Pornography, Nadia Bolz-Weber

Nadia Bolz-Weber on Pornography as Part of Sexual Flourishing

on November 7, 2018

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) celebrity Nadia Bolz-Weber is on a crusade to combat the church’s “misogynistic interpretations of  Scripture” and “the fear of sex stuff that came into Christianity.” That includes easing the Church’s moral objections to pornography, apparently.

Last week, Dan Skogen over at Exposing the ELCA blog highlighted several controversial statements on pornography and sex made by the Lutheran Pastrix during an October 21 interview with Out in Jersey, an LGBTQ digital publication.

Here is an excerpt of the interview:

OIJ: Let’s talk about sex! A big part of our “coming out” as a community has been a label of sexual deviancy given to us by Evangelicals. Tell us about pleasure.

Nadia Bolz-Weber: Pleasure is a complicated thing for human beings because it’s easy to fall off one or the other side of the spectrum. Either we’re over indulging to obesity, or we’re eating elimination diets where four foods are pure enough to consume. We restrict or indulge in ways that are equally harmful.

A chapter I rewrote many times in my new book was about pleasure and pornography. I refused to pick the low-hanging “Moral Outrage Fruit” of Liberals and Conservatives about porn. Now, there are issues of justice and exploitation within the porn industry, no question, but it doesn’t mean consumption of pornography should be shamed. There is ethically sourced porn. There are people who say it’s sexual immorality, but if you take Liberals and Conservatives who show outrage and made a Venn diagram of those who consume pornography, you’d see a huge overlap.

And:

NBW: There are people who consume pornography in a shame-based way, it would be horrible if people know because they are those who are morally outraged as Liberals or Conservatives. That’s a lonely place to exist, let’s take that part out of it. I’m not going to shame people when they already feel ashamed. People have viewed erotic imagery since we could scratch it on the inside of caves. To see erotic images or hear someone in the cave next to you, your body reacts as an empathic response. We respond empathetically when we hear a baby crying! Our bodies are wired to have empathic responses to others, and it includes erotic ones. To say you should have shame for that is problematic. If we took shame out of the fact that people like to view erotic imagery, the compulsive behavior around consuming pornography would decrease.

Sure, it is unhelpful to heap further shame on those who already feel unashamed for their actions. A better option is to point them towards the mercy and justification offered by Jesus Christ. Bolz-Weber and I could agree here if that was the point she made. But it was not. Shortly after her above comments, Bolz-Weber states, “If the teachings of the church are harming people, then we need to rethink those teachings.” 

Herein lies the nexus of Bolz-Weber’s problematic theology.  If people don’t like the church’s traditional sexual ethics, then change them. Add pornography to the list alongside of same-sex marriage, transgenderism, and abortion. Bolz-Weber and her colleagues on the left found the church’s traditional moral teachings on each of these “harmful.” So they changed them.

The sad irony is that Bolz-Weber fails to acknowledge the harm done by pornography. She makes sure to nod towards the porn industry’s dehumanizing exploitation and makes the ridiculous “ethically sourced” comment (how do you ensure ethically-sourced porn?) But why doesn’t she acknowledge pornography’s harmful effects on sexual intimacy between husbands and wives?  What about the unrealistic depictions and expectations that cause spouses feelings of inferiority and rejection? Or what about Jesus’s warning that “whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart“? 

“All have sinned and fall short of God’s glory. We understand that,” shared Dr. Derryck Green, a Christian thought leader and faculty member at Prager University. “However, I part ways on her approach to resolving this issue. When Jesus met people where they were, he didn’t assure them the sin in their lives was acceptable. He called them to higher spiritual and moral standards of living by charging them to leave sin alone.”

Green continued, “I don’t think Bolz-Weber is alone in attempting to steward people with respect to this issue. Eroticism, gratification, lust, and the idolatry of objectification associated with porn can’t be overcome despite the social makeover by calling it ‘ethical.’”

By the end of Bolz-Weber’s interview, you realize she is promoting her forthcoming book Shameless: A Sexual Reformation. The book’s purpose, according to her, is “calling out harm that’s been done to people as a result of what the church has taught them about sex, body, and gender.”

