Who Knew Sex Helps You to Experience God’s Presence in the World?

Oxytocin occurs naturally in the body. Produced by the hypothalamus, it acts as a hormone and as a neurotransmitter, affecting many regions of the brain. It is stimulated during sex, childbirth and breastfeeding. Recent research has highlighted oxytocin’s possible role in promoting empathy, trust, social bonding and altruism.

To test how oxytocin might influence spirituality, researchers administered the hormone to one group and a placebo to another. Those who received oxytocin were more likely to say afterwards that spirituality was important in their lives and that life has meaning and purpose. This was true after taking into account whether the participant reported belonging to an organized religion or not.

Participants who received oxytocin were also more inclined to view themselves as interconnected with other people and living things, giving higher ratings to statements such as “All life is interconnected” and “There is a higher plane of consciousness or spirituality that binds all people.”

Study subjects also participated in a guided meditation. Those who received oxytocin reported experiencing more positive emotions during meditation, including awe, gratitude, hope, inspiration, interest, love and serenity.

Oxytocin did not affect all participants equally, though. Its effect on spirituality was stronger among people with a particular variant of the CD38 gene, a gene that regulates the release of oxytocin from hypothalamic neurons in the brain.

This only one  study in a growing field of a whole new generation of neurobiological studies of belief, part of what’s been called our second scientific revolution. The most sophisticated theological synthesis of neurobiology and belief out there might be Graham Ward’s Unbelievable, Why We Believe and Why We Don’t. You will find it in my TOP10 Books on Neuroscience and Religion.

If these links between neurobiology, religion, sex, and human flourishing–already known to the ancients–can be confirmed by further studies, then this will have interesting implications for the theory of secularization.

Yesterday, I reported upon the fairly sharp decrease in sexual activity among Americans, which comes upon the heels of studies in Japan that demonstrate a kind of sex nihilism (in terms of abstention) there.

The conclusion to draw from the combination of the two is either a) the widely-reported increase of the Nones and non-believers in America is a result of the decrease in sexual relations, or b) the decrease in sexual relations has led to the increase in the numbers of those two groups.

Either way, I haven’t seen any secularization theories that take the combination of sex and belief into consideration. Either way, it would make sense that Catholic practice would sharply decrease in such an environment, as it has steadily since the Sexual Revolution, which coincides with the flowering of late capitalism.

The two factors are usually kept apart, as if sex and religion had nothing to do with each other. This separation of spheres of life is actually religious itself, since it reflects The Protestant Imagination’s tendency to stress God’s transcendence of the created order whereas The Catholic Imagination tends to stress the presence of God within the created order.

I would argue it might make more sense to talk about “Protestantization” rather than “secularization.”

I’ll discuss the difference between the two imaginations in terms of sexual practice tomorrow. Right now you might want to click on the post that got this whole unusual discussion rolling.  I’m not entirely sure where it’s going, but that’s the point of writing essays and blogs. They are attempts at understanding.

If sex is your thing, and if you are Catholic, it more likely is than not, then you’ll want to look at the first piece in this series: Increasingly Secularized Americans Are Sexless, But Catholics Might Be Bucking the Sex Trends.

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