Perhaps many men in ministry have been bad lovers. I don’t know. But neither do you. Through the years, I’ve learned that plenty of couples have good sex lives and never share about that with anyone. Why would they?

J –Respectfully disagree. It takes a unique individual to be able to preach regularly against sexual immorality and also promote a vibrant sex life. Historically, men in the ministry had a bad reputation as lovers. John Wesley dragged his wife by the hair. Just out of high school I attended an almost exclusively all-male technical college. One of our instructors was also attending seminary to be a minister. One day a student openly asked him what he thought of oral sex. He made the whole class burst into laughter when he grimaced and said “yuk, that’s dirty!”

Look, I agree that the Church has done poorly in many ways—I’ve talked about that plenty—but the idea that the Church has been uniquely wrong about sex just doesn’t bear up under historical scrutiny.

Your last sentence pretty much sums up…
And oftentimes, the best sex research we can conduct is in our own bedroom, with our own beloved, studying one another and figuring out how to nurture a physical, emotional, and even spiritual connection there.

Porn will always give a skewed view of sex.

I LOVED my statistics course in grad school. It was really interesting and enlightening.

Well said.👍

To be more specific a quote from a book:

“Mrs. R, described as a short, stout, recently widowed 20 year old woman with a lively disposition came to Dr. Bostwick out of desperation. She explained, “If I can’t be relieved of this agonizing condition, I am certain that the struggle between my moral sense and lascivious longings must soon send me to the grave.”

In this 19th Century example, the woman was considered a Nymphomaniac. St. Paul would simply affirm her desires and recommend marriage as a means of lawfully fulfilling them. He never says her desires are wrong or suggests she try to rid herself of them. This would be thought normal for a man. She would be considered a slut.

The Church has largely propagated this.

Agreed!

I agree with you that many Christian have been inhibited by Scriptural assumptions that are untrue. However, as it pertains to “nymphomania,” attributing some type of manic behavior to a woman’s reproductive organs is not restricted to Christianity by any means. In fact, all the way back to 2nd Century Greece, physicians blamed the uterus and women’s sexuality for various illnesses, including “hysteria.” Soranus of Ephesus went so far as to suggest that women’s natural state was virginity, with interruptions for the sake of bearing children, of course.

Throughout history, the pendulum swung back and forth on women’s sexuality, but it was definitely at a height of restriction during the Victorian era. That era also happens to be when the Christian faith was perhaps most prevalent throughout Western society, so culture and faith converged yet again. And yes, many of those viewpoints have continued. But I don’t believe “nymphomania” is a faith-based concept. It’s just been used in too many cultures and times to be able to point the finger solely at Christianity.

I would add that many Christian women are inhibited by Scriptural assumptions that have been birthed from the imaginations of men, therefore all aspects of sex or studies are approached from these prior assumptions that were designed by men to limit and control women’s sexual pleasure. A simple illustration is the word “Nymphomaniac.”