This article was a Christian communard's response to an issue of Communities magazine, a cosmopolitan publication dealing with various forms of intentional community from Skinnerian to Utopian to Christian to Hindu. The issue in question dealt with communal life and sexuality. Unfortunately, the particular communities featured seemed mostly involved with radical experiments in "open" communal sexuality. My response was graciously received and printed.

IN THE "LOVE, ROMANCE, AND SEX" issue of Communities (Summer '95) it appeared that no historic Christian communities participated! I am a member of Jesus People USA (JPUSA) community in inner-city Chicago, a group of folks around 500 strong that has existed since 1972. (I joined in 1977.) Community, in our 23-year experience, has been an endless lesson on the incredibly fragile fabric of human relationships, a lesson often learned the hard way. In discussing sexuality in a communal context, we have leaned primarily on biblical teaching, finding affirmation of our sexual beings while also finding some boundaries to what "ought" and "ought not" be done.

"Dos" and "don'ts" concerning sex will, of course, produce controversy. In attempting to explain our own understanding, then, I have heeded Geoph Kozeny's advice in his Peripatetic Communitarian column, "Absolute Truth" (Winter '94/'95):

In our community we are unapologetic about our belief in an absolute truth, embodied in the Person of Jesus Christ, and in His Word revealed in the Old and New Testaments. Of course, this will affect our stance on sexual matters. Yet we also admit, with sadness, that evangelical Christians aren't very whole in their own understanding regarding what Scripture says about sexuality. Public pontifications regarding sex have been revealed as hypocrisy nor only among the now-fallen TV evangelists; bur also among many of their listeners. A Variety magazine article a few years back, for instance, was entitled "Bible Belt Fingered as Top Porno Fan in U.S."

Despite this confession, we also suggest that our non-Christian acquaintances may not know what Christian sexuality is, having accepted Jimmy Swaggart's shattered sexual persona as an accurate reflection of all biblical believers. Our own experience at JPUSA is, we believe, one Christian and communal argument against the idea that absolute truth means publicly rigid conformity along with secret sexual dysfunction. We ask our non-Christian friends to hear our hopefully humble and obviously incomplete reflections on sexuality with this in mind.

Definitions and Borders

Community is a world of experimental relationship, an attempt to crash through what sociologist Anson Shupe calls the "contractual view" of relationship held by mainstream America. Instead, many communities seek a "covenantal view" of relationship based on either religious goals and principles or philosophical/psychological concepts. In such a model, then, boundaries between individuals are far more porous than the boundaries between individuals in a contractual view. The members of JPUSA as well as members of many other communities desire great personal transparency, honesty, and self-revelation, and believe they have found a supportive (though of course imperfect) environment to experience such transparent relationships.

Believing that the covenantal view of relationship is far better than the contractual "I'll do for you if you do for me" norm, there is still the question of defining just where the boundaries lie between the individual and community, I know of virtually no community, for instance, that would allow a violation of sexual boundaries between adults and children. Neither have I heard of any communal group that would allow for sexual relations between human beings and animals. How about sex between an adult and his father's wife? In short, sexual boundaries of some type--"taboos" to use the old term--exist everywhere. Are these taboos absolutes? Why or why not? For many, both within and without intentional community, the term "consenting adults" is a border collectively agreed upon. Yet does a majority vote determine what is or is nor appropriate sexual behavior? Who created "adult consent" as a definition? Is it absolute?

In what is perhaps the world's oldest recorded community--the nuclear family-there are also questions of definition. What makes a husband a husband? A wife a wife? How porous is the relationship between husband and wife? What happens to the definition of this little community if another man or woman, or men and women, step across the boundaries of the original couple's sexual relationship? Is the community of two still itself after sexual involvement by others occurs? What happens to the fabric of this relationship if others are included in it?

