Not so very long ago a thoughtful, provocative report was drafted to give guidance to the Presbyterian Church on a wide range of questions dealing with sexuality. It was sent to the 1991 General Assembly, where a few groups on the right wing of the church focused the debate on questions of homosexuality, and created enough alarm that the report was rejected.

The report, though, contained a great deal of careful thinking and analysis of our society's attitudes and behaviors relating to sexuality, and offered helpful surveys of ten specific issues, along with useful policy recommendations. Happily, even without the Assembly's stamp of approval, the report has been published and widely used ever since. Now some twenty writers have been invited to look again at the report, which is in the booklet Presbyterians and Human Sexuality 1991, published by the Office of the General Assembly. Their survey of the many issues in the report, in the light of growing knowledge and continuing debates on questions of sexuality, offers new insight and calls us back to the good work of the original report.

There is a wealth of material in this collection, far beyond the scope of this short review. But two general themes stand out for me.

First, our sexual relations are intimately bound up with our many ways of seeking and using power. Sylvia Thorson-Smith captures this idea well in her essay on moving toward "sexual health and well-being," when she writes,

Never content to categorize human diversity simply as "different," patriarchal society invests power, reward, status, merit, and value in some categories over others. In a complex matrix of both personal and social relationships, our sexual lives are infused with virtually invisible and unexamined power dynamics. Furthermore, sexual health is narrowly defined according to the experiences and interests of dominant groups. (p. 239)

Many of the other essays shed light on this power dynamic: the relationships between straight and gay, between women and men, between "good" and "bad" (however that's defined), and much more. Daniel Maguire explores the many ways in which our male-dominated culture has led most of us to view sexuality as dangerous and bad, as a chaotic force which must above be subjected to control. And that control, of course, has been seen as the work of the men! Virginia Ramey Mollencott talks about how we view humans as either male or female (in the "binary gender paradigm," as she names it), so we define all those who don't fit the model as deviants needing to be fixed. So we exclude millions of people from any legitimate existence, condemning them to life in the shadows.

The other insight for me is that our sexuality and sexual experiences, in all their variety, can be modes for revelation of the divine, since they help us know ourselves and others in ways not possible otherwise, and give and receive love in extraordinary ways. So Robert Goss and Scott Haldeman, both writing as gay men, show how deeply their experience leads them into new dimensions of experiencing the divine, the sacred. And Toddie Peters in "Embracing God as Goddess" explores female sexuality as a way of thinking about the divine. So she suggests seeing "God/ess" through women's experience of bodily change, of nurturing, of feeling pain, of valuing relationships more than control. This leads her to say that this understanding of the feminine side of God/ess can lead us to care more about the quality of relationships than about particular norms and limits, as the male-oriented concern for control tends to do.

There's much more in this collection. The co-editors, both of whom served on the original study committee, begin by setting out the project of the book, to extend the work of the Human Sexuality report. Yes, it was rejected, but the issues are still with us, and these essays remind us of the power of the basic approach to the subject that was taken in the study: an affirmation of sexuality and of divine grace. After so many years of hearing the same old arguments about homosexuality, it's refreshing to see sexuality in a much wider framework.

Beverly W. Harrison reminds us that the study placed issues of sexuality solidly within the framework of justice. That leads to the further reminder that we cannot change the various forms of sexual oppression without joining the wider struggle for justice, including economic justice in our own society, and in the new challenges of globalization. Other essays, on AIDS and on violence against women, underline the terrible consequences of globalization.

Johanna van Wijk-Bos offers a very helpful look at "how to read what we read" in the Bible, showing how Biblical teachings on sexuality reflect changing economic and social situations in Israel and in the early church. So, for instance, she says that in early Israel, as an agricultural society, women and men were largely equal, as co-workers in their farms and households. As the nation become more urbanized, the role of women was more restricted; after the Exile, as the nation of Israel struggled to recover, women became valued primarily for producing offspring and maintaining the family within an increasingly patriarchal system. Finally she concludes that justice is the "hermeneutical key" through which we can relate the Biblical world to our own. This justice demands love for the other - even (or especially) when the "other" is in some way a stranger. And it calls us into covenantal relationships (faithful and sexual) with others.

There's more. These essays will lead you into fresh perspectives on issues we deal with far too often - or maybe not enough: domestic violence, clergy sexual misconduct, sexuality and aging, environmental ethics, the ways our economic arrangements affect our sexual relationships, the troubles in our marriages.