Tag Archives: David C. Ford

The Power of Sexual Purity

by David C. Ford and Mary Ford

sexual purity

In this modern day and age, when sexual promiscuity – i.e., any sexual relations outside marriage – abounds all around us, why would anyone choose to live in sexual purity? How could refraining from all sexual relations outside of marriage ever be more fulfilling, more satisfying, than having sexual adventures before getting married, and perhaps even after marriage through having affairs?

The Orthodox Church’s answer would begin, we think, with affirming what our Saints through all the centuries have always known from their own life-experience, as shaped by the life of the Church – that virtue, including sexual purity, has power, contributing greatly to the deep inner peace, profound joy, true love, and ineffable satisfaction that come from finding our “true selves” through living in the way our Creator intends for us to live. Continue Reading…

Sexual Purity and the Vocation of Marriage

by David C. Ford, Mary Ford, Rev. Dr. Philip LeMasters, Philip Mamalakis, and Alf Kentigern Siewers

“The sacred nature of the God-established union and its lofty spiritual content explain the Apostle’s affirmation in Heb. 13:4. That is why the Orthodox Church condemned any defilement of its purity (Eph. 5:2-5, 1 Thes. 4:4, Heb. 13:4ff)” (Chambesy Statement). The Church indeed must emphasize sexual purity, or chastity, today more than ever, especially for the benefit of young people, as a calling to the integral unity of body and soul in Christ. Orthodoxy envisions chastity as an ascetical discipline whereby people achieve an embodied wholeness fulfilling them in synergy with God’s grace. Holy matrimony and monasticism are both icons of chaste participation in the mystical marriage of Christ with His Bride, the Church. Such purity minimally requires  abstinence from genital expressions of sexuality outside of monogamous marriage between a man and a woman.  Authentic chastity, however, involves much more than simple refraining from certain behaviors. Continue Reading…