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Exploring Sexuality and Spirituality At the Interface/ Probing the Boundaries Founding Editor Rob Fisher (Progressive Connexions) Advisory Board Peter Bray (University of Auckland) Robert Butler (Elmhurst College) Ioana Cartarescu (Independent Scholar) Seán Moran (Waterford Institute of Technology) Stephen Morris (Independent Scholar) John Parry (Lewis & Clark College) Natalia Kaloh Vid (University of Maribor) volume 132 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ aipb Exploring Sexuality and Spirituality An Introduction to an Interdisciplinary Field Edited by Phil Shining and Nicol Michelle Epple LEIDEN | BOSTON Cover illustrations: (Front) ‘Yoni Canyon’, photograph taken by Dennis Alan Winters and used with permission; (Back) ‘Phallic Needle’, photograph taken by Dennis Alan Winters and used with permission. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Shining, Phil, editor. | Epple, Nicol Michelle, editor. Title: Exploring sexuality and spirituality : an introduction to an interdisciplinary field / edited by Phil Shining and Nicol Michelle Epple. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill | Rodopi, 2021. | Series: At the interface / probing the boundaries, 1570-7113 ; volume 132 | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020028860 (print) | LCCN 2020028861 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004430792 (paperback) | ISBN 9789004437869 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Sex–Religious aspects. | Spirituality. Classification: LCC BL65.S4 E945 2021 (print) | LCC BL65.S4 (ebook) | DDC 201/.61553–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020028860 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020028861 Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/b rill- typeface. issn 1570-7 113 isbn 978-9 0-0 4-4 3079-2 (paperback) isbn 978-9 0-0 4-4 3786-9 (e- book) Copyright 2021 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid- free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. Contents Foreword vii Jon Braddy Preface xix Nicol Michelle Epple List of Figures xx Introduction to the Sexuality and Spirituality Field of Research 1 Phil Shining part 1 Natural Instincts 1 Spirituality of the Sexually Charged Landscape 57 Dennis Alan Winters 2 Spirituality and Sexuality in Prehistoric Art 106 Richard Alan Northover part 2 Religious Rapture 3 A Spirituality of Pleasure: The ‘Thousand- Year’ Intercourse of Śiva and Śakti 131 John R. Dupuche 4 Experiencing yadaʿ: Holistic Encounters of Spiritual Bliss between Christian Believer and God 163 Nicol Michelle Epple part 3 Alternative Ecstasy 5 Oscar Wilde’s Spirituality: The Erotics of Queer Theology 197 Rita Dirks vi Contents 6 The Holy Rebellious Pussy: New Feminist Demands and Religious Confrontations 211 Assumpta Sabuco Cantó and Ana Álvarez Borrero part 4 Taboo Challenges 7 The (In)compatibility between Spirituality and Sexuality: Contemporary Chinese Case Studies 245 Huai Bao 8 Sex Education and Tantra 269 Pavel Hlavinka part 5 Limit- Experience Embodiments 9 The Abandoned Self: Excess and Inner Experience in Sadomasochism 289 Catherine Papadopoullos 10 Embodying ‘The Little Death’ of Orgasm: An Interdisciplinary Research on Sexual Trance 318 Phil Shining Index 387 Foreword Jon Braddy Early in my formative years, growing up with the heavy burden of bearing the moniker of being a minister’s son, living in the fish- bowl of our church’s parsonage whose congregation proudly practiced spiritual warfare and nev- er doubted the reality of demonic possession, attending public schools where I read the works of Oscar Wilde while sternly forbidden to suggest the author harbored homo- erotic perspectives, in an area where those schools had no qualms to invite speakers who warned the impressionable students assembled of Satan’s rampant evil of stealing souls through the use of subtle tactics such as backward- masking embedded within rock-a nd- roll albums and the harmful lure caused by pornography, in a municipality where law enforcement serious- ly investigated claims of secret covens of devil worshipers whose bloody rituals sacrificed livestock of local farmers, in a place where civic leaders debated with sincerity that their town was the buckle of the proverbial Bible Belt, in an area of the deeply conservative and religious haven of the American South, I began exploring and forming my initial understanding of sexuality and spirituality. Friends and schoolmates seemed to navigate this turbulent exploration of sexuality and spirituality with greater ease then myself. Other preachers’ sons gained reputations of being studs, deflowering their church’s youthful virgins— often becoming religious youth leaders and spending a couple of weeks of the summer attending church camp savoring the fruits of the flesh. My sister, whose lesbian tendencies were clearly a result of demonic posses- sion acquired while serving in the US Army, was exorcised while she being sur- rounded by a legion of spiritual warriors engaged in a five-h our long prayer battle; the result was a decisive win, she is now appropriately celibate. Rock- and- roll is less popular in my hometown, the mournful lyrics of divorce and ‘Jesus, Take the Wheel’1 moments expressed in American country music is the preferred genre. The warning caused by pornography was real, the example of the local preacher of a large and prosperous congregation still echoes; the pastor was immediately fired when his secretary noticed questionable images downloaded to the church- office’s computer. The fbi never found evidence of devil worshipers in the area, but did arrest and sentence to federal prison our 1 Carrie Underwood, ‘Jesus, Take the Wheel’, Some Hearts. Written by Brett James, Hillary Linsey and Gordie Sampson (Arista Records, 