[ALSO SEE “Elyse Fitzpatrick Revisited,” PAL, Vol. 26 No. 6]
We wrote the book The Sodomy of Christians: The Biblical View for Christians who desire to think and live according to the Word of God, because many, perhaps unknowingly, are following the sinful ways of the world in the marriage bed. 1 In it we reveal how the sexual revolution of the sixties has influenced not only the world, but also the church. We describe how and why, in recent history, many Christians moved from orthodox (sound doctrine) biblical beliefs about sexuality to the outright acceptance and practice of sodomy. The legal definition states that whether sodomy is between “a man and a woman, two women, or two men,” it is still sodomy.2 We warn about the dangers of such sexual practices and urge all Christians to discipline their bodies according to God’s sexual design as revealed in Scripture.
We were constrained to present this information, because many books written by Christians have been recommending that Christian couples engage in certain sexual practices that are the primary ones used by homosexuals. Not only have Christian authors and pastors been recommending these sinful practices, but biblical counselors have also been recommending the same for their counselees. We critiqued biblical counseling leader Heath Lambert’s very pointed allusion to such practices in our article titled “Dr. Heath Lambert: A Failed Biblical Counseling Case.”3 Now we critique another leader and popular biblical counseling author and speaker, Elyse Fitzpatrick.
Fitzpatrick earned a certificate in Biblical Counseling from the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation in San Diego and an M.A. in Biblical Counseling from Trinity Theological Seminary. She is both a counselor and popular speaker at women’s conferences. She has been married for over 40 years to Phil and they have three adult children. She has authored 23 books for Christians and her work has been recommended by numerous leading evangelicals. “Upcoming Events” and “Previous Events” on her website, www.elysefitzpatrick.com, indicate that she is a frequent speaker in evangelical circles.
Fitzpatrick’s teachings have been supplied by the Institute for Biblical Counseling and Discipleship (IBCD), which is a national organization with a prolific amount of material on biblical counseling and related subjects. IBCD provides audios by 60 leading evangelicals, including leaders in the biblical counseling movement. Fitzpatrick is included in this list and has more audios available than any other person on the list. One of the 39 audios by Fitzpatrick is titled “Not in the Mood Sexual Problems in Marriage,” which is a talk that was given to an all-female audience, primarily made up of biblical counselors.
“Not in the Mood Sexual Problems in Marriage”
Like many biblical counselors, Fitzpatrick’s talk titled “Not in the Mood Sexual problems in Marriage”4 has both good and biblically questionable material. Early in her talk, she says:
Yesterday was Phil’s birthday. So we got home last night and I’d been sick for days. He went in and he took a shower, and I know in his mind he’s thinking, “It’s my birthday, but I’m striking out tonight because she’s in a conference and she’s sick.” Right?
Fitzpatrick next describes Phil as walking out of the bathroom after his shower and dramatizes how she enticed him with a very sultry, sexy, singsongy voice, “Happy birthday to you. Happy Birthday, Mr. President.” The women in the audience roared with laughter as if they had heard a very risqué joke. Later in her talk, as she is encouraging women to be aggressive in sex, she advises: “There needs to be times in which you sing to your husband ‘Happy Birthday, Mr. President,’ and it’s okay.” Was this sexy interlude described by Fitzpatrick an allusion to President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky?
Another perplexing piece of the puzzle is Fitzpatrick recommending two books to her all-women audience. One of them is Sexual Intimacy in Marriage, which Fitzpatrick describes as “A very good book.” She later says, “This book Sexual Intimacy in Marriage would be a very good book for you if you need information about this stuff.” We obtained the book and found a great number of sexual activities favorably described, from acts of sodomy to the use of sex toys. The Christian authors of the book, William Cutrer, M.D., and Sandra Glahn, support a great number of sexual practices for believers, including sodomy, as long as there is mutual consent by the couple.
This combination of a Christian medical doctor and a Christian woman as coauthors gives a tacit message that their sexual recommendations meet medical requirements and should be considered biblically acceptable to Christian women. Their book raises questions about how much of what they leave open to married couples is being practiced by the two authors and the Fitzpatricks as well, since she recommends this “very good book.” In addition, since the Fitzpatricks counsel Christian couples and regard the area of sex as essential to a good marriage, one has to ask: what are they teaching these couples about their sexual opportunities or limitations with one another, if any?
Towards the end of her talk, Fitzpatrick says, “If my [adult] daughter was sitting in here and I talked about ‘Happy birthday, Mr. President,’ she would be throwing up.” We add Fitzpatrick’s original remark to the content of the “very good book” she recommends to her final reference to her daughter regarding that original remark, and we conclude that she really was referring to what Monica Lewinsky gave to President Bill Clinton and, thus, to what she was offering Phil on his birthday.
Several problems: First, why would a known-to-be-godly woman and popular, well-known Christian author and prolific conference speaker, who influences many women in the church, publicly describe her private sexual relations with her husband? Second, she had been “sick for days’ and must have been carrying germs in her mouth, which sets an unhealthy example for the other women, not only the biblical counselors in the audience, but likely their counselees.
Moreover, using the Clinton-Lewinsky allusion as an example of her gift to her husband on his birthday was a seriously sinful choice. And, why, oh why, did she publicly mention how her adult daughter would react to her sensual, sultry “Happy Birthday” song if she had been there? Finally, with a room full of biblical counselors, Fitzpatrick is sending her sinful, sex-saturated message as an example to them and through them to many others!
Conclusion
Since the sexual revolution in the 1960s, the sexual acts of sodomy have crept into the church and are now favorably taught by many Christians as “joyful possibilities” for the marriage bed. Fitzpatrick is just one of many Christians favorably teaching publicly about the option of adding acts of sodomy to marital intimacy. But, she is the only one, of whom we are aware, who publicly gives a personal example from her own sexual intimacy with her husband! Who would have imagined that one dividing line of faith in the evangelical church would ever be between those who believe that the Bible supports acts of sodomy in marriage and those who say that such sexual acts were derived from homosexual practices and are contrary to God’s ordained design for marriage?!
[ALSO SEE “Elyse Fitzpatrick Revisited,” PAL, Vol. 26 No. 6]
Endnotes
1 Martin and Deidre Bobgan. The Sodomy of Christians: The Biblical View. Santa Barbara: EastGate Publishers, 2017, available at amazon.com..
2 “Sodomy,” www.legaldictionary.net/sodomy/.
3 Martin & Deidre Bobgan, “Dr. Heath Lambert: A Failed Biblical Counseling Case,” PsychoHeresy Awareness Letter,” July-August 2016, https://www.pamweb.org/lambert.html.
4 Elyse Fitzpatrick, “Not in the Mood Sexual Problems in Marriage,” https://ibcd.org/not-in-the-mood-sexual-problems-in-marriage/.
(PsychoHeresy Awareness Letter, September-October 2018, Vol. 26, No.5)