“You can draw a straight f**king line from what people were told in church and the harm in their lives,” she claims. “I’m also instigating an art project where women mail me their purity rings. They’ll be melted into a sculpture of a vagina.”

Sexual sin is harmful to our souls. The bottom line here is that Bolz-Weber is overlooking the sexual sin in people’s lives and that is damaging and ultimately separating them from God. As a professing Christian witness, her job is to help people recognize and lay down their sins at the cross of Christ. Anything else is irresponsible, unloving, and harmful.

 

  1. Comment by Myron Miller on November 8, 2018 at 8:04 am

    Wait, wait; are you saying that two people who love each other, wish to commit to each other exclusively, and consate that commitment with the tenderness of sexual intimacy would be sinning? Odd to put it that way, isn’t, since the author of the letter to the Hebrews has a different perspective on this, right?

  2. Comment by Loren Golden on November 8, 2018 at 10:55 pm

    “Are you saying that two people who love each other, wish to commit to each other exclusively, and (consummate) that commitment with the tenderness of sexual intimacy would be sinning?”
     
    If the “two people” are of the same gender, or if they engage in the act of consummation irrespective of the commitment of marriage, then, according to the Biblical definition, yes.

    “Odd to put it that way, isn’t, since the author of the letter to the Hebrews has a different perspective on this, right?”
     
    No, he did not.  He said, “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.” (Heb. 13.4)  Any “commitment”, other than lifelong heterosexual marriage, that is “consummated” by sexual intercourse, or any engagement in sexual intercourse outside the bonds of lifelong heterosexual marriage, is by definition adulterous and/or sexually immoral, and therefore defiles the marriage bed.

  3. Comment by Nick Stuart on November 8, 2018 at 5:43 pm

    Ever notice that crazy liberal clergy look about what you would imagine they would look like? It’s like we’re living inside a Chick tract.

  4. Comment by Steve on November 8, 2018 at 5:58 pm

    I have warned repeatedly that sexual obsession is a sign of idolatry from Romans 1. This lady is promoting idolatry by worshiping any false God other than the real.

  5. Comment by Loren Golden on November 8, 2018 at 11:04 pm

    “But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols.  I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality.  Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works, and I will strike her children dead.  And all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you as your works deserve.” (Rev. 2.20-23)
     
    “What has been is what will be,
    and what has been done is what will be done,
    and there is nothing new under the sun.
    Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See, this is new’?
    It has been already
    in the ages before us.
    There is no remembrance of former things,
    nor will there be any remembrance
    of later things yet to be
    among those who come after. …
    “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; all is vanity.” (Eccl. 1.9-11, 12.8)

  6. Comment by Walter Pryor on November 19, 2018 at 5:21 pm

    The reason we are having such dissension and conflict right now in the church is this; God is polarizing the World into two camps. Those who know and love God. Those who are seeking and growing in God and all other people on Earth.
    These so-called clergies do not know or fear God. This is the result of preaching love, feelings, and tolerance for decades and never preaching obedience!

  7. Comment by matt on November 19, 2018 at 6:02 pm

    well spoken

  8. Comment by Donald on November 20, 2018 at 4:46 pm

    I don’t think “God” is “polarizing” us into two camps. We humans have been doing that fairly well for about the last 3,000,000 years.

  9. Comment by Donald on November 20, 2018 at 4:48 pm

    I wonder why all these other Legacy Denominations, the ELCA among them, continue to race each other to see who can get below 1,000,000 members first. The Disciples of Christ have already won that race. I can’t imagine the other six of the Seven Sisters will be content with second place.
    Maybe this is the ELCA’s effort to get a lock on 2nd Place?

  10. Comment by Rebecca on November 20, 2018 at 12:16 am

    And no one in the ECLA has a problem with her. Whatever happened to excommunication? Where’s the shame? Where’s this woman’s conscience?

  11. Comment by Loren Golden on November 20, 2018 at 2:24 pm

    None of the so-called “Mainline” Protestant denominations practice excommunication anymore, nor have they had any heresy trials for years.
     
