Marriage, Love, and Sexuality: A Cultural Crossroads (Summer)

The further that our secular culture goes on its path, the less resemblance it bears to its Christian roots. With this divergence, radically new definitions of marriage, love, sexuality, etc. have become possible. AT BEST, we Christians now live in a strange world where we are using the same words as the rest of our culture, but speaking different languages. AT WORST, we have lost the Christian meaning altogether and no longer understand the basic precepts of our faith.

In this course, we’ll examine how the definitions of the words marriage, love, sex, and gender have changed in the United States over the past 200 years and then we’ll broaden the discussion to include both ancient Christian (specifically Orthodox Christian) contexts and modern scientific findings. We’ll then consider the unifying themes behind the two worldviews – joyful, self-sacrificing love and the pursuit of pleasure, for Christianity and the secular culture, respectively. The first half concludes by explaining why the pursuit of pleasure eventually backfires and why true joy and deep meaning are only possible with self-sacrifice.

The second half of the course examines various specific topics (e.g. hook-up culture, gay marriage, celibacy, etc.) in light of the terms and issues discussed in the first half.

All course materials provided by the instructor.

Mother Melania (Salem) is the Abbess of the Holy Assumption Orthodox Monastery (OCA) in Calistoga, Ca. She holds the Ph.D. in Theology from the University of Durham, England. She has been a monastic since 1999. She is the author of the series of children’s books entitled Fearless the Fire Duck and His Friends, as well as a continuing series of booklets on the meaning of the Great Feasts of the Church and Stories from the Old Testament.