschooling our kids. I discovered I was an unschooler. Eventually, I learned there were different styles and flavors to homeschooling Some appealed to me others didn't. (Hang with me...this relates to Nadia's Shameless). Eventually, I blended some ingredients and found the right homeschooling cocktail for us. Halfway into this journey a TV show that featured a homeschooling family with a lots of kids hit the media. I have no doubt this family believed they were doing the world and homeschoolers a service by letting millions peek into their family, their style of homeschooling and their version of looking like Christ. I could barely watch. This wasn't us yet I knew we were going to be lumped into this category of conservative homeschooling. Young families in our church wondered why anyone would make this choice. Yet, only by God's kindness to us, our kids seem to wear homeschooling fairly well. They're far from perfect but are pretty normal, fun people, are free and love you whether you are like them or not. They swear when needed and drink with friends after small group. On most days, they love Jesus and tell me they want to homeschool their kids someday. It seems that in some small way our family has caused a few young people having children in our church to at least wonder if homeschooling might be something to consider. I'm surprised when that happens.This out of hand dismissal of homeschooling makes me sad and I wonder how we got here. My husband is a social worker as am I. From the beginning, we wanted to have emotionally and spiritually healthy children. Like many parents, we cared deeply that we wouldn't damage our kids. We now know that was inevitable but at least we prayed, read the scriptures, apologized a lot and learned all we could. We wanted to provide an environment where our 3 kids could be kids and explore all that they were on the inside as well as out. We shielded them from religion and we wanted them to really know each other as siblings. We wanted them to learn at their own pace without comparison. This turned out to be a good thing because my oldest didn't read till he was 10. He's in medical school now. For the most part, he never bought into the idea that he was behind. We watched the pressures and the rigorous schedules kids kept and knew traditional education would make it difficult to process their inner worlds or to learn at their own pace. We're not saying this is the right choice for everyone but, we wonder if it's a good choice for some. Our story is by and large untold. We are sad for the hit that homeschooling has taken. It seems lines have been drawn. I'm not trying to sell homeschooling, at least not that I am aware of, but to draw attention to how we have been sent to the margin.Again, hang with me. Nadia talks a lot about (rails against?) the purity movement. About 12-14 years ago, we were in a souvenir shop at some caverns and my three boys were taken with the rings. They were affordable and they decided a ring would be their souvenir of choice. By this time, we were in homeschool co-ops and hobnobbing with other homeschooling families. What I've loved and still love about this community of 300-450 is that people from very different backgrounds, Catholic to Protestant, liberal to conservative, religious and non-religious, and a lot in between come together to share the privilege we still have in this country to home educate. One of my boys had heard someone talk about wearing a ring to say they wanted to wait to have sex till they found a wife someday. The three of them went out in the woods to Narnia complete with a log kitchen where they made sticks and leaf stews. There they pledged their undying devotion to their future loves and then came in and told us. Sigh. I knew those rings would be associated with the purity movement which I found alarming.My two older kids eventually shed the rings realizing the association. I've been listening to Nadia's book, Shameless, this week. My heart has been heavy for my third boy who continues to wear his ring. He must have been seven? when they pledged their undying love. I don't think he even knew what sex was but he loved his big brothers. He is 19 now and he's up to speed. This week I got a chance to talk to him about it. I asked him if he knew the history of the ring. He said he had no idea what the purity movement was, had never heard of it. I explained and filled him in on some of the methods the movement used to shame young people. I explained there are groups of people who come together to talk about the damage that it did and how difficult it has been to enjoy their God-given desires. I told him it was up to him but he should know what the history of the ring is and how it might appear that he's supporting something, I know from previous conversations, he might not want to support. He told me why he wears it and what he said was innocent, authentic and beautiful. He looked at his ring and he looked sad, then he nodded and walked upstairs. To be honest, I worry that he will be judged, categorized and misunderstood. I know how this would shame and hurt him.What makes me sad is that I know some of the young people in our church are listening to Nadia (as am I). I wonder if there's a way to talk about those of us who have been misguided (and aren't we all) in a way that paves the way for understanding and unity. I get it that the church has hurt people. We have screwed up. I sit in my counseling office 20 hours a week and I hear the stories. But, I wonder if there's a way to raise awareness and shed light, without perpetuating more intolerance. I love Nadia's message of embracing those who have been rejected by the church and rethinking how we got to this place to begin with. And I too want more Christ followers to stand in the gap, to challenge perceptions and befriend and sit with those we've hurt. As we invite others to the gap, what I am thinking after 35 years on this journey, is that we're all getting it wrong in some way. We might be getting a couple things close to right, but, looking back and realizing how wrong we've gotten it in the past, humbles me. Why is it different now? Why would I be different? Why are you different? Can I be absolutely sure that my interpretation is the right interpretation? Shouldn't we be sobered by our potential to mislead? On the vast landscape of all there is to interpret in the scriptures, and generally know and understand, what we comprehend amounts to about a blade of grass. No one can be completely sure and if they think they are, they run the risk of doing great harm. After all, didn't well meaning people do this very thing all throughout history? (And asking these questions, most likely won't set you up to sell books.) So, how do we seek change without repeating history?I'm doing my best to keep it to myself but, I hope my son will decide to take off his ring, even if he doesn't really want to. The more people listen to Nadia’s anger toward and intolerance of conservatives the more likely they are to join in her anger (and disgust?) and the more my son and others like him, stand in harm's way. I don't think this is her intention. I think she intends for her anger to be at injustice but unfortunately, if we're not careful, it gets directed at people. I think she intends to draw attention to how terribly hurt people have been by (her version) of bad teaching. It is her version (much of which I agree with) because isn't everything we read someone's version? Unfortunately, we know from history, that people get incensed as they rant and rally against an injustice, find others who feel the same, and from the pain they have experienced, become blind to how they are hurting others all in the name of righting a wrong.Now I'm in my 50s, I've been a long-standing egalitarian, I love Anne Lamott and Don Miller and I care deeply about our pride. I don't know what it looks like in the heart of others but I do know what it can look like in me. I like to think I'm right. I know that I need to qualify what I say with this is my version and it might be wrong (at least in my mind or by how I listen and ask questions)...but I often don't. If we're not doing that, we are running the risk of inspiring another generation of intolerant, angry, harsh or dismissive people and we will create a new shamed or oppressed population. If others are looking to us as a leader (especially one hoping to lead others to find more of Jesus), don't we want to lead them to love all people well, especially those who don't believe what we believe? I am concerned that those of us who feel liberally enlightened don't love and listen for understanding to our conservative brothers and sisters. We don't get a pass. It's easy to love people who are like us but, can we welcome, care for and love those who hold viewpoints that are appalling to us? In that space, conversations that lead to change have a chance. Be careful Nadia, please. We can unknowingly create more hurt, hatred and division, the opposite of the very thing we are hoping to stand for.

