10. Sex and Religion (Remastered)

Sex and Religion

R.J. Rushdoony

Our Scripture is Romans 1:18-25, and our subject, ‘Sex and Religion.’

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.”

This morning we conclude a couple weeks of introductory material to some of the basic laws with regard to marriage. And in order to understand these laws, it is important to understand the relationship of sex and religion. It is a commonplace and well known that many writers have written voluminously to try and trace all religion to the worship of sex, and they call attention to the variety of fertility cults as instances of this. The frequent, very close association of sex and religion can be granted. The fertility cults are to be found in every part of the world in the past and in the present, and there is no question that what these are, cults which worship the generative power. This relationship moreover, is cited emphatically in Scripture, our text, for example, declares that this is an inevitable consequence of apostasy, of the rejection of God. 

To reread the last few verses of our text in Moffatt’s translation, I quote: 

“They claim to be wise, but they have become fools. They have exchanged the glory of the immortal God for the semblance and likeness of mortal man, of birds, of quadrupeds and of reptiles. So God has given them up in their hearts’ lust to sexual vice, to the dishonoring of their own bodies, since they have exchanged the truth of God for an untruth. Worshipping and serving the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever, amen.”

Now this clearly states that when men depart from the worship of God, they embark on a course of idolatry which culminates in the worship of sex, and particularly moral acts of degeneracy.

Now as Dr. Murray has noted:

“…religious degeneracy is penalized by abandonment to immorality; sin in the religious realm is punished by sin in the moral sphere.” ⁱ

This, he states in brief, is the meaning of this passage. God, when He is forsaken by man, abandons man to his own devices. And the immediate consequence is the rapid deterioration of man, so that, seeking to exalt himself, he ends up by debasing himself. 

Thus, sexual vice is an aspect of man’s revolt from God. When man turns to self-worship, he ends by worshipping his own sexual vices. When he refuses to acknowledge God as creator, he worships his own genital powers as creator. Sex, thus, is a common substitute for religion in history. A very important one.

To give a dramatic example from California. According to the then chief of police of Oakland, when the San Francisco earthquake struck, it affected the whole peninsula and the whole Bay Area. Oakland did not see the devastation that San Francisco did, but there was a continual shaking and trembling and people were terror-stricken. What happened? According to the chief of police:

“All day long and at night, men were lined up for blocks, waiting in front of the houses of prostitution like at a box office, at a theatre on a popular night.”

Now of course, case after case of a similar reaction of men to disaster can be cited. Having no God, they seek life at its closest point, in their sexual activity, in order to find some kind of religious relief. At the end of every age in particular, this is especially true because as religion declines at the end of an age, man’s recourse is to make sex his religious aid. It is not true, definitely, that in the last days of Rome, or in the last era of the Medieval period, or in our area, men have been more over-sexed. Actually the reverse is true. Whenever you have a period of social decline, there is a radical decline of men in every area. And today as a matter of fact, the increasing evidence is that men are progressively more and more impotent at an earlier age or have a marked decline of fertility.

But, at the end of an age, instead of normal sexual activity, there is an intensely perverse activity. Man’s religious hunger increases as his world falls apart, and because sex is his substitute God, he seeks in sex his release, with a tension and a drive that is almost incredible.

But this is not all. At the same time, men begin to justify their religious and their moral depravity. Now, one of the things that characterized the fertility cults, for example in Canaan, and this is one of the reasons why when God gave Canaan to Israel, they were ordered to destroy everything before them. The fertility cult required, as a part of worship, every kind of moral depravity; acts of homosexuality, acts of prostitution by the women, acts of bestiality, acts of incest, all of these things were religiously required to revitalize society; these were chaos cults; this is what an orgy was.

Now the significant thing is that in this day and age there is an increasing religious justification of the old fertility cult. And in work after work by modern scholars we find an extensive justification of the old fertility-cult worship. 

For example, in one very prominent scholar, Georges Bataille we read: 

“The modern view of the orgy must at all costs be rejected. It assumes that those who took part had no sense of modesty at all, or very little. This superficial view implies that the men of ancient civilization had something of the animal in their nature. In some respects it is true that these men do often seem nearer than ourselves to the animals, and it is maintained that some of them shared this feeling of kinship. But our judgments are linked to the idea that our peculiar modes of life best show up the difference between man and animals. Early men did not contrast themselves with animals in the same way, but even if they saw animals as brothers the reactions on which their humanity was based were far from being less rigorous than ours.… This is why when we discuss the orgy in a very general way we have no grounds for seeing it as an abandoned practice but on the contrary we should regard it as a moment of heightened tension, disorderly no doubt, but at the same time a moment of religious fever. In the upside down world of feast-days the orgy occurs at the instant when the truth of that world reveals its overwhelming force. Bacchic violence is the measure of incipient eroticism whose domain is originally that of religion.

