Sensuality and Theology

I participated in an interview conducted by a Princeton student (concentrating on sociology and religion) regarding conversion experiences.  Long story short, I was asked to share my "conversion story" and identify a song or a musical piece that best can be associated with that story.  The song I chose had a saxophone playing the melody, but that melody was recapitulated at the end with the piano instead.  Thus, the song is reminiscent of my "conversion story" because the song reminds me of God continually unfolding Godself before me.

The saxophone has an element of sensuality about it, and the student and I launched into a discussion on the role of sensuality and theology.  Sensuality, to be sure, is not sexuality, even though the two are often closely connected.  One can engage in sexual behavior non-sensually, and one may not engage in anything sexual while displaying sensuality.  Consider, for example, the action of giving a rose to a significant other.  This simple "signify-cant" (significant) act is purely sensual.  If I give a rose to a significant other, I do not shove it in her face!  Nor do I just give it to her and say, "Here's a rose.  Love ya."  No - you accompany the rose-giving with a different tone, employing different vocabulary than ordinary speech.  The behavior, in other words, signifies sensuality.  Even the rose itself is a sensual item; it is, after all, botanical genitalia.

Sensuality is key to erotic love.  Again, erotic love is not directly sexual in nature.  Erotica, the media that is often associated with overt displays of sexuality (I would include Abercrombie & Fitch in this genre...), has unfortunately hijacked the terminology.  Erotic love is sexual in a secondary sense - that is, only if sexuality is related to sensuality.  Sensuality is much broader.  Sensuality is what moves us, what makes us swoon.  This is not analytic persuasion, but emotional persuasion.  Presidential candidates, particularly in the United States, need to be good at sensuality to appeal to their targeted voting blocs.  Sensuality moves us in very powerful ways.  It is what makes something (or, someone) stick into our minds and never leave!  We have our favorite cars, favorite brands, favorite bric-a-brac because those things have swayed us with their sensuality.  Something abstract like an idea may be sensual too.  The myth of the American Dream is very sensual; it tickles our fancies, making that myth take on an aura of beauty.

Because sensuality moves us in very powerful ways, its connection to ideals or things can be dangerous.  When wars become sensual (the technical term is "romanticized"), they become dangerous as peoples' lives will be sacrificed not on the basis of rationality, but on the basis of sensuality.  It feels good to go to war, in other words.  Such, I think, was the sentiment behind the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.  It was an irrational war, based on very flimsy evidence (later proved to be non-existent), with little international support.  But it feels good to topple a country with WMDs!  The rationale, here, was not logical, empirical, or for the matter, theological.  It was purely sensual.  A nationalized sensuality, coupled with a terrible depression, allowed Germans to vote the German Nazis into the Reichstag, giving them a near-majority voting bloc and allowing Hitler to ascend to the Chancellorship.  Erotic love is powerful, and Hitler was absolutely masterful at harnessing it in furthering his evil plans.  Today, the anti-Bush or anti-Obama camps routinely invoke the image of Hitler to describe them because Bush and Obama are, whether one knows it or not, connected with sensuality.

Funnily enough, we don't pay enough attention to sensuality in theology.  Let's be clear that sensuality here is not just being "emotionally tickled," like many praise songs do.  It's being emotionally moved.  We are compelled, at the conclusion of our sensual experience, to do something.  Assuming we are Baptist, the reason we make that decision to "give our lives to Christ" is because the message of the gospel is sensual.  The message, the story, in other words, is not easily doffed, pushed aside to be ignored; it enters our mind, occupies it, and just keeps festering there.

In fact, God is sensual!  For me, at least, God has revealed Godself in a sensual way.  If you're mind is already moving in the direction of a nubile lady, recall that sensuality and sexuality are not ontologically related.  Sexuality is NOT sensuality.  When we read the Scriptures and allow the Holy Spirit to speak between the interstices of the lines, the words, the phrases, and the strokes of the alphas and alephs, we are witnesses to God's sensuality, to God's still, small voice wooing us to embrace the Totality that is God, the God who, in Paul Tillich's language, is the Ground of Being.  When we go out "into nature" and enjoy God "through creation," we are invoking images of a sensual God.  How can we not?

Recently, I am made aware of Abercrombie & Fitch's CEO, who remarked that his company deliberately markets products for young men and women who are of the "right" physique.  To make clothing for every consumer results in watering down the brand, but to target clothing towards a specific market (for A&F, hot looking young people) then buying Abercrombie & Fitch is not only to buy into a brand name, but to attach a significance to the brand name.  Now, a lot of critiques center on how A&F is now pornographic, how they're discriminatory, etc.

