{"id":35693,"date":"2024-05-16T11:12:37","date_gmt":"2024-05-16T15:12:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/?p=35693"},"modified":"2024-05-16T11:12:37","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T15:12:37","slug":"what-christians-can-learn-from-bridgerton-about-sex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2024\/05\/what-christians-can-learn-from-bridgerton-about-sex.html","title":{"rendered":"What Christians Can Learn From &#8220;Bridgerton&#8221; About Sex"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_35690\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-35690\" style=\"width: 550px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/87\/2024\/05\/bridgerton_credit-Netflix.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-35690\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/87\/2024\/05\/bridgerton_credit-Netflix-550x413.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"550\" height=\"413\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-35690\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Netflix<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I\u2019m a woman, I love period dramas and I\u2019m Black. So when a new Netflix series called &#8220;Bridgerton&#8221; was said to have been blind cast and with a diverse group of actors, I was already sold.<\/p>\n<p>Set during the Regency era in England, &#8220;Bridgerton&#8221; is the story of a small London community and the attempts of its inhabitants to find love. We enter the story at the time of debutante season, during which the eponymous Bridgerton family and others, present their daughters at court so that they can be married.<\/p>\n<p>Back in the 19th century, unmarried women of my age would be \u201cspinsters\u201d: women past their prime and unlikely to find a suitor willing to marry them and be their provider and head of the household. I remember fondly a moment when, at supper the night before I was married, my genuinely lovely step father-in-law announced a toast to my \u201clast night as a spinster\u201d. I was 26.<\/p>\n<p>So I was old, but with the carnal knowledge that many of the young women in &#8220;Bridgerton&#8221; did not have as they entered into relationship with their new husbands. When looking for someone to write this piece, many were surprised that a Christian publication wanted to write something about sex. I was amused, mainly because sex is literally what got us all here, but also saddened if we as the Church refuse to engage in conversations around sex and relationships, then it leaves space for the world to define \u2013 and often distort \u2013 what it should look like.<\/p>\n<p>Silence around sex is something the young women, girls really, of the Bridgerton era knew only too well. When Daphne Bridgerton begs her mother to tell her what to expect when she is finally alone with her soon-to-be husband, Simon Bassett, the Duke of Hastings, her mother appears embarrassed and shys away from telling her the truth; feeding into the sense that sex is something shameful to be hidden away. When Daphne and her new husband \u2013 who, like many men of that time is all too familiar with conjugal pleasures \u2013 finally consummate their marriage, I was surprised. A beautiful sex scene sounds like an oxymoron but it was encouraging to see two people committed to both life and intimacy together, in the traditional way we see it ordained in the Bible.<\/p>\n<p>A modern rhetoric largely passed around media for young people suggests that you have to \u201ctry before you buy\u201d when it comes to relationships. I\u2019ve often heard it said that you can\u2019t wait until marriage before you sleep with someone because, \u201cwhat if it\u2019s awful??\u201d I wasn\u2019t a virgin when I got married and I can\u2019t change the past but I do love that in &#8220;Bridgerton,&#8221; Hollywood gives us a really positive picture of intimacy with a woman who waited. There is much imperfection in the relationship between Daphne and Simon, as there is in all of us. But if you ask me, there is something beautiful in their committed acts of physical love in &#8220;Bridgerton&#8221; that we as Christians would do well to celebrate.<\/p>\n<p><em>This article originally appeared on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.womanalive.co.uk\/