and again...

Lurking underneath the romanticized eros is a certain individualism, and, indeed, almost all of today's marriage guides frame marriage strictly as an individual project. The marriages that emerge from the pages of these books are marriages of two people who rarely engage their communities. Marriage is figured as something that is undertaken by, and that serves, only the husband and wife. None of the books' rules, guidelines, or suggestions urge couples to understand marriage in the context of the communities to which they are committed.

Consider, for example, the Blooms' endorsement of fidelity: Having enjoined married couples, "If you chose monogamy, keep your agreement," the Blooms go on to suggest that "Ultimately the question of monogamy … [is] a matter of enlightened self-interest. Keeping the agreement to monogamy provides a container within which we are able to experience greater depth and fulfillment in our marriage and greater levels of self-awareness and self-development." Fidelity, then, is not a social good; it is not a discipline that fosters goodness; it neither draws on nor offers anything to neighbors. It is merely good for the folks practicing it; it helps them attain self-fulfillment.

Even Judith Wallerstein, who aims to shore up good marriages and prevent divorce, seems to assume that marriage begins and ends with the couple. None of the nine tasks she lays out for married couples put husbands and wives in relation to a larger community. Her married people don't even seem to have friends. They have each other, and some kids; that's where their community begins and ends.

And, yet, marriage is meant to be communal as well as couple-centered both in its means and its meanings. At the most practical level, it is our friends, our brothers and sisters in the church, our aunts and uncles and colleagues, who can remind us why we got married in the first place. It is this community that, when we lay our marriages bare before them, are able to hold us accountable, and also celebrate with us. This is what the Book of Common Prayer's Order of Marriage is getting at when it prompts the celebrant to ask the congregation if "all of you witnessing these promises [will] do all in your power to uphold these two persons in their marriage?" The congregation's response is a hearty "We will." If we Christians want to get our divorce rates down below the national average, rendering our marriages visible to our communities—opening ourselves up to our friends' support, prayers, questions, and rebuke—would be a good place to start.

But recalling the communal dimension of marriage is not merely a strategy for sticking it out and navigating the rough patches. It is rather an assertion of God's purposes for marriage. Our surrounding society tells us that marriage is a private endeavor, that what happens between husband and wife behind closed doors is no one else's concern. But in the Christian grammar, marriage is not only for the married couple. Insofar as marriage tells the Christian community a particular story, marriage is for the community. It reminds us of the communion and community that is possible between and among people who have been made new creatures in Christ. And it hints at the eschatological union between Christ and the Church. As Catholic ethicist Julie Hanlon Rubio has put it, "marriage consists not simply or even primarily of a personal relationship. Rather, it crystallizes the love of the larger church community. The couple is not just two-in-one, but two together within the whole, with specific responsibility for the whole. … They must persevere in love, because the community needs to see God's love actualized among God's people."

The inflections of community are important because they get at the very meanings of marriage. Marriage is a gift God gives the church. He does not simply give it to the married people of the church, but to the whole church, just as marriage is designed not only for the benefit of the married couple. It is designed to tell a story to the entire church, a story about God's own love and fidelity to us.

:)

and this one:

Q: Real Sex is written most specifically for those with what you call "articulated Christian ethics." What do you think readers who don't share that same perspective can take away from your discussion of chastity?

A: I wrote the book, as you say, envisioning a primarily Christian audience. In fact, I turned down offers from "secular," New York publishing houses (which most of my friends and colleagues thought was nuts) because I knew that what I wanted to do, primarily, was shake up a Christian conversation -- not convert the secular world to Christian sexual ethics.

The point I like to raise when speaking to audiences not primarily made up of Christians is: Since the sexual revolution, we've been living in America with a cultural norm that accepts premarital sex as normal, good, even normative. (I.e. If you're not having premarital sex, you must be weird, repressed, etc.) I believe this culture of premarital sex has affected how all of us -- Christian or non-Christian, whether we've had premarital sex or not -- understands what good sex is.

As I say in the book, "the sex of blind dates and fraternity parties, even of relatively long-standing dating relationships, has, simply, no normal qualities. It is based on mutual desire, and it dispenses with the ordinary rhythms of marital sex, trading them for a seemingly thrilling but ultimately false story. This may be the way that the sin of premarital sex sticks with us most lastingly; it may be the twisted lesson it teaches us most convincingly: that sex is exciting. That sex derives its thrill from instability and drama.

"In fact, the opposite is true: the dramas of married sex are smaller and more intimate, and indeed it is the stability of marriage that allows sex to be what it is."

I think the absurdities of the sexual revolution have become so absurd -- 14-year-olds having rainbow parties -- that people who in general think premarital sex is fine are beginning to see some of the negative effects of the sexual license in our current society. In other words, you don't have to be religious to wish your teenage son or daughter wasn't out having random sex with a bunch of different people. These excesses, I think, mean that Christians and non-Christians may be able to come together to talk about sexuality and sexual ethics in a way we haven't much done over the last 30 years.

finally:

Sex Is Not Private

In the chapter entitled “Communal Sex (Or Why Your Neighbor Has Any Business Asking You What You Did Last Night),” Winner prescribes a biblical approach to addressing the needs singles are mentioning. And the Church is called to be very much involved.

“I was trying to suggest that here we live in this hyper-individualized society and we really have in America this pervasive notion that what I do with my body is really no one’s business as long as I’m not hurting anyone; this is really a private decision. Even the Church has absorbed that radical individualism. This myth of individualism and the idea that my body and what I do with it is my own business really underlies almost everything else that we think and do about sex."

“Also, Paul is pretty clear about this … that in Christianity, the individual is not the unit of ethical meaning. The community and the Body of Christ—all of our Christian metaphors are communal. We are the Body of Christ … so, I think this is one of the places where Christianity has something to offer the surrounding society—an alternate understanding that sex is not individualistic, that it is rather deeply communal.”

This understanding, says Winner, is for both married and single people alike.

“The purposes of marriage in the Christian story are communal purposes. In other words, God gave us marriage not simply so that my husband and I can enjoy each other’s company forever, but also because our marriage and everyone else’s marriage tells a story to the broader community about faithfulness and loyalty, and I think that’s part of why the New Testament so often uses marriage as an analogy in explaining Christ’s relationship to the church."

“Singleness, I think, also tells a story, a story to the Church, a story about dependence on God, and also a story about the eschatological moment wherein there will be a wedding feast between Christ and his Church, but an eschatological moment when I won’t be married to Griff. I will instead be in the fullest way possible his sister.”