The God That Clubs

What's God got to do with our bedroom antics? How has religion created clubs with rules around love, sex, and marriage?

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
What's God got to do with ourbedroom antics? This is Doctor Wendy Walsh.
I've always wondered how religions grow theirmembership, and I realized it has
to do with the sex rules,the rules that all religions create around dating,
mating, and marriage. This isMating Matters. Welcome to Mating Matters,

(00:22):
the podcast that looks at human behaviorthrough a lens of reproduction. I'm
doctor Wendy Walsh, and I believemomost everything we do is designed to increase
our mating opportunities. This episode iscalled The God Who Clubs and will explore
how religion has created clubs with rulesaround love, sex and marriage. May

(00:43):
Almighty God have mercy on them,forgive us us. Religion. Just the
word alone can conjure up a hostof feelings, depending on which religion you
are raised in, if any atall, and your ability to fit in
with its teachings. The word religionmight evoke anything from memories of punitive lessons

(01:03):
filled with shame, to warm feelingsof songs, prayers, and a support
of community. Grammy winner Mendiza inher Owed to Cancer patients sings to the
best of religious support in her headsong overcome her. You might be surprised

(01:30):
to learn that religiosity has been associatedwith longevity. Religious people tend to be
healthier and live longer. That's partlybecause of the mandate to live a healthy
lifestyle that comes with most every religion. Clean living is the rule of the
day. There's also the healing powerof social support. Isolation is not good

(01:51):
for humans, and to take thatone step further, on a deep psychological
level, God can become a secureattachment figure. The Australian Christian group Hillsong
United holds the record for having asong that spent sixty one weeks at number
one on Billboard Hot Christian Songs chart. Their song Oceans talks about God as
a feeling of security when notions risethe souls in you Ah. But the

(02:25):
early days of religion formation were lessabout a loving God manifested psychologically as a
secure boyfriend, and more about tribalaffiliation. You know, religions are the
ultimate tribes in our evolution. Religionscreated group meaning co operation over food procurement,

(02:46):
in group rules of conduct. Inshort, religions helped people trust each
other. No matter where you travelin the world, if you meet someone
who shares your religion, you feelyou can trust them. You both followed
the same set of rules. Tribalaffiliations are very strong with the religions because

(03:07):
if I know you, I feelsafer. If I don't know you,
I don't feel as safe. Whois my neighbor? You know, we
have a lot of time. I'mdoctor Darnis Martin and I am Assistant Professor
of Religion and African American Studies atLoyal and Marymount University. I am a
cultural and historical scholar of religion,So that means that I study religions in

(03:30):
their context, in their history andthe culture. And I do that with
pretty much what we call the Abrahamicreligions, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.
As a historian, doctor Martin studiesthe religions most commonly seen in Western
culture. Who do I associate with? And my tribal slash religious affiliations tell

(03:52):
me who it's appropriate to mingle withand who it's not. So a lot
of that throughout the Bible here inChristianity, and some of these tribal loyalties
and conflicts still play out today theUnited States. We don't live in a
polytheistic world anymore, but we dostill see this kind of our God,
their God thing. Religions develop outof the need for in group loyalties and

(04:15):
outgroup hostilities, and so yeah,this is a way of creating a safe
tribal community by saying Gods on ourside and by staying loyal to our gods,
God will protect us and make usstrong. And we even see remnants
of that in current politics today.My name is Ryan Bell, and for
twenty years I was an evangelical pastor. Today i'd call myself a humanist,

(04:42):
which to me is like, youknow, the best that Christianity has to
offer without the supernatural part. Accordingto former pastor Ryan Bell, besides creating
trusting bonds, religions also serve tocreate strict group conformity. This was necessary
as we have all from small tribesto larger groups where we couldn't recognize all

(05:03):
the members. At its heart,religion is about social control, about keeping
people in line. It's about punishmentand reward. But religions do one other
thing really well. They expand theirmembership. Some religions do this through amazing
recruitment strategies. If you want toknow Jesus come and see. Religions are

(05:27):
also especially good at increasing their membershipthrough human reproduction. The founding fathers of
most religions, and yes, theywere mostly men, either consciously or unconsciously,
created rules around sex that increase thechances that their membership would multiply.
Most religions have rules around premarital sex, marriage, birth control, abortion,