But the truth of the orgy has come down to us through the Christian world in which standards have been overthrown once more. Primitive religious feeling drew from taboos the spirit of transgression. Christian religious feeling has by and large opposed the spirit of transgression. The tendency which enables a religious development to proceed within Christianity is connected with these relatively contradictory points of view.

It is essential to decide what the effects of this contradiction have been. If Christianity had turned its back on the fundamental movement which gave rise to the spirit of transgression it would have lost its religious character entirely, in my opinion.” ⁱⁱ

Now what is the gist of that rather complicated passage? First he insists that the fertility-cult and its worship was a marvelous thing, and that Christianity did much harm to the world in destroying it. And second, Christianity is opposed to that which is the essence of true religion, the spirit of transgression. In other words, man is most religious, most holy, when he is most filled with the spirit of transgression, the desire to break every law that God or man may establish. You can understand, of course, under teaching such as this why we had a hippy generation and the student generation we do. 

“The essence of true religion is a spirit of transgression.” 

And of course this meant the transgression of every kind of moral law.

Bataille went on to state in this study of his, that Christianity had desacralized the world and man, that before Christianity came around, everything that man did was holy, whatever perversion it was. Whatever act of depravity, it was holy, everything was holy because holiness was man himself, not a God out there. This faith of course is being confirmed today, and this was of course the thesis of Allen Ginsberg’s famous poem of a few years ago, Howl, which says over and over again that everything is holy. The pervert, the rapist, the insane, all are holy and as a result the great offender is Christianity which has desacralized man. 

And as Bataille says: 

“It [Christianity - RJR] reduced the sacred and the divine to a discontinuous and personal God, the creator.” ⁱⁱⁱ

Every man was his own God. Now, Christianity destroyed this. And so it has changed the glorioius reality when every man was God and every sexual act he performed was divine and holy, and when sex was the redeemer.

For example, another writer speaking of sex and the title of his book is  The Sacred Fire, writes of the worship of sex: 

“Still, sex worship did for man even more than that. It was the redeemer of his imprisoned soul. It provided an outlet for those sexual passions which the race had known in its infancy, but which later had apparently been driven out of heart and mind. Memories of them may have lingered on, as they had not been entirely effaced from the earth. At all events, the desire was there, smouldering beneath the heap of suppressions.

Once, man was a free agent, sexually. He could mate with any female that came his way. Now, he was in chains. Sex worship came to break the fetters and, if only for a brief space of time, to bring back to man the freedom that had been his. What was forbidden at large in the bush not only was permitted, but, in fact, became a duty in the temple of the gods.

When, in the temple, man was free to do as he pleased sexually, and he pleased to do it with all freedom possible.” ^iv

We can understand of course why the new morality is inevitable in the churches today. Having forsaken the God of Scripture, they are going to affirm as their religion this spirit of transgression. And this is why, of course, increasingly your modernist churches will support every kind of revolutionary activity; whether in the political, religious, or moral realm, they will support it because the essence of this faith is a spirit of transgression.

It would be possible to go on at length and cite writers who justify this position. In brief, they demand that all laws be outlawed, which means that Christianity must be abolished, and there must be a ‘resacralization’ of human love. And this view is expressed in many high places. For example, Mme. Suzanne Lilar, who is the wife of the until recently Minister of Justice of Belgium, and a man very important internationally, has written a book justifying this position, calling for the resacralization of human love. In other words, total permission.

Now we said earlier that the end of an age sees the decline of every kind of energy, including sexual energy. But the religious need for sex at the same time increases. Now, when you have a decline of physical energy and a heightened religious demand for that same energy, the result is that more and more provocation is needed in order to stimulate the jaded appetite. As a result, at the end of an age, as the energies of man decline, his perversities increase because it takes more and more each time to give him a ‘charge,’ as it were. He needs acts of increased depravity in order to find the same satisfaction. 

Thus, about ten, twelve years ago, studies began to be made of the various wife-swapping groups throughout the United States. At that time, this was their activity, wife swapping. Now, of course, every type of perversion has been introduced into these groups. Why? Because they cannot stand still, and thus wife-swapping is now dull, it’s old hat. The spirit of transgression requires a heightened type of assault on morality, and therefore every kind of perversion is brought into these groups and practiced. And for them the spirit of transgression requires that they assail every kind of law. If they had rules for their groups a year ago, those rules must be broken today because the moment is everything, the totally uninfluenced existentialist moment. The past can have no boundaries on the present, no fences against man, the moment is everything.

