ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a relationship between spirituality and sexuality. In Christian terms, spirituality is the whole of life viewed in terms of a fundamental relationship with God, in Jesus Christ, through the indwelling of the Spirit and within the community of believers. Such a definition calls into question the classical dichotomies that have characterised conceptions of spirituality in the past and which make it difficult to understand sexuality as a spiritual issue in any deep sense. The historical origins of Christianity's traditional problems with the body, passion and sexuality are complex. For much of the Christian era the perceived precondition of a profound spirituality has been the absence of sexual activity and this has become associated with spirituality as a power system built on a theology of hierarchy and exclusions. Sexuality is about more than cementing stable families and reproducing the human race.
