Chapter 6 of Jake Meador's "What Are Christians For?" (my observations here) marked the transition from diagnosis to prescription. From the social practices that have landed American culture in its current state of disarray to positive changes that could and should characterize the lives of Christians. Meador in Chapter 7 discussed recharacterizing human relationships with the natural order, earth and animals. In my opinion, this chapter offered little substance. By contrast, Chapter 8, A Vision of Christian Belonging: The Household and the Sexual Revolution, is more concrete.
Chapter 8 builds from a discussion of the changes in the social place of the family wrought by industrialization. From what the family household had once been--at its best--a place of "peaceable living, a sort of training ground in the life of peace that equips its members to bring that peaceableness into the world," had during the nineteenth century morphed into a place for sheltering from "the excesses of the world [of heartless markets] outside the home." On Meador's account, the cult of domesticity was not a fable invented by Victorian writers; it was a response to radically changed economic circumstances. (For some of my thoughts on the intersection of industrialization of the workplace and bankruptcy law, you can read The Missing Piece of the Puzzle: Perspectives on the Wage Priority in Bankruptcy (here or here)).
More insightful is Meador's consideration of marriage and the place of sexual intimacy. Tracking Carl Trueman's notion of expressive individualism as it has come to expression in "the triumph of the erotic," Meador observes that in contemporary American society "sex is ultimately a means of self-expression, which is to say it is interpreted as being chiefly for the individual." (And chiefly the male individual.) Contrastingly, "Christianity says that what we desire in sex is not merely pleasure or a personal experience of satisfaction, but something deeper. We desire union with another person." And so, we hope, the other with us. The personal and procreative should be oriented toward the mutual and unitive.
But that's not the all of it. "Like all good things, we do not want our union to end, and so we come to the role of children within the life of the household. The best way to think about the role of children in a marriage is as icons of the couple's love." (Emphasis added.) The scope of the initial unitive community can grow. "The intimacy that calls forth new life ... [also] creates a place of trust, safety, and homeliness." This is explains why, "according to Christianity, marriage must be between a man and a woman." Granting the good of marriage as unitive mutuality, and granting the natural human desire for persistence in the good, and acknowledging the nature of embodied human life, then it follows that
Marriage must be between a man and a woman; the point of sex is a sacrificial union with another person, and this union is designed to be fruitful. A union that is by design permanently sterile is not able to accomplish this.
But what is to be made of marriages that are involuntarily infertile? For example, is marriage by a post-menopausal woman illicit? Meador is unclear at this point. He points to the good of adoption but fails to elaborate exactly how, on his account, marriage knowingly undertaken when the culmination of sexual activity will never produce a child counts as marriage. While Meador's argument against the same-sex marriage draws support from its necessary infertility, it is not determinative. For a stronger--if recondite--argument see Robert George's discussion here.
Meador is very good on celibacy. In brief, while marriage partakes of the good of creation, celibacy anticipates the greater good of the new creation where, if Jesus is to be believed, there will be no marriage. As Meador elaborates,
By embracing [a commitment to voluntary] chastity, Christians could show the world that there is a greater love than that of a husband and wife ... Chastity testifies to the love of God and the uniquely satisfying pleasure of giving oneself wholly to God's service, which one could do if freed from the obligations of marriage and family life.
Meador make it clear that "both marriage and chastity are true goods" and that neither is superior to the other. Still, the contemporary near-exclusive emphasis on the family among Evangelicals is unbalanced:
If Christians are to offer a credible alternative to the sexual revolution, it will be by presenting a comprehensive vision of Christian belonging that not only discerns the rightful place of the sexual embrace in the lives of human persons but also discerns the heavenly origins of the celibate life for those who are chaste. A Christian rejoinder to the sexual revolution will highlight not only how the revolution degrades the natural but also how it obscures the supernatural.
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