And of course we see this exaltation of the moment, together with the spirit of transgression in every area. Thus, not too long ago Andre Voznesensky, the leading present-day Soviet poet, was interviewed when he visited the West. And he was asked this question: 

“Which Russian poet of the last 40 years has influenced you most?” 

In other words, which previous Soviet writer or poet has most influenced you? At that he made a face and he answered: 

“What a question! Being influenced by old poets is like being in love with your grandmother.” ^v

In other words, not even the Soviet past could have any influence; the moment only, the total spirit of transgression. The rootless man is thus in terms of this temper, this faith, the redeemed man. On the contrary however, righteousness has roots, it is grounded in God’s Law and moves in terms of redemptive history; past, present and future.

Righteousness is thus the enemy of religious sexuality, of the religion of sex. Whereas evil progressively becomes more and more rootless, more and more heedless, more and more filled with a spirit of transgression and total obedience to the moment, and it becomes pure and holy to the degree that it transgresses in terms of the moment only.

For example, in one of the far-out ultra-modern writers, extremely popular and regarded virtually as a classic in the Now generation, a character states, and this character has a woman, a young woman as prisoner and is about to subject her to every kind of depravity. And she says, “But why? You don’t even know me. Why would you want to do this?”  And his answer: 

“…be not so naive as to believe that cruelty and violence must necessarily be motivated! The malicious act, set apart from the commonplace, lackluster treadmill of goal-oriented drives, attains a certain purity of its own being.” ^vi

Now there in capital form is a definition of the spirit of transgression in terms of the moment only. The enemy is the goal-directed person, the person who has to have a motive for things, particularly a righteous motive. In fact, if you do something against someone because you dislike him, you’re a square too. The whole point is the spirit of transgression for the sake of evil, then it is pure and holy.

And of course, then it is redemptive. There is a film downtown, named “Teorema” which is a religious expression of this faith. In this film “Teorema,” a stranger visits, it is an Italian film, an industrialist. In no time at all this stranger has relations with the mother and the daughter and the maid, and with the son and with the father, then he leaves. The father becomes a homosexual roaming the streets naked, the mother an immoral tramp, the son seeks escape in impressionistic art, the daughter goes insane, and the maid becomes a religious hermit. Incidentally, this film was labeled as obscene by the Italian government, but it was given a medal by the Catholic church. But there was so much criticism that they had to withdraw the medal.

Now, Dale Monroe’s movie review in the Herald Examiner, says of this film:

“What meaning can be found in all this? Is the stranger supposed to be God, the devil, or neither one. Are these people so depraved that when their artificial bourgeois existence is stripped away they have nothing left but madness?” ^vii

Now, of course this review, which was very favorable, got the point of the book; this stranger you could take as either God or the devil. Because from the standpoint of this new faith, there is no discernible difference between the two. Ultimacy and morality are held to be incompatible and therefore if there is a God or if there is a devil, and if this stranger is either one, it is his duty to rob men of their artificial bourgeois existence, that is, of their belief in a moral law, of a belief that there is a distinction between good and evil. You must fill them with a spirit of transgression, and the message is if you refuse this, you are damned, but if you accept this destruction, you are redeemed.

And of course another film which again is downtown and has been for months and equally depraved, “I Am Curious (Yellow),” has as its point that true religion and true freedom means the total defiance of God and authority. And that this defiance must be expressed sexually.

Now we begin to see the point, do we not, of St. Paul’s statement. We don’t have to take St. Paul’s statement in faith, it is a fact that is underscored all around us; that apostasy leads to immorality, and this immorality then turns into perversity and perversion, and that this is the burning out of man. We shall deal with that passage subsequently, but in the Greek the words are very clear, it speaks of this as the burning out. Because such men forsake God, God forsakes them. They exchange the truth of God for a lie, this lie meaning a false god. The humanist rebels against God to exalt himself, and God's judgement is that his acts lead to dishonoring himself. He seeks to glorify and honor his body, but instead he dishonors it publicly.

This, then, is the outcome of his apostasy. There is, with all apostasy, this inescapable relationship between sex and their religious faith. 

“Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.”

St. Paul’s statement is being demonstrated about us every day, as men glorify the moment and the spirit of transgression and move to their own destruction.

Let us pray.

