When Sex Was Religion

Model 3 incorporates the spousal support and relationship characteristic variables into the model, which were positively associated with pleasure. The effect of social support on pleasure also decreased substantially, but still remained statistically significant. This finding suggests that the effect of social support on pleasure was partially explained by spousal support and relationship happiness and also had a direct effect on sexual pleasure.

The inclusion of spousal support, relationship happiness, and sexual frequency into the equation increased the model fit substantially, confirming that these variables were likely the most proximate and important predictors of sexual pleasure. Table 4 also presents the OLS regression models predicting emotional satisfaction with the sexual relationship. Religious integration was positively associated with emotional satisfaction, although the relationship was not statistically significant. Catholics had lower levels of emotional satisfaction than evangelical Protestants.

Model 3 reveals that the inclusion of spousal support, relationship happiness, and sexual frequency fully explains the effect of social support. This suggests that social support increased relationship quality. Relationship quality then positively impacted emotional satisfaction.

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Again, the addition of the spousal support, relationship happiness, and sexual frequency variables increased the explained variance dramatically, suggesting that these variables remain the most proximate and important predictors of emotional satisfaction. Table 5 presents the percentage breakdowns by religiosity of unmarried adults that had sex in the last year. This table reveals two discernable patterns. First, among both men and women those indicating low levels of attendance and integration were more likely to have had sex within the last year than those with moderate or high levels of religiosity.

Second, the percentage of unmarried men that had sex in the last year was higher among men regardless of religiosity. A higher percentage of men that had high religious attendance or strongly agreed that they carry their religious beliefs into their everyday lives had sex in the last year than did women.

This table suggests that religion shared an inverse relationship with sex in the last year and this relationship was stronger among women. Table 6 presents logistic regressions split by gender among unmarried respondents predicting the likelihood of having had sex in the last year. These models show that for both women and men, having a romantic partner was positively related to the likelihood of having engaged in sex in the last year.

For women, religious integration shares a strong negative relationship with sex in the last year and was not found among men. After taking into account religious attendance and integration and controls , the likelihood of sex in the last year did not vary by religious tradition. In this study we argue that religion provides reference groups that equip individuals with a script to follow that outlines the context in which sex is condoned, encouraged, or proscribed.

The extent to which individuals follow these scripts is largely proportional to their level of religiosity; in other words, the value an individual places on their religion will determine how closely they follow religious sexual scripts. Based on these arguments we made three hypotheses concerning married individuals and three concerning unmarried individuals.

Among married individuals, our first hypothesis stated that high levels of religious integration in daily life will increase frequency of sex, pleasure from sex, and emotional satisfaction from sex. This hypothesis is generally not supported: Although, the positive relationship between religious integration and pleasure from sex provides some support for this hypothesis.

Our second hypothesis stated that the effect of religious integration on all of the sex outcomes of married individuals will be explained by the level of social support an individual perceives. This hypothesis receives some support in regards to pleasure from sex, but none regarding frequency of sex and emotional satisfaction. Our third hypothesis stated that the effect of religious integration will be explained by spousal support and the overall level of perceived happiness in a marriage. This hypothesis is largely unsupported by the data as the inclusion of the spousal support and happiness variables did not significantly decrease the effect of integration on sexual frequency or satisfaction.

This finding may be due to a lack of an association between religious integration and outcomes. Overall, analyses of married older adults show a weak relationship between religiosity and sexual outcomes. Among unmarried individuals, both our fourth and fifth hypotheses were strongly supported by our analyses. Our fourth hypothesis predicted that religiosity was negatively associated with engagement in sexual activity. A simple cross tabulation Table 5 provided evidence that indeed more religious individuals were less likely to engage in sex within the last year.

On further inspection in multivariate models, we found that once demographic and social controls were entered into the models, this inverse relationship only existed among women. We therefore find support for our fifth hypothesis which predicts higher levels of religious integration will have a stronger effect on the likelihood of having sex for women than men. Evangelical Protestants were no more or less likely to have engaged in sex than mainline Protestants or Catholics. We therefore find no support for our sixth hypothesis.