(05:51):
divorce, homosexuality, and even masturbation. And to enforce these rules, a
punitive God, of course, andso right, I think this punitive God
is the God who will punish youif you step out of line, but
will reward you if you stay inline. And it's a powerful social motivation,
has been for thousands of years.It's known that religions with the most

(06:11):
angry God who promises an afterlife ofhell, tend to grow the fastest.
God is a big cop in thesky is a psychological concept that developed to
instill fear in religious congregants who mightwant to break the rules or cheat a
lot. For instance, the Muslimcall to prayer in many urban centers in

(06:33):
the world, it blasts out fromloudspeakers five times a day to remind devout
Muslims to stop and pray. I'mTarik Shaky. I'm affiliated with the Islamic
Center of Southern California. I'm ontheir religious committee board, and i do
a lot of volunteer work with themosque in Pasadena where I live. And

(06:55):
I'm a dad. That's my maintitle. You know. I lived in
Egypt for a short a couple ofyears actually, And it's interesting because you
kind of come to rely on itas a martyr, and it kind of
divides up your day in a waythat is healthy. I feel like it
kind of pulls you out of yourbusy life and your job and it says,

(07:16):
okay, it's, you know,afternoon prayer. And even if you
don't stop and take the time topray, you're remembering that there is a
God and that people are getting togetherand praying, and it kind of connects
you back to something bigger than youjust by hearing it. Evidence from psychological
studies shows that the Muslim call toprayer serves another purpose. When the call

(07:36):
to prayer is amplified, particularly loudly, say near markets or places of business,
people are much less likely to cheat. The same probably goes for church
bells reminder to be a good person, God is watching. I should also
add that once religions become very establishedand congregants have intergenerational transmission of rules,

(08:01):
yes as shaming grandma and parents,God becomes less punitive and more loving.
The exception is modern Islam, accordingto tark Shaki. So interestingly enough,
I feel like Islam came to avery very backwards traditional culture on the Arabian
Peninsula where women had, you know, no rights. They were sold as

(08:24):
property, they were inherited when theirhusbands died. So initially it was seen
as kind of a liberation, like, Okay, women can choose their spouses,
they can inherit and own their ownproperty, they can decide you know
who and when to marry and divorce. But I feel like over the years
it's kind of the traditional Islam hasgone back to like the pre Islamic tradition,

(08:46):
where it's become much more conservative,and I feel like women have lost
a lot of rights that they wereinitially given at the outset of Islam.
In the beginning, when the Bible, the Torah, and the Qoran were
many rules of conduct were designed toincrease reproductive odds. Here's doctor Johnnie Martin
again. Yeah, when we talkabout the commonalities and the different religions,

(09:09):
the different Christian religions, we canpinpoint things like marriage is the ideal union
and children are a gift from God. Children are the way to live out
the plan that God has for humanityas part of our salvation. In fact,
and in particular, the Mormons havea particular way of looking at procreation

(09:31):
as this divine mandate, but overallthe different Christian groups really come at this
as God has ordained a certain wayfor us to live. We should be
married one man, one woman andmake children. Marriage, of course,
helped more children to live to growup. Having two people with a biological
interest in offspring always increases survival odds. And if sex outside of marriage isn't

(09:56):
allowed, sex inside of marriage alsohas plenty of rules too, particularly for
women, depending on the religion.In Christian marriage, you're giving yourself to
one another. Your body is notjust yours anymore. So you give yourself
to your husband. He gives himselfto you, and so if he asks
you and you do have a headacheand you don't want to have sex right,

(10:16):
then you do it any way.There's a reproductive reason for this.
The social pressure is you don't wanthim to go outside of the marriage.
That would be your fault if you'renot enough for him, And then his
seed could go somewhere else and notsay an appropriate places such as the religion.
The household is now defiled. Inthe Jewish faith, fear that the

(10:41):
seed will be sent outside of thehousehold is less an issue than the seed
must be controlled within the household.While Christians are told they can have as
much sex as they want at anytime of a month in the marital bed
unless they're practicing natural family planning andwant to skip ovulation week, Orthodox Jewish
couples have a fascinating practice designed tobuild up sexual desire and prime them for

(11:05):
fertilization. I'm a mia Adler Zairand I'm a clinically licensed psychotherapist and i
happen to have a specialty in workingwith Orthodox Jewish couples a marriage as well
as dating and sexuality, and miaAdler Azair practice is what she preaches.
I am an Orthodox observant practicing jewand between my husband and I we have