    One of the last heresy trials was in 1981, against Mansfield Kaseman, who had been approved by National Capital Union Presbytery to serve a small church in Maryland, despite his denial of the Deity, Sinlessness, Substitutionary Atonement, and Bodily Resurrection of Christ.  Charges were brought up against him, and his case went all the way to the Permanent Judicial Commission of the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the USA, which essentially acquitted him, stating that each presbytery in the denomination is free to ordain whomsoever it wishes, even if the ordinand is a rank heretic like Kaseman.
     
    No, the ELCA won’t excommunicate, censure, or discipline Bolz-Weber for her heresy.  Neither they, nor any of the other formerly “Mainline” Protestant denominations that have given themselves over to sexual immorality and idolatry have the backbone to do so.

  12. Comment by Jay Haug on November 20, 2018 at 7:11 am

    The oldest and most enduring “religion” in the world is the attempt to combine lust and spirituality. It takes a thousand forms and but always ends up in the same place.

  13. Comment by David Gingrich on November 20, 2018 at 9:01 am

    I love to listen to Nadia. She is so smart and so interesting. Unfortunately, I fear she is also very ignorant of evil and inclined to write her own “scripture”.

  14. Comment by Grevile Constant line on November 21, 2018 at 2:52 pm

    I agree that shame of the Natural order of the sexual act should not be hanged on the head of any or all believers who choose to enjoy being sexual and enjoy having sex. However, the danger is that the line between sex worship and sex intimacy is being blurred and many Protestant clergy are teaching that having sex very often, encouraging perversions in participation in Gay, bisexual, and multi partner orgies is now considered ” Spiritual “. Jesus warned against Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, and I fear this is what is happening in the modern Evangelical churches.

  15. Comment by The Platypus on January 14, 2019 at 6:47 pm

    I get it. the commenters herewant to smugly attack this pastor for stating the truth that church dogma abqt sex DOES HURT people. They cons
    ole
    themse]lves byelling each other that anyone who challenges the status quo like this pstor has done must just not know scripture… or ignores it. Well here is a Baptist raised guy who is ready to take Pastor’s side and meet you head on. To put it bluntly, you are not “pro” God. you’re just anti sex. in whatever form it
    takes… marriage or no.

    Case in point: My wife used to work for Family Chrpistian bookstores. I would join her after hours while she tidied the store, rang up the credit purchases, etc. so I could walk her safely to her car. I perused lots of books in those times. One night I was reading a childrens’ concordance and it did a good job explaining “a
    “atonement” for sin. Not an easy concept. I read another couple excellent entries…each handled well in language a young person could understand. On a whim I looked up “circumcision” to see what the book would say. No entry. Just blank before the word “cistern.”

    Now, God ordained this as a sign of the covenant. It was a command. Strong’s lists the word occuring 60 times in scripture. The word “cistern” appears about five. Why avoid the word? Can’t have Johnny nd Suzie ead the word “penis.” Command of God or not. Several other kid Bibl8e dictionaries avoided topic too. The one t
    that did define it said it was merely a ceremony pekrformed on Jewish males wkithout elaboration.

    What message does this send? The posteprs on this site know and they like things just as they are.

    Whe
    n was the last tme you heard a reading from Song of Solomon aloud in church? It’s not about what God says. It’s about shaming…something this Pastor’s trying to end.

  16. Comment by Charla on February 20, 2019 at 4:45 pm

    Please! READ what she says. I am 100% for removing shame from the loving act of human creation. However, she CELEBRATES her sin. When I first heard Nadia Bolz-Weber, I was intrigued. She was different and reached out to people otherwise shunned. But after a few months the new wore off, and she simply went full-tilt into-the-wall nuts. She is the “shock jock” of today’s Christianity and all of her talk about God wanting us to experience sexual fulfillment is no better than those pandering the “prosperity gospel”. Her talks are even more filthy than the Daily Wire portrays. If a male pastor divorced his wife because “the sex wasn’t good enough” and bragged about how the incredible sex with his new girlfriend brought him to new “enlightenment”, he would be tarred and feathered and condemned by all (and rightfully so)… but for today’s America, they’re not only considered acceptable, her brash and filthy spewings are celebrated. Pardon the offensive language (all hers), but if you’d care to learn more just take a look at her interview here: https://www.exposingtheelca.com/exposed-blog/famous-elca-pastor-talks-of-sex-with-boyfriend-writes-book-rejecting-sex-reserved-for-marriage

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