Lauren Winner's latest book, Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity, has some very interesting insights into Chrsitianity and sex. Mike Cope points out the following exerpt that I found facinatng:
"One might hope that the strongest predictor of teenage virginity would be church involvement--but it's not. A recent study of teenage girls shows that the strongest predictor is actually participation in team sports. The girl who plays lacrosse or soccer is more likely to remain chaste than the girl who attends church and youth group."
Why?
"At first blush, team sports and sexual abstinence seem to have nothing to do with each other. But in fact, the relationship makes sense: through soccer and tennis and field hockey, those girls are learning how to inhabit their bodies in good, robustly physical ways. They are seeing their bodies change and excel and face challenges and, sometimes, fail them. Their sports teams are communities that are teaching them how to live--not as sex objects, but as bodies that are graceful and disciplined and strong. They are learning, through those tennis matches and lacrosse games, that their bodies should be celebrated, because their bodies do great things. This doesn't mean, of course, that if only the church sponsored more softball leagues, everyone would stay on the chaste straight and narrow. But it does mean that the church ought to cultivate ways of teaching Christians to live in their bodies well--so that unmarried folks can still be bodily people, even though they're not having sex, and so that married people can give themselves to sex freely."
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