Christian sex workshops for born again marriages

Standing at the pulpit of Indian Rocks Baptist Church in Palm Harbor, Fla., with pink and purple lighting shining down upon him, a bespectacled man in his stocking feet looked out upon the pews full of flush-faced parishioners.

“Some of you are freaked out that I said the word clitoris,” he told the packed church. Downward looks, fleeting glances, then embarrassed giggles, then silence. This is always how it is at the beginning of a Christian sex workshop.

Using a Christian theological framework and quoting frequently from scripture, Christopher McCluskey, a certified counselor and sex therapist, helps couples improve their sex lives according to what he believes are God’s intentions. He conducts workshops and seminars across the country. For those unable to attend, there’s "Coaching Couples into Passionate Intimacy: God’s Intention for Marital Sexual Union," McCluskey’s DVD home study kit that features the above scene.

“Whenever I speak on sexuality, I speak in stocking feet because we are on holy ground,” McCluskey said from his office. “When sex is used within God’s guidelines, God is greatly glorified.”

But these workshops are about much more than sex. They are part of a growing movement for a modern Christian theology of sexuality, albeit within heterosexual marriage.

“We as a church must redeem and sanctify our view of sex,” McCluskey says in his book, "When Two Become One: Enhancing Sexual Intimacy in Marriage." “If we fail, it will likely be our undoing.”

From San Francisco to Philadelphia, people are listening. Discussing God’s plan for sex in an honest, sometimes explicit fashion is becoming increasingly more acceptable to Christian groups.

In the DVD "Love, Sex and Relationships," former minister Joe Beam identifies the sins that he believes have both caused and fueled these changes: the influence of sex-saturated mainstream popular culture, homosexuality and soaring divorce rates. The DVD is produced by Family Dynamics, a ministry organization headquartered in Franklin, Tenn., that Beam founded.

Divorce has soared in the last 10 years, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and it may be even higher among some Protestant denominations, according to the 2004 General Social Survey, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center.

“Vows come pretty cheap nowadays,” McCluskey said.

When McCluskey worked as a Christian counselor in Tampa, Fla., people bombarded him with their sexual problems--medical, emotional and often a combination of both. The problems, he said, were rooted in repression instilled by church and family during childhood, a lack of sex education and sometimes sexual abuse. When negative associations about sex are so deeply instilled, the central nervous system can clamp down, making sexual intercourse impossible, McCluskey said. “Some think sex is this necessary evil they didn’t wish God could see,” McCluskey said.

Reversing the impact of years of sexual trauma is a challenge, and one he approaches with caution. “There are rules about sex, but they’re not restricting. It’s not like God doesn’t want us to have any fun,” McCluskey said. “Sex is all over the Bible, it’s everywhere. God designed our orgasms. What a statement about God’s heart.”

Nancy, 43, and her husband, Bill, 44, who live in Cape Coral, Fla., and who asked that their real names not be used, were having sexual problems and decided to attend a seminar run by Sexual Wholeness, a ministry devoted to training therapists and pastors in biblical sexuality that was co-founded by McCluskey.

“It’s very common for couples to have issues with intimacy and feeling awkward at times, just being sexual with one another," Bill said. “I think it was relieving for some of us, myself included, to recognize that we weren’t alone in issues that we might have in the bedroom."

Bill blamed his premarital interest in pornography for his impotence with Nancy. “Having a real person that had real feelings that I was supposed to relate to outside of sex was a novel idea. I wasn’t ever taught it," he said. "I was retarded in that way, truly.”

Harriet Brawner is a 48-year-old Southern Baptist from Atlanta in the jewelry business. She attended a Passionate Intimacy workshop run by Dr. Michael Sytsma, an ordained minister and sex therapist.

“I’m from the South. We Southern girls aren’t supposed to talk about these things,” Brawner said, which caused her relationship with her husband, David, to suffer. In time, she “felt more comfortable talking about intimacy issues.”

Family Dynamics offers peer-led classes during which a group of six to 12 couples discuss the intimate details of their marriage, including sex.

“Everyone’s learning from everybody, so it’s very fulfilling. You always remember what you learn on your own and discover,” said Jim Brown, who heads the marriage ministry of 12 branches of the New York Church of Christ in Westchester County, N.Y., and runs Family Dynamics classes with his wife, Teresa.

Charles Gordon, 45, an anesthesiologist from Saratoga Springs, N.Y., enrolled in one of the classes with his wife. “It’s hard to believe, six to eight couples talking about their sex life,” he said. “It gets intense.”

A facilitator’s job is to encourage honest, personal discussion by being the first to divulge, explained Chris Copeland, 44, a New York Power Authority account executive from Ossining, N.Y., who recently led his first class with his wife, Jackie. “If you’re very open and vulnerable about your marriage and so forth,” he said, “then they’ll be as open.”

Still, there will always be questions no one wants to ask. At the end of McCluskey’s workshops, anonymously submitted questions are read aloud, then answered: “Can you have oral sex?" “Anal sex?” “What about masturbation?” “Or tying someone up?”

This was when Nancy says her world changed.

“I think I found real freedom about being a Christian woman and really having fun without being dirty,” Nancy said.

“We’ve grown a lot as a couple. Since then we’ve done things we probably never would have done,” Bill said.

“They give you so many cool ideas about how to be romantic. And the gift baskets,” she said. “I remember cinnamon-flavored condoms and lubricants.”

“And cherry,” Bill chimed in. “Definitely cherry.”

E-mail: jw2328@columbia.edu