* * *

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee that thou hast called us out of the darkness of this world, into the light of Jesus Christ. And we thank thee, our Father, that thou hast given us a lively hope, that we should not fear nor be afraid nor disturbed, but trusting in thee, move in the confidence of victory. We thank thee, our God, that thy judgement on evil is sure, and in this faith we await, O Lord, thy judgement upon the ungodly, and thy deliverance of thy people. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Are there any questions now, first of all with respect to our lesson? Yes.

Yes?

[Audience Member] I have heard it said that there have been more wars under Christianity than under any other group. How would you respond to that charge, Dr. Rushdoony?

[Rushdoony] Yes, this is all part of the same trend, that there have been more wars under Christianity than under any group and so on, and this is ridiculous. Very much the reverse is true; sinful man’s history has been one of continual bloodshed and lawlessness. And Christianity has brought such law and order as there is. When you go, say, to Asia, if you are going to see ruins of the past, usually those ruins are where the desert has overwhelmed them or for some religious reason they have been protected; otherwise they are destroyed by the continual warfares and destruction. But you can go through Europe, and until recently you could see churches and buildings and castles and homes that went back a thousand years, twelve hundred years, and longer. Their destruction began with the rise of modern apostasy. The French Revolution began a fearful destruction in France of an almost unbelievable sort, and since then with our wars, which are not under the influence of Christianity but of humanism, we have destroyed in a way the past did not destroy. So there was an element of civility and order, of continuity in Europe, for untold centuries.

Yes?

[Audience Member] Is Europe still Christian? ^viii

[Rushdoony] No. We are in the age of humanism, and since the beginning of this century especially, humanism has been the dominant force in the policies of nations. They are not even bothered by Christian scruples.

Yes?

[Audience Member] These rebels know very well that there is a God.

[Rushdoony] That is very true, it is in a sense a witness to God. I was talking yesterday to a mother whose daughter, just nineteen, turned hippy and has gone the whole route, narcotics and everything else, and she said, because she talks not only to the girl but a lot of the young men that have been associated with her and other girls, she said:

“They know there is a God, but they just avoid Him.” 

And we could add, with a spirit of transgression they declare war on Him. But in their hearts they know He is out there.

Yes?

[Audience Member] How do I talk to my friend who is hardened to the gospel? ^ix

[Rushdoony] All you can do is to make your witness and then go your way because you yourself cannot save such a person, only God can. And of course, as Ezekiel made clear, once he had stated what God had ordered him to say he was innocent of their blood, and that was it. They had heard, he had no further obligation. And sometimes we make the mistake of feeling, after we have stated our position and tried to do what we can, we have to hang on because they are children, or they are someone we know and love. There is no point in tearing ourselves apart in such a case. You make your witness once, and then God says, “You are through, you have done your duty.” But you have to do it once.

Yes? 

[Audience Member] Do you know about the ‘Ranters,’ Dr. Rushdoony?

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes, the Ranters were an antinomian group of somewhat you might say ‘Pentecostal’ activities, but they were antinomian.

[Audience Member] Didn’t the French tear down their own buildings? ^x

[Rushdoony] Yes, first of all, they built them and they destroyed them. The Bastille was destroyed by the mobs of Paris who were directed by professional revolutionists and agitators. There were only a handful of prisoners in the Bastille, I think there were half a dozen to a dozen at the most. Some of them were very well treated, they could have servants, they could have meals sent in and so on. The myth has been created about the Bastille as a place of fearful torture and so on. One of the prisoners they released was the Marquis de Sade, one of the great degenerates of all time, and they made him, of course, an official of the revolution. But then they had to imprison him afterwards. And when you compare the handful of people in the Bastille with all who were executed, millions upon millions, and a continual procession to the guillotine, the previous order was a very, very mild one. They were complaining about taxation in the previous order, and today we would turn cartwheels if we had taxes comparable to those under the Bourbon Kings. And the revolution imposed taxes that made that of the kings look like penny ante stuff.

Yes?

[Audience Member] Should we just be loving these people? ^xi

[Rushdoony] Yes, well, it wasn’t an accident that we have the Bible reading that we did today, Psalm 149 is very plain spoken. And it reads that: 

Let the saints be joyful in glory:

Let them sing aloud upon their beds.

Let the high praises of God be in their mouth,

And a twoedged sword in their hand;

To execute vengeance upon the heathen,

And punishments upon the people;

To bind their kings with chains,

And their nobles with fetters of iron;

To execute upon them the judgment written:

This honour have all his saints.

Praise ye the Lord.

Psalm 149:5–9.

Now that is plain speaking. This is the destiny of God's people, they are in due time going to bring judgement upon these people, and it is an honor.