I think this is one of the most passionate, honest and co m passionate books on faith and sex that I have ever read. I am old; just wish this kind of honesty and compassion had been around fifty years ago.

I knew when I cracked open this book that I would not like it, Bolz Weber has a reputation as the shock jock of so called liberal Christianity, and this book helps cement that reputation. Filled with theological errors and heresies masquerading as truth, it is designed to lead astray the unwary, and those who have chosen the route of error. It is also ignorant of Western Christianity, focusing on so called reformed or evangelical theology, but ignoring (and at times showing a profound and arrogant ignorance of) Catholic doctrine.There heresies are multiple: Individualism linked with Sensualism (the idea that what we like defines what is good for us), antinomianism among them, and she seems to delight in them, proclaiming freedom, but actually binding her followers in the chains of theological ignorance. (Just as Arius and the other heretics did, providing comfortable but heretical untruths, whilst turning people away from the actual, though more difficult to palate truth.)The Bible is a difficult document, and there are those who have been damaged by its misuse and misapplication, but the response to this is not to suggest further misuse and misapplication, but to return to the traditions and theology of Western Catholicism, a tradition which has successfully underpinned Western civilisation for 1,700 years (at least).

These days it is rare for me to read a book from cover to cover; to find the time, effort and energy to give a book the attention it deserves. But this book; wow. A thoughtful, engaging, heartfelt read. I am not sure if I agree 100% with all her theological beliefs but I find myself drawn to the warmth and heartfelt conviction of her writing. I will certainly read her other books and look forward to hearing her speak next weekend at greenbelt. Xx

In the blurb on the back, one of the peer-reviews says “..... this will heal many” and Shameless certainly did that for me. Many within me are now whole and if you know what that means then PLEASE read it for yourself. This book will remain in my top three of all time.

I gave this rating because reading this book is like receiving a hug from God if you happen to have grown up in a church culture which was all about don't & gave you an unhealthy view of sex and sexuality. This book isn't saying anything goes but it is saying a whole lot of stuff is healthy & normal.There's alot of great storytelling in this book which seems more mature & settled than some of her earlier writing. This is a pastoral resource rather than an aim to shock book. As a church based community worker with young adults I can't recommend this highly enough.