Special Issue on Media, Sexuality and Religion Guest Editorial

Abstract

The papers brought together in this issue of Theology & Sexuality focus on media, sexuality and religion. They have emerged from a workshop on “Sexuality, Gender, Religion,”1 held by the Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Centro per le Scienze Religiose, in Trento, Italy, in 2008. They provide differing reflections on the complex and formative roles that the media takes in the cultural processes by which we negotiate sexual norms and gender concepts in our religious and social systems. Media representations of sexuality are now ubiquitous in contemporary society, contributing to its “sexualization,” but also to how we perecive and live sexuality in our daily lives. As Jorg Metelmann points out in his paper, young people increasingly fashion themselves as sexualized beings, drawing self-worth and self-consciousness from their sexual attractiveness and activity. Yet the media can also provide alternative visions to the plethora of sexualized, plasticized bodies facing us from billboards, magazine covers and movie screens. And these alternatives are also explored in the following essays. Theological reflection on media representations of sexuality, on how religious concepts of sex are taken up or criticized, and on how media influence changes in sexual comportment and experience is therefore important in order to enable theology to respond meaningfully to the contemporary social situation, and to develop an anthropology that responds to and includes human desires and passions. In the chorus of multiplied discourses on sexuality, theology can add a voice that