Talking about your sex life in church is like talking about your sex life with your grandmother--a situation most folks would do anything to avoid.
But Saturday afternoon, several hundred adults and teenagers gathered in a South Side church to do just that.
"Say it with me now: Sex is good!" the Rev. Matthew Williams extolled about 100 teens squirming in the pews of Trinity United Church of Christ.
"Sex is good," the crowd mumbled back, as a wave of giggles swept through the sanctuary.
"Amen. Yes it is. Sex is a good thing," said a smiling Williams, one of Trinity's youth pastors. "Sex is a gift from God, but just because it's good, doesn't mean it can't be used in a bad way."
Williams' address was part of the two-day Midwestern Regional Black Religious Summit on Sexuality, a project of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.
The conference, themed "Back That Thang Up: Rethinking Faith and Sexuality," ran Friday and Saturday. It was the group's first conference in the Midwest, drawing teens, pastors and other adults from across the Chicago area, Indiana and Ohio.
"I think the church too long has treated sex as a taboo subject," said the Rev. Carlton Veazey, the coalition's national president. "It's not taught in the home, it's not taught in the schools, so if the church doesn't talk about it, it's going to be taught on the streets."
Veazey says that African-American communities are facing an epidemic of teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, HIV and AIDS, an epidemic that is threatening an entire generation of young people.
"My preference and what I advocate is abstinence. But we've got to acknowledge and recognize that there are a lot of young people who are going to have sex," Veazey said. "It's a challenge. This is a basic responsibility of the church, because we're responsible for the whole person."