Let’s Talk About Sex (and Religion)

Prior research on religion and sex has focused primarily upon adolescents and to a lesser degree unmarried adults and finds high levels of religiosity to be negatively related to a plethora of sexual outcomes Rostosky et al. This study concludes that religion influences the sex lives of older married adults in another way. Religiously inclined older married individuals tend to have more pleasurable sex than their non-religious counterparts, while religiously inclined unmarried adults tend to have less frequent sex than their non-religious counterparts.

Among unmarried older adults, religion tended to play a similar prohibitive role in regards to sexual activity as it does with young adults. Like young adults, religion tended to have a stronger influence on females than among their male counterparts Crockett et al. These findings are consistent with the world view of many American religious traditions which prohibit sex outside of marriage and accept or even promote it within the marital context. Religious beliefs and the institutions that foster these beliefs tend to affect the sexual behavior of individuals dynamically, depending on their stage in the life course.

Sexual activity continues to be valued by older adults and may improve life satisfaction, marital quality, and general health Yeh et al. Research on the sexual behavior of older adults is in its infancy. We have accentuated the role of religion as one component of social life that impacts sexual behavior and deserves further attention. This study is one of the few to investigate the relationship between religion and sex among older adults and suggests that religion continues to play a large role in shaping the sex lives of older Americans especially, in the decision to abstain from non-marital sex.

Religion becomes more important for adults as they age and sexual relationships remain so, therefore understanding the intersection between these two life domains should not be overlooked.

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Future research in this area should replicate these findings using longitudinal data sets and ensure that the effects of religion on sexually activity are robust across time. This study only used two measures of religiosity to investigate the predictors of sexual activity and satisfaction. Our measure of religious integration in daily life may also be a limitation of this study. While we acknowledge this measure may introduce measurement error, we find it unlikely to be the case. Future research may wish to employ more nuanced versions of religiosity, such as the scales measuring organizational and non-organizational religiosity created by Idler et al.

The results of this study are only applicable to older U. Future work should investigate how the relationship between religion and sexual behavior may vary by generation, country, or culture. For married individuals, this study stressed the importance of prosocial and relationship-value norms effervescent in religious communities as an explanation as to why religious beliefs have an influence on sex outcomes. Future studies may wish to ask whether prosocial norms and social support increases marital quality or if religious individuals tend to have access to and engage formal types of relationship building classes or therapy offered by their church.

This study presents a baseline toward understanding the connection between religion and sexual outcomes among older adults. Due to the categorical nature of the items making up social support, positive spousal support, and negative spousal support, polychoric correlations were used to calculate the alpha values. Supplementary analyses using alternative religious tradition schemas resulted in the same pattern of findings presented here. Supplementary analyses ran all models using ordinal regressions which resulted in the same pattern of findings presented here.

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Author manuscript; available in PMC Mar 1. McFarland , Jeremy E. Uecker , and Mark D. Author information Copyright and License information Disclaimer. Department of Sociology, University of Texas at Austin. See other articles in PMC that cite the published article. Abstract This study assesses the role of religion in influencing sexual frequency and satisfaction among older married adults and sexual activity among older unmarried adults.

Introduction Despite longstanding stereotypes to the contrary, sexual interest remains alive among older adults. Theoretical Framework Sociologist Robert Merton asserts that reference groups provide people with a ready group by which to evaluate their own circumstances, behaviors, and to form new attitudes. Individuals that have higher levels of religious integration will report a higher frequency of sex and higher levels of physical and emotional satisfaction from sex. The effect of religious integration on sexual frequency and satisfaction will be partially explained by social support.

The effect of religious integration on sexual frequency and satisfaction will be partially explained by spousal support and overall happiness of marital relationship. Unmarried people reporting higher levels of religious integration will be less likely to have engaged in sexual activity in the last year.

The proposed inverse relationship between religious integration and likelihood of sexual activity among unmarried people will be much stronger for women compared to men.

Could it be that religion is more like sex than school?

Those affiliated with the evangelical tradition will be less likely to have engaged in sexual activity in the last year than mainline Protestants or Catholics. Dependent Variables Information on the frequency of sex was collected during the in-home interviews. Independent Variables We consider two dimensions of religion: Analytic Strategy Expectations and norms relating to sexual activity are different for married and unmarried individuals in American religious traditions; therefore these analyses will include separate analyses for married and unmarried individuals.