[Audience Member] But weren’t the kings of France a bad lot? ^xii

[Rushdoony] Now, we can criticize for example, Louis the XVI, and Louis XIV, and Louis XV, and I certainly, if I chose to, could do so. Their concept of Christianity was from my position defective, but they were Christian monarchs, for all their weaknesses. And they did seek earnestly and jealously to do justice to their realm. The worst of the evils they committed was mild compared to what the revolutionary regime has done since. Not all the people killed by all previous regimes of history can equal, what, say, the Marxist regimes have done in the past fifty years, there is no comparison, it has been wholesale.

So that, they have no argument, it is total hypocrisy on their part to go back, as they do, and try to dig up this episode or that episode out of history and paint the nasty picture they do of this or that monarch or country. It is easy to do so; there has been no perfect order, and some of them have been very frail and faulty. But there was a movement forward, and today the movement is certainly not forward, it is back to the most vicious kind of barbarism.

Yes?

[Audience Member] I have heard that Polynesians were a peace loving and cultured people. ^xiii

[Rushdoony] Yes. The life of the people and the Polynesians was one of incredible depravity. They were treated like slaves, which they were. Most all the Polynesian peoples and the Maoris in the South Pacific, in New Zealand and elsewhere, were cannibals among other things. Their life has been glamorized as though they lived in a very fine, idyllic kind of world before the white man went there. The original documents of this indicate nothing of the sort, nothing of the sort. In fact, they give a very, very ugly picture of what they were. 

Also we have some of the early photographs from over a century ago of some of these natives, and they were not the beautiful natives that you see portrayed now; they represent the modern native girls who are singled out as such beauties and whose pictures you see, cross-breeding and so on and modern standards. But some of the earliest photographs of the natives of the South Pacific would turn your stomach. They were anything but an idyllic people, they were barbarians, barbarous, savage, vicious.

One of the earliest books written idealizing them was by Melville, but Melville got out just in time, and admits it, or he would have ended up in the pot. So the picture is a very, very false one. 

There are a couple of books that begin to tell the truth about them, both by liberals, one by doctor, himself a native, who has become a distinguished anthropologist; I believe he has died recently. There is a museum dedicated to him in Hawaii. Then Furnas, J.C. Furnas, who has written The Road to Harpers Ferry and other such books, has one on the South Seas in which he does tell more than a few home truths. But the best way to find out is to go back to some of the accounts of the first men who landed in that area. It is quite a startling account.

Yes? 

[Audience Member] I had heard that the Hawaii islanders were a most enlightened people. ^xiv

[Rushdoony] No, definitely not, definitely not. They have been highly idealized, but their background was one of incredible depravity, and an extremely low and primitive culture. And they were so savagely abused by their monarchs, who were regarded as gods, that it is unbelievable, unbelievable the way they were abused and mistreated, killed wholesale, had to stretch out to be walked on when the chief would walk so their feet wouldn’t touch the ground. Why, not even the wildest white man who ever hit the South Pacific dreamed up the ways to abuse those people as their own leaders were doing. But to hear modern writers tell you the story of Hawaii’s history and so on, it was a paradise until we landed. 

Well, our time is up, but I would like to remind you of the Chalcedon seminar for college and university students and college-age youth on Saturday August the 16th, from 9:45 to 4:30 p.m., and we would appreciate it if you would pass this on to any college-age students that you know, or college age youth. Gary North and myself will be the speakers. 

There are some copies of the announcement sheet available for those who would like to have some. 

We are adjourned.

i. John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959), I, 43.

ii. Georges Bataille and Mary Dalwood. Erotism, Death & Sensuality. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1986, pp. 117-118.

iii. Georges Bataille and Mary Dalwood. Erotism, Death & Sensuality. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1986, pp. 117-120.

iv. B.Z. Goldberg. The Sacred Fire The Story Of Sex In Religion. Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Company, Inc., 1930, 59,60.

v. Elizabeth Sutherland, “Interview with Andrei Voznesensky,” Barney Rosset, editor, Evergreen Review Reader, 1957–1967 (New York: Grove Press, inc., 1968), p. 540.

vi. Michael O’Donoghue, “The Adventures of Phoebe Leit-Geist, Episode X,” in Evergreen Review Reader, opposite p. 473.

vii. Dale Monroe, “Movie Review: Enigmatic ‘Teorema,’ ” in Los Angeles Herald Examiner, Friday, May 23, 1969, p. C–1.

viii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

ix.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

x.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

xi.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

xii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

xiii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

xiv.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.