2005). viii Foreword town sheriff and his deputy for violating the civil rights of prisoners and in- timidating witnesses, also for mutilating sheep belonging to a local judge. The debate about the actual location of the Bible Belt’s buckle continues; however, there is no debate that my hometown has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the nation, and therefore one of the nation’s highest school dropout rates. Experiencing both worlds simultaneously, the worlds of my own explora- tions of spirituality and sexuality, led me to one conclusion: escape that milieu. My flight was not motivated due to witnessing the hypocrisy surrounding me, far from it. In my belief, those that had fallen did so because their faith was lacking; they simply did not have the strength and fortitude to resist temp- tation. I was fleeing from a much more frightening and sinister realization, a dawning comprehension that I was a homosexual. I say homosexual because it was the word uttered by polite company; the signifier carried with it all the weight of a medical discourse and the symptoms of the mentally ill associated with its usage. I actually preferred usage of the term homosexuality. Before the age of the Internet where one could quickly perform a Google search and find a universe of definitions and perspectives, the only sources of information available to me were the school’s and town’s libraries. The school’s resource center had nothing on the subject and the town library only contained a set of— donated— Catholic encyclopedias published from the 1960s. Reading the official church’s entry on the subject of homosexuality dated from that decade, evoked a mixture of sorrow, guilt, and horror. Other signifiers were even more loaded with negative connotations; sodomite and sinner used among the religious; faggot, queer, sissy boy used by everyone else. I never knew which moniker frightened me more. Regardless, I consciously engaged in stylistic performances— both in the selection of artifacts and through cor- poreal displays— and repeated acts intended to cover any leakage of escaped gendered transgression. Judith Butler clearly identified such behaviors when she declared, ‘Just as a script may be enacted in various ways, and just as the play requires both text and interpretation, so the gendered body acts its part in a culturally restricted corporeal space and enacts interpretations within the confines of already existing directives.’2 Of course, my real conflict was less concerned about hearing the word and all the connotative weight it conveyed, but rather about all the spiritual con- demnation and public damnation inherent in the individual associated with the meaning of homosexuality. The sodomite is destined for hell, he is an 2 Judith Butler, ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory’, Theatre Journal, 40.4 (1988): 526. Foreword ix abomination to God, and he must endure the pity and scorn of others. The faggot lurks around men’s public restrooms, he waits at bus stations luring the recently released prison inmate, he seduces confused or emotionally vulnera- ble youth; and when he is arrested by the police, when he is beaten and robbed by criminals or when he is sent to the mental ward and branded a sexual pred- ator, his is deserving. Or he can be celibate, never acting upon his sinful and loathsome desires; also, never experiencing open companionship or public expressions of affection; he is alone in his secret suffering and sorrow. My in- ternal conflict was real. Why was this both my soul’s fate and my life’s destiny? Something, even to my immature spirit and young mind, appeared emotional- ly and logically incongruent; I felt, in the words of queer theorist Lee Edelman, an opposition to the ‘logic of oppositionality’.3 Queer theory is not, ‘a matter of either being or becoming, but rather of embodying, within the historical moment that imposes upon us such a figural association, the unsymbolizable remainder or the real produced by the order of meaning as the token of what that order is necessarily barred from being able to signifiy’.4 So experiencing oppositionality, I fled to the farthest, safest and most liberated place available to continue my personal explorations of sexuality and spirituality— college. Higher education provided an excellent space to explore sexuality. Spiritual exploration, however, quickly waned. I arrived in Chicago and delved into my studies and soon discovered that, like most metropolitan centers, there was also a large, open and thriving gay community. My college roommate was truly the first person who did not condemn homosexuality; for him, it was simply no big deal. My college professors did not treat homosexuality with disdain or as the equivalent to child molesters or the mentally ill. The mayor of Chicago openly celebrated Gay Pride, he attended the gay community’s parades and festivals, lavishing resources to beautify and enhance safety in the Halstead neighbor- hood. Bill Clinton was elected president of the United States and removed the prohibition against gay men and women serving in the military. The Internet was expanding, ushering forth new businesses and opening vast avenues of information. Oppressive fear was quickly replaced with unrestrained curiosity and the freedom to explore my sexuality became fun, joyous and liberating; I ‘exuberantly discarded’5 the self. And this discarding had another unexpected consequence; my spirituality, which previously seemed at odds with my sex- uality, deepened its roots, sprung forth new growth, blossomed and yielded 3 Lee Edelman, ‘The Future is Kid Stuff: Queer Theory, Disidentification, and the Death Drive’. Narrative 6.1 (1998): 27. 4 Ibid. 5 Leo Bersani, ‘Is the Rectum a Grave?’ October 43 (Winter, 1987): 218.

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