Secularisms, sexualities and theology (original) (raw)

Abstract

When we began to conceptualise the introduction to this themed symposium in Sex Education journal our initial instinct was fairly defensive. This came from, upon discussion and reflection, a bit of projection we later came to understand. Some background will be useful: our shared interest in the overlaps between sexuality, secularism, and theology in the field of sexuality education came about, as many collaborations do, at a conference. And the discussions with which we began were rooted in the various obliquely related projects upon which we three were working on, loosely organised around sexuality, gender, queer studies, religion, and education broadly conceived. The so-what for our purposes here, though, comes in the call for the special issue and the attendant response, which is to say the general lack of responsiveness. Theologians we approached demurred from contributing because they saw themselves as not having the requisite expertise related to sexuality education; while colleagues within sexuality education clearly did not share our desire to root around in sexual theology. This is not a completely untrodden path for contributors to the journal, there have been a handful of papers in Sex Education in this space; see for example Lisa Isherwood’s (2004) engagement with feminist liberation theology where she imagines ‘Sex education in a Christian context has the duty of encouraging passionate lovers and justice makers’ (282) through to Alireza Tabatabaie’s (2015) discussion of Islam and adolescent sexuality Islamic traditions in which ‘adolescents are mature enough to distinguish between good and evil and to be liable before God for their religious duties’ (285). Contributors to the journal are keen to discuss religion – there have been no less than 463 articles in the journal that include this term, compared to the 12 (including the contributions to this special issue) – that directly engage with and interrogate theology.

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