(11:31):
nine children, so we are bothat the second marriage for both of us,
so it's three of mine, fourof his and two of ours.
In the Jewish faith, there aresignificant rules around sexuality and sexual relationship within
the context of marriage. Of course, it is absolutely assumed that there is

(11:52):
not only no sexual relationship before marriage, there's literally not even touch people do
not even of hands. There's nophysical contact whatsoever before the wedding night and
after the wedding. The rules aroundlove and sex relate to a woman's menstrual
cycle. During menstruation and for aboutfive days after, the husband and wife

(12:15):
create physical space between each other,and it is to the extent that they
do not share a bed, theydo not hand things to one another.
There is it's really looked at asa window of opportunity to focus on the
friendship and the spiritual nature of therelationship and to put the physical aspects of
it aside. And in the Muslimfaith, this same dynamic plays out during

(12:39):
prayer, where the sexes are keptseparate. So I think traditionally there was
this notion of you don't want tohave the woman present because you will distract
you from your worship, or inprayer, you don't want to be standing
shoulder to shoulder with the woman asyou would the man, because you'd be
thinking about her body and her skinand her shoulder, and sexuality eventually would

(13:01):
creep in. So the idea isthat we're protecting men from themselves and protecting
women from the men. And then, of course what happens when you can't
have what you want, it becomesmuch more desirable. So what tends to
happen in this cycle, within therelationship around the woman's menstrual cycle is that
not only does it set them upphysically for pregnancy because you know, typically

(13:24):
you're coming back together at the timeof a woman's ovulation period, but at
the same time, you're also creatingthis wanting, this kind of longing because
you're quote unquote forbidden to have anykind of Yes, the word no,
the world's most powerful aphrodisiac religions haveused it well to grow membership. No

(13:46):
sex except if it's with another memberof the church. No premarital sex,
no divorce, no birth control,and no abortion. No no, no,
no no sex. Researchers have longknown that attraction plus obstacle in this
case, the word no equals majorsexual arousal. I mentioned that most religions

(14:09):
founders were men. Yes a kindof patriarchy, so the rules were slanted
to benefit men a little more thanwomen. Think about it, a woman
can only actually have a baby aboutonce a year, but theoretically a man
can have a baby every single dayif he has access to plenty of women.
According to doctor Martin and Christianity,men had leeway on the sex rules

(14:30):
that has amounted to a sexual doublestandard. There's a thing called prostitution,
right, so of course, ifyou're going to go before the prostitute,
no, you're not marrying her.The men would have had more freedom to
have sex with multiple partners. Ofcourse, they're supposed to marry and have
a family with a woman who's beenidentified as appropriate. But of course we

(14:52):
see in the Bible there are storiesabout women who are prostitutes, are alleged
prostitutes, so we know that's goingon, and they were not marrying them
in any way, shape or form. And this sexual double standard puts a
lot of pressure on women. Yourjob is to receive your man, receive
his seed, and you conceive hischildren and give birth. I mean,

(15:16):
of course, now I'm in moreprogressive time, we don't have people saying
that quite that way. But thereare fundamentalists and evangelical kinds of Christians who
really do still understand. Like youknow, your marriage isn't complete unless you
have children. You, as awoman are not complete unless you're a mother.
And not only a mother. Womenare also expected to be the holder

(15:37):
of men's sexual boundaries even today.Here's a clip from a YouTube video of
a podcast called The Marriage Mentor byJoline Engel and her husband Eric Engel.
Your God's gal first and your husband'ssecond. So you take your marching orders
and your authority is from the wordof God, and you live that way
and as a result and pleasing God, your husband and should be pleased unless

(16:02):
he goes off with his perversions andtries to get you to sin. As
if holding the boundaries in the maritalbed isn't enough, the burden of chastity
remains on women when they are single. In historic times, a father guarded
his daughter's eggs, preventing access bya man outside of the religion or a
man who couldn't support his offspring.But in today's age, with a highly

(16:26):
sexualized media and pressure on young womento look like Instagram models and please their
poor and exposed boyfriends, life canbe psychologically painful in order to navigate being
a good girlfriend for a boy ora young man. She opens herself up
to some sort of sexual activity becauseshe wants the boyfriend, but she has

(16:51):
to also navigate this other side,maybe that she's gotten from her family and
her church, that says good girlsdon't God will be unhappy with you if
you have sex. So she's gotto figure out, Okay, how can
I do this? And so oneof the things that we see young women
and young girls doing is having oralsex, not thinking of it as real
sex, having antal sex, becauseyou can't get pregnant these ways and there