From a historical perspective, it remains baffling as to how interrelationships function properly within a communal context when various "open" sexual relationships are practiced. It is interesting to note how many communities starred off as virtual "free love" experiments and eventually reverted to the traditional one man/one woman marriage model. In larger society as well, the whole "open marriage" trend ended up simply not working. (Even the O'Neills, who wrote Open Marriage if I recall correctly, later confessed that the experiment was a failure and had greatly damaged their marriage.) Could it be that too much sexual sharing actually impedes rather than enhances transparency between individuals? I suspect such a communal life would be very exciting in the short run, yet turn out sadly unfulfilling in the long march of years.

I suggest that there is a delicate balance between the identity of any community and the identity of the individuals making up that community, one which certainly becomes blurred and distorted when the community's sexuality invades the personal. This problem becomes even worse when community leadership--almost always male--is the main wellspring from which "open" sexual concepts flow. It was of interest that a photo in the recent "Love, Romance, and Sex" issue of Communities of multiple sex partners in bed together was of one male and three females--a cliché theme of pornography if ever there was one, and a potential indicator of male exploitation.

Most folks' experience does teach them that sexuality is a two-edged sword when it comes to building or destroying relationships. One approach is to see monogamous sex ar a provoker of jealousies and exclusion, which frankly, it sometimes is. Bur to suggest that the best way to deal with such jealousy/exclusion is to make of sex little more than recreational bonding--anyone with anyone--is a suggestion that looks worse the more experienced one grows. There is additionally a gift of being made significant by another via the sexual relationship, a significance that comes up missing when that other is also "sharing" with various partners. If sexuality is not to degenerate into a mere stroking of nerve endings, where the other person is little more than an appendage to be used as a means to an end, then somewhere commitment is necessary as a foundation of security for the incredible vulnerability that giving oneself sexually entails.

A Christian View of Sex

Jesus People USA has held to a "middle road" view of family and sexuality agreed on by many Christians, namely, that sex is good, a gift of God to be fully and luxuriously enjoyed by a man and woman married solely to one another in a life-long commitment.

Sex is not merely, or even primarily, for procreation, but is rather an incredibly pleasurable gift for husband and wife to explore together, "knowing" each other more fully with each caress, each kiss, each orgasm. Nor is sexuality limited to the explicit "in-bed" behaviors of coitus, but ought to be part of a larger "sensual" approach to life that maintains monogamous purity while affirming touch, emotion, and physical beauty. Sexuality is an expression of romantic love and intimate communion as well as "agape" (selfless, self-surrendered) love. Biblically, there is nothing dirty or substandard about sexuality; it is not, as some have taught, a product or cause of man's fall. Some Christians seem not to understand the Song of Solomon, with all its rhapsodizing on breasts, thighs, arms, lips, tongues, and "channel" (New Revised Standard Version). Sex--along with the human body itself--was part of the Creation which God declared "good" in Genesis and elsewhere.

From this perspective, introducing any combination of plural marriages, "open" marriages, or sex between consenting adults outside of marriage would be a death blow to sexuality, as it would destroy sexuality's borders. It would be like a small boy, who while painting with the vibrant colors of his new paint box, suddenly has a "big idea." He mixes the bright, gorgeous colors all together, and is baffled to discover his paint box has become a dull gray mess. Our own lives before becoming followers of Christ testified to the falseness of the idea that sex with more people was better sex. Many of us had tried that way, and found in it an initial thrill which quickly faded, followed by frustration and a growing boredom and loneliness. There was not so much a feeling of guilt as a feeling of pointlessness: sex merely affirmed hopelessness in the aftermath of each orgasm.

Of course, all these assertions can be argued with, and dialogue, we believe, is crucial. Each individual is responsible for her or his own choices and decisions, even in the midst of a communal experience. Was it Socrates who said, "The unexamined life is not worth living!" I respectfully suggest that we communitarians closely examine both our sexual and communal commitments in light of exactly why we exist, what we think we are to do, and who, if anyone, wishes us to do it. My wife and I, along with other couples involved with JPUSA, can affirm that there is great joy, sexual and otherwise, in finding one's identity and meaning in Jesus Christ.