But let's step back a bit.  In a capitalist society, what Abercrombie & Fitch is doing is justifiable!  You can't deny that, for capitalism opens markets to all consumers.  It is within A&F's rights to market to a specific market segment.  People like me would have to buy less interesting brands like whatever you get from Target.  Capitalism thrives on sensuality.  Sensuality is the oil that makes consumers consume. Many of us buy iPhones hot off the production line not because it's better (how do you know when you're among the first to consume it?) but because it's cool to have the latest iPhone!  That's sensuality, right there!  Abercrombie & Fitch's only mistake, in a capitalistic worldview, is disclosing in understandable terms what their sensual strategy is.  (They could've just said - we just don't make plus-sizes.)

One response to this is to compel others to not buy Abercrombie & Fitch.  Don't do it!  They're sexist!  They're pornographic!  But unless you want to do the Occupy Wall Street and sit in on their stores (and get arrested for it), good-looking people will still buy Abercrombie & Fitch!  Sensuality, recall, is powerful!  It defies logic!  Many of A&F's consumers are probably not sexist, and they're not involved in pornography (or are addicted to it, even).  They buy it because, hey, I don't agree with their sensual shopping bags, catalogs, and marketing strategy, but they have my size, and I've got the money.  You may rant and rave against Apple's utilization of cheap Chinese labor, but hey, I don't agree with unsafe working conditions, but they've got what I want, and I've got the money.

What if the Church rethought sensuality?  Why must we let Abercrombie & Fitch, and all the world's top marketing firms, define sensuality?  For too long, I think the Church has been scared of sensuality, scared of its power.  It was not until relatively recently that the Church's great erotic theologians, St. Teresa de Ávila and St. Terese de Lisieux, were declared Doctors of the Church.  Teresa of Ávila writes, for instance, that:

I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it.

It is quite intense and it made use of sexual imagery (not even sensual!).  The temptation here is to downplay the sexual language and make it all allegorical.  This strategy was used to interpret for several decades the Song of Songs.  The sexual language is so embarrassing!  An allegorical reading, then, would make it more palatable for our Victorian sensibilities!  But let us not forget that the Victorian era was known as the "Gilded Age."  It was gilded because underneath the nice exterior is something rotten.  Christian pietism often focuses on the gild, but not on the "Ground" of human being.  No wonder Dietrich Bonhoeffer hated pietism.  If you focus on the gild, you will follow the gild no matter how rotten its core is.  I think if we attack A&F by concentrating on "not buying A&F", we're only attacking the gild, but not the underlying problem.  And the problem is that the social arbiters of sensuality are the corporations who employ sensuality in a bid to command our consuming powers.

So we need to stop being afraid of sensuality.  Embrace it!  No, I'm not offering a vision of the church that embraces flippant sexuality - remember, sensuality is not sexuality!  In fact, the hippie notion of "free love," I think, is not really sensual.  Again, remember, one can have sex without sensuality.  I consider "free love" as a ravaging satisfaction of human lust.  There is no sensuality in lust.  We need to not be afraid of a God who verbally undresses Godself through the pages of Scripture and through God's work in human history today.  When we see God at work, we don't go, "Wow, God.  I am reminded of the Barthian image of your inbreaking into human condition..."  No, no, no - we just go "God, that's freakin' AWESOME!"  That's sensuality, right there.

Few theologians take this seriously.  In fact, I only know of one: Marcella Althaus-Reid.  I don't agree with all aspects of her theology, but I appreciate her boldness in "re-sexualizing" Scripture.   Here is a theologian who understands the sensuality - even, indecency! - of the Bible.  And she's right - the Bible is sexually-charged!  In fact, in the Old Testament, sexual relations was one way of exerting political influence and control (I don't need to go into details, do I?)  So why are we so scared sensual language when the Bible doesn't shy away from sexually-explicit imagery?

I would very much rather sensuality be imaged by a sensual God, not a soft-pornographic image on an Abercrombie & Fitch shopping bag.  Plus, unless we live in a Christian enclave out in the boonies of Wyoming, there's no way we can insulate ourselves from corporate-defined sensuality.  If we don't like the idea of a sensual God, our only strategy left is to suppress sensuality.  History has shown that such suppression has terrible consequences.  (Again, I don't need to go into details, do I?)  Let us, therefore, retake back what is ours.  Sensuality belongs in the Church; we've let corporations borrow its power, and it's time we demand it back!