Paradox in Discourse on Sexual Pleasure: a Feminist
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PARADOX IN DISCOURSE ON SEXUAL PLEASURE: A FEMINIST PASTORAL THEOLOGICAL EXPLORATION By Elizabeth R. Zagatta Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Religion December, 2011 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Professor Bonnie Miller-McLemore Professor Ellen Armour Professor Volney Gay Professor Laura Carpenter Copyright © 2011 by Elizabeth R. Zagatta All Rights Reserved ii To my parents, George and Rosanne, and my little sis, Rebecca, For their love and support in scholarship and in life. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am overwhelming grateful to many individuals for their love, support, input, and encouragement throughout the course of writing this dissertation. I want to begin by offering my thanks to the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities for the generous fellowship that funded my last year of writing. The Center also provided resources for moving forward with academic jobs in the academy and organized a writing group with other graduate fellows, whose feedback and input was invaluable to my work. A number of local organizations and individuals have supported me over the course of my time as a doctoral student, allowing for timely completion of the dissertation. Thank you to Amy Mears, April Baker, Thomas Conner, and the congregation of Glendale Baptist Church of Nashville, TN, to Chris O’Rear and the Pastoral Counseling Centers of Tennessee, to the Law Firm of Bart Durham, to Lynn Reed and the staff at JAS Forwarding, to Dr. Anita Hauenstein, and to the students and professors of the graduate psychology department at Trevecca Nazarene University. My research and study leading up to and including the dissertation has been guided by the interest, excitement, and contributions of my dissertation committee. Each scholar played an integral role in contributing to my knowledge base in theology, pastoral theology, psychology, science, methods, sociology, and critical issues in clinical practice. Each challenged and encouraged me along the way to critically contemplate and write about that which I am most passionate. Many thanks to Dr. Laura Carpenter, who supervised my minor area paper in sociology. Thank you to Dr. Volney Gay for his iv rigorous attention to method and for stocking our academic toolboxes in preparation for life in the academy. I am equally grateful to Dr. Ellen Armour, Director of the Carpenter Program in Religion, Gender, and Sexuality, who arrived at Vanderbilt just in time to provide me with a solid grounding in feminist theology and to supervise my minor area exam in sexuality and theology. Dr. Armour is a firm supporter of feminist scholarship across areas in the Graduate Department of Religion. She continually encouraged me to include aspects of my work as a pastoral counselor in the dissertation and to ask myself as I drafted each chapter: “Why is this important for pastoral theology?” Many heartfelt thanks to my dissertation director, Dr. Bonnie Miller-McLemore, for her support at each and every step of my doctoral work. I am grateful for her assistance in shaping and honing my research interest across my coursework, exams, and dissertation proposal, for her enthusiasm for my work, and for her wisdom – not only in her feedback, but in her own feminist pastoral theological scholarship, which contributes in important ways to the some of the arguments I make in the dissertation. Dr. Miller- McLemore is one of the foremost thinkers in the field of pastoral theology and is a role model for young scholars, like myself, who identify as feminist pastoral theologians. In addition to my dissertation committee, I would like to thank the Religion, Psychology, and Culture (RPC) Assistant Professors of the Practice of Pastoral Theology and Pastoral Counseling, Dr. Evon Flesberg and Dr. Bruce Rogers-Vaughn, as well as my current and former colleagues in RPC at Vanderbilt. Over the years my colleagues have functioned as critics, teammates, editors, supervisors, co-instructors, counselors, cheerleaders, and family. I could not have done this without you all in our many support v groups, both formal and informal: Nichole Phillips, Karla Van Zee, Eileen Campbell- Reed, Mindy McGarrah Sharp, Leanna Fuller, Kate Lassiter, and all the members of Dr. Miller-McLemore’s Spring 2009 research seminar. Of course, getting to and through Vanderbilt is due in large part to the support and love of my family – my mother and mentor/role model, Rosanne Zagatta, my generous father, George E. Zagatta, my hilarious and loving sister, Rebecca Zagatta, my quick- witted brother, George V. Zagatta, and my uber-supportive, pen pal and grandmother extraordinaire, Rose Mandara. I also have a special place in my heart for my in-laws – Fred and Clara Allison – who, for the last two years, have been my parents in residence here in Nashville, cheering me on, sharing their wisdom about life, and treating me and Rob to delicious, homemade meals. Lastly, I offer my deepest thanks to my partner and teammate, Robert Allison, who since the first keystroke of the dissertation communicated to me daily that I was more than capable of this feat. He nursed me back to health, gave me the gift of time and space to write, continually put the weight of this project in perspective, and continues to support all of my hopes and dreams. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page DEDICATION ................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... iv Chapter INTRODUCTION: THE CRISIS OF SEXUALITY IN THE CHURCH ...........................1 Research question and thesis ....................................................................................3 The problem ..............................................................................................................5 Everyday sexual suffering and spirituality ..................................................5 Classical theology: Pleasure as sin ..............................................................6 Feminist theology: The return of eros .........................................................9 Christian sexual ethics: Pleasure and a passion for justice ........................12 Communities of faith in a culture of commodities and confusion .............15 Pleasure and culture today .............................................................17 Sex and the Church: Official denominational positions ................21 Sex and the Church: The media spotlight. .....................................26 Method: A critical correlation of religion and culture – Toward a feminist pastoral theological reconstruction of sexual pleasure ............................34 Mapping the journey ahead ....................................................................................42 Significance ............................................................................................................45 1. CURIOUS ABSTENTIONS: THE LACUNA IN PASTORAL THEOLOGY...........49 The pastoral care movement responds to the Kinsey Reports ...............................51 Between paradigms: Sex and the ethical dimensions of pastoral care ...................57 Sex and context: Contributions of the new paradigm ............................................65 Missed opportunities and further proof ..................................................................72 Stop beatin’ ’round the bush…let’s get it on .........................................................79 2. ROTTEN ROOTS: THE CHRISTIAN SEX-NEGATIVE LEGACY ..........................82 Saint Augustine of Hippo: Doctor, doctor, gimme the news .................................85 Confessions: Methinks he doth confess too much?! ..................................88 Excavating Augustine’s theology of sex and orgasm ................................95 Sex in Eden? ..................................................................................97 Original sin is not sex, but sex testifies to original sin ................102 The Doctor’s prescription ............................................................106 No pardon for pleasure .................................................................110 vii Page Saint Thomas Aquinas: It's natural; It's chemical (let's do it); It's logical; Habitual (can we do it?) ....................................................................115 The inconsequential importance of pleasure ............................................117 No rhyme or reason for pleasure ..............................................................119 Sinning unreasonably: The pursuit of pleasure ........................................123 Perpetuating the legacy ............................................................................126 Martin Luther: Waiting for you to justify my love ..............................................127 On the goodness of marriage and the impulse to multiply ......................130 Distorting the edenic ideal: Marriage as precarious prophylactic ...........132 Pleasure’s parameters ...............................................................................136 Perpetuating the legacy ............................................................................139 John Calvin: Marriage & moderation to combat fornication ...............................141 Marriage as metaphorical fig leaf ............................................................143