The Bible and Sexuality | Minns Lectures (In-Person)

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In 1996, at the beginning of her seminary studies, Rev. Dr. Debra W. Haffner published a widely disseminated article titled “The Good News: What the Bible Can Teach You About Sex.” Thirty years later, she returned to the Bible and rediscovered far more complex messages about sexuality in both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Scriptures. The texts had not changed—but over those thirty years, she had, as had scientific and cultural understandings about sexuality.

In these Minns Lectures, Rev. Dr. Haffner will survey the Hebrew Bible and Christian Scriptures for their surprising and varied messages about sexuality - sometimes troubling, often life-affirming, and always rich. Rather than presenting a single model of sexual morality, these texts portray a wide range of relationships that still challenge our social, religious, and sexual norms - sex workers, eunuchs, women with multiple husbands, nonmonogamy, and adults living in more than a dozen forms of intimate relationships. In two lectures, Haffner emphasizes the necessity of messages of love and inclusion that surround, ground, and trouble these texts.

Minns Lectures are an annual series of lectures on religious topics directed by First Church in Boston and King's Chapel in Boston.

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