(17:15):
will be no one to tell thetale. The pressure to be cute yet
virtuous, sexy yet chaste is probablythe greatest female double blind That can lead
to a host of mental health problemsthat express themselves as eating disorders, cutting,
and even physical illness. So thenyou become sexy and hot. But
then if you actually like any ofit, if you actually become empowered by

(17:38):
any of it as a teenage girl, even late teenage girl, now you've
slipped over into the whore. Girlswere cast out, girls were relegated to
sex work, prostitution because you areno longer an appropriate match for any man.

(17:59):
It is a fortunate woman who wasable to navigate around all the landmines
protect her eggs until marriage, andwith no sexual experience, become the sexually
fruitful wife. But what if shewere attracted to women, or what if
a religious man were more attracted toanother man. The rule in Christianity regarding
homosexuality is that thou shalt not behomosexual. In terms of homosexuality, the

(18:22):
Jewish religion in general does not acceptit, it is not permissible, and
the Muslim faith traditionally homosexuality has beenseen as sinful. In no matter how
you look at it, homosexuality isdefinitely not God's plan, going back even
to the beginning of Genesis, wherea man and a woman are created by
God and designed to procreate. Today, there are many forms of religions with

(18:45):
openly gay pastors and welcoming and inclusivechurches for members of the LGBTQ community.
But when all the sex rules wereoriginally set up, growing membership was the
goal and being gay wasn't seen asa to do that. I should tell
you here that anthropologists speculate that samesex orientation stayed in our human gene pool

(19:06):
because mothers who had a gay brotheror sister had more offspring who survived.
Child free adults who could lend ahelping hand, say, gay uncles or
aunties, also tended to their owngenes that were carried by their nieces and
nephews. Of course, gay peoplealso had their own children. Wink wink.
Religion gives the blueprint or procreation peoplejust we all just grow up feeling

(19:30):
like, Oh, I'm going tohave babies. I'm gonna have babies.
I'm gonna have babies, and thenthe religions reinforce that. If homosexual behavior
was off the menu in most religions, how about a natural human behavior called
auto sexual arousal or more simply masturbation. The Bible says about wasting one seed
if you're a man, that youare definitely not supposed to do that,

(19:53):
because the idea is that that's theway you procreate. God has given humanity
sex a way to procreate. Soto masturbate, for example, or to
have sex with someone and pull out, or to have sex with women you
don't intend to make children with isa way that you're wasting something precious that

(20:15):
God gave you for the purpose ofcreating children, touching yourself as the gateway
to the devil or the gateway toHell, and warns women in particular about
pleasuring herself that she should not becausethat button. That button is Satan's doorbell,
and you don't want to ring it. Religions also involved tribal warfare.

(20:44):
Groups of humans fought over food,water, and territory, and even while
at war, reproduction was a google. The oldest weapon of war, one
sadly still used too often today,is rape. Rape it desecrates the woman
and makes her impure, essentially permanently. You see it in the in the

(21:07):
Hebrew Scripture, in the Old TestamentChristian Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible,
you see rape used as a weaponto violate an entire community of people.
You see it in the in thewar in the Middle East with the Yazdi
women being raped by Isis soldiers.Besides taking marriageable young women off the market

(21:30):
within their own tribe, thus reducingreproductive opportunities on the enemy's side, rape
was also a chance to plant one'sown seed in a rival. Rape could
result in children and children for theconquering side, and of course make the
woman unavailable to her own community.Given that she's now tarnished, she's not

(21:52):
really eligible to bear children for herown people. When we think about the
legacy of rape as a tool ofreligion is warfare. Of course, we're
thinking. We have to think aboutdomination and power. It's not enough that
I just take your stuff. It'sthat I leave my mark upon you and
your women, and I enter yourgene pool. You won't know whose babies

(22:15):
those are. They might be mine. Now I have really done something to
you that's going to last with youfor generations. Have you noticed that I
haven't been talking about Catholics much.I saved it to the very end for
a couple of reasons. One,I'm a recovering Catholic myself, and I

(22:37):
admit I've got little PTSD over theshame based messages about sexuality from my own
childhood. Yeah, Billy Joel,you know me. Catholic girls stop much.
But the other reason that I waitedto tell you this is that I
recently met a Catholic Sex and Marycounselor who blew my mind just a little

(23:02):
bit. First of all, letme say that I personally think that Catholics
win the Gold Medal for growing theflock through procreation. I mean, think
about it. They sent missionaries aroundthe world, told people not to have
sex, and if they did,to not use birth control. Oh that's
sexy aphrodisiac word. No, Ithink they even invented the missionary position.