Results The descriptive statistics in Table 1 reveal that the majority of married respondents have engaged in sexual activity at least once in the last year, and they also indicate elevated levels of sexual satisfaction. Open in a separate window. Number of Valid Observations below Correlation Coefficient. Discussion In this study we argue that religion provides reference groups that equip individuals with a script to follow that outlines the context in which sex is condoned, encouraged, or proscribed.

Footnotes Due to the categorical nature of the items making up social support, positive spousal support, and negative spousal support, polychoric correlations were used to calculate the alpha values. The role of private prayer in psychological recovery among midlife and aged patients following cardiac surgery. Religiosity and premarital sex in adulthood.

Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. Beit-Hallahmi B, Argyle M. Taylor and Francis; Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. University of California Press; Religious influence on marital stability. Response bias in assessing sexual behaviors relevant to HIV transmission. Evaluation and Program Planning. Religion, religiosity, and nonmarital sexual conduct: An application of reference group theory.

Timing of first sexual intercourse: The role of social control, social learning, and problem behavior. Now, fewer people need convincing, and we are expanding our focus, publishing more books by and for people in the LGBTQ community. Next year, WJK will publish Unashamed: The daughter of a longtime executive at the ultraconservative Focus on the Family organization, she came out in and was rejected by her family and church.

Unashamed is her guide for those wrestling with questions about how their faith and sexuality can be reconciled and where they can find a welcoming faith community. Discernment for Ministry in the Episcopal Church Church Publishing, out now , with a foreword by Mary Glasspool, shows how the Episcopal Church has been a leader in opening up ordination to holy orders for partnered gay and lesbian members.

As a result, many gay and lesbian churchgoers are considering an option for religious involvement that was formerly unattainable. The book focuses on the practice of discernment: One of the large mainline denominations still bars openly gay people from ministry. Christians on both sides of debates about sexuality can find scriptures that support their theology. The memoir he wrote with his mother, Out of a Far Country: Countering cultural trends, Yuan offers advice for Christians who experience same-sex attraction and encourages Christians to reach out to LGBTQ communities.

Gurney, a psychologist, examines how childhood experiences and media culture can create unattainable expectations for sexual relationships and gender roles. Karen Keen finds support in the Bible for a different view of sexuality. Accepting same-sex relationships does not require compromising what the Bible teaches, Keen argues, and she shows new ways to read the scriptures often used against homosexuality. I hope this book will encourage the hearts of gay and lesbian people who often feel painfully torn between faith and sexuality.

This story has been updated with a correction about David Bennett's beliefs and work. To subscribe, click here. Simply close and relaunch your preferred browser to log-in. If you have questions or need assistance setting up your account please email pw pubservice. New York Rights Fair. The Best Books of Books of the Week. Stay ahead with Tip Sheet! Sexual attraction is part habit, part mystery, part madness. Most religious people, if pushed, might say something similar about how their spiritual involvement or commitment fluctuates and varies over time. It provides an explanation of religion which can sit alongside, but does not require, appeals to the call of god or the truth of religious claims.

It also stands as a warning to the devout atheists that religion will never go away, and that attacks on religious people as irrational will not make any real difference.

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At the same time, it opens up a new and intriguing set of possibilities for thinking differently about how religion fits into our world, and how we might learn to express our religious instincts in a diverse society without blind dogmatism or violence. Pets in Victorian paintings — Egham, Surrey. The history of pets and family life — Egham, Surrey. Available editions United Kingdom. Peter Kevern , Staffordshire University. In the words of Jeffrey Schloss: A new perspective This evolutionary account of the existence and persistence of religion in most, if not all, human societies it depends a lot on how you define it is hotly debated and open to criticism from a number of angles.

Religion means different things to different people. Religion religious belief Evolutionary psychology Cognitive psychology. Found this article useful? You might also like British Library. The Virgin Mary may not be able to pull Brazil out of a deep recession, but her church-sponsored house calls do wonders to ease economic malaise among participating Catholic families.