Chapman Classes Seek Spiritual Side of Sex

Professor Kevin O’Brien’s reading list for his new fall class in the English department at Chapman University is not apt to raise any eyebrows: Euripides, Walt Whitman, D.H. Lawrence and Pablo Neruda. The title of his class draws a lot of interest, though: “The Sexual as Spiritual and the Spiritual as Sexual in Literature.”

It’s one of two courses offered at Chapman this fall about sex and spirituality. The other, taught by Professor Joseph Runzo in the religion department, is called “God, the Good Life and Sex.” Students have been clamoring to sign up for the courses, both of which have long waiting lists.

Part of the draw may be the titillating course titles, but O’Brien and Runzo claim that the scholarly nature of their respective syllabi and the sheer amount of required reading will weed out students merely seeking a salacious semester.

In his first class, O’Brien had students read poetry aloud. At first he had no volunteers.

“C’mon,” he teased. “If you’re taking this course, you can’t be that shy.”

Finally, a student read from “Song,” an Allen Ginsberg poem: “The warm bodies shine together in the darkness, the hand moves to the center of the flesh.”

Afterward, students were impressed by the seriousness of their new studies.

“I thought when I signed up for this class that it would be more subversive and controversial than it was last night,” student Amity Westcott of Huntington Beach said of O’Brien’s first class.

The classes will explore the imagery and mythology of sex throughout selected works of literature and in the major world religions. In particular, the professors want to look at the tradition of sex as a gateway for people to experience the divine.

One classroom example: Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” in which he wrote about physical rapture and warned against repression. From section 24: “Divine am I, inside and out.”

“For average mortals, sex is a peak pleasure,” O’Brien said. “When mystics want to talk about the transcendent, the metaphor they use is human sexuality.”

The mystics of various traditions, like William Blake in Christianity and Rumi in Islam, may tap sexual imagery to explore what they consider to be an “enlightened” state, but O’Brien said secular writers, like Lawrence and Whitman, also link sex to spiritual experience.

“Human sexuality is the most powerful bonding human beings have,” he said.

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For students weaned on conservative Christianity, this link between sexuality and divinity can be a problematic area of study.

“The class does make me a little nervous, but that’s why I wanted to tackle it,” said student Shelley Cobb, who works as a chapel assistant at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. “There’s a part of me that’s very conservative and that’s the part that’s nervous.”

But the professors are adamant that they are not advocating sex, but promoting a healthy and reasoned approach to sexuality. The courses, predictably, have their critics.

“It’s promoting immorality,” said David Spady, executive director of the Christian Coalition, a conservative Christian political group. “Sexual immorality is condemned in the Bible as sin and it’s destructive to the individual and society as a whole.”

“A close look at the Song of Songs in the Bible is problematic for a more conservative Christian,” O’Brien said. “It’s intensely erotic and the erotic is perceived as dangerous.”

Higher-ups at Chapman defend the courses.

“People who have grown up . . . in Western culture think that one can’t be a spiritual person and also enjoy and celebrate their sexuality,” said the Rev. Ronald Farmer, dean of the Wallace All Faith Chapel at Chapman University.

“Students have great interest in these two topics today,” he said. “It’s especially intriguing because sometimes they’ve heard that the two don’t mix.”

Runzo said his class doesn’t talk about biological sex, nor does casual sex fit into the course. “The divine human relationship is a love relationship,” he said.

He added that he wants to explore the positive aspects of sexuality instead of dwelling on sexuality’s criminal and abusive margins.

“A typical approach to sexuality is to look at what’s wrong with it,” he said, citing rape, child molestation and domestic violence as examples of sexuality run amok.

For Cobb, the class is a safe environment for her to articulate her own spiritual and sexual life. “No matter what you believe or how you choose to live your life, you should still think about these things,” she said. “This subject could be very tacky or easily offensive, but [O’Brien’s} handling it very well.”

O’Brien and Runzo hope the courses will make students more aware of their own choices; for example, if they choose to abstain, they do so with the clarity of a historical and literary perspective.

The Christian mystic, William Blake, is prominent on O’Brien’s reading list: “He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence,” is from “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.”

“He’s pointing out the cost of repression,” O’Brien said. “What you repress comes out in other places.”

Regardless of his students’ personal decisions about sexuality, O’Brien said he hopes the curriculum helps his students--who find themselves in a region replete with plastic surgery and beauty spas--to view their bodies as sacred.

“I’ve never lived anywhere where there’s such a cult of body-beautiful,” he said. “At the very least, we all need to love what we’ve got.”