(23:23):
Boom, Millions and millions of Catholicswere born all around the planet. But
remember I mentioned that once religions becomemore established, the psychological concept of God
becomes a little more loving. Myname is doctor Gregg Popcheck. I'm the
executive director of the Pastoral Solutions Institute. I'm the Associate Professor of Pastoral Studies

(23:45):
at the Holy Apostles College. Ihost More to Life on Sirius X one
thirty. I'm author of over twentybooks on the relationships, psychology, and
spirituality. Doctor Popcheck says, intoday's Catholic Church, there really aren't a
lot of rules. The rule isto love another person, and of course

(24:07):
we define love as working for thegood of another person. As the Catholic
God become less punitive, Well,this seems to be the way Catholic scholar
and counselor doctor Greg Popchek explains thesex rules, which he calls ethics but
he says in modern times and ethosapplies, God as a punisher is replaced
by individual conscience and compassion, behaviorthat comes from the heart. Right,

(24:32):
So I could not cheat on mywife because I don't need the hassle,
you know, of having an affairand would a pan in the butt.
That would be to cheat on mywife, and then I'd be faithful,
right, but that would be anethic and ethosis. I don't cheat on
my wife because I love my wife. He says that a misunderstanding exists about
Catholicism because of one historic French bishopwho trained a lot of Irish priests.

(24:56):
His name was Bishop Jansen, andhe apparently did sexuality with rules. Therefore,
Irish Catholicism that dominated the US Catholicculture became a punitive ideology, Jansenism.
So they got infected with this Jansenism. Ireland got infected with Jansenism brought
it to the US. That's notreally Catholicism. In fact, like I

(25:18):
said that Jensism was denounced twice asa heresy by the Church, and it's
it's Jansenism tends to be this veryrule bound you know, God's gonna get
you sex is bad, pleasure isawful. Sort of perspective on sexuality that
really is contrary to what the coreof Catholic thinking about all this stuff really
is. In fact, doctor Popchackexplains the Catholic rules. You know,

(25:42):
the big Catholic knows non pre maritalsex, no birth control, no abortion
as a positive thing. You know, so saving sex or marriage is good
for human flourishing. What you knowyou're talking about, no, no contraception.
That doesn't mean though family planning,by the way, what it means
is stop treating Let's treat healthy functioningparts of the body as if they were

(26:06):
a disease. And let's stop treatingchildren as if they were a disease.
You know, Let's let's value life. M Maybe the Catholics have simply rebranded
their rules are now called soft rules. Oh and even these have been known
to increase membership through reproduction. TheCatholics do it as well as all religions
do it well. I would saythe obstacles that religions put in place the

(26:29):
rules do definitely create a certain desireright and an early marriage, because life
expectancies were short anyway, and soit creates within people a desire to hurry
up and mate. The Torahs specificallyprovides with a commandment and i'll i'll use
that term loosely. In Hebrew,the word is meek sva. It's actually

(26:51):
a positive commandment, meaning it's likeyou get bonus points right. It's one
of those things that in the faithis looked on, looked upon as God
smiling on you. If you will, if you procreate right, you bring
additional Jewish kids into the world.Faithful Christian families should have more children,

(27:11):
as many as they can be fruitfuland multiply. Of course, religions do
a whole lot more than just increasemembership for billions of people around the world.
Religious organizations provide coping strategies against fearand pain. They create comforting structure
for many, They help the poor, and religions tend to be a safe
haven of like minded people for healthenhancing social support. But they wouldn't be

(27:37):
here today if they hadn't created anear perfect formula for human reproduction. Maybe
babies have the last laugh. Godsgive thanks for listening to Mating Matters.
I'm doctor Wendy Walsh. Mating Matterswith doctor Wendy Walsh is produced by iHeartMedia.

(28:04):
It is researched, written and hostedby me, Doctor Wendy Walsh,
and produced and edited by the BrookePeterson. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook,
YouTube and Instagram at doctor Wendy Walsh. Listen to Mating Matters on the
iHeartRadio app, or wherever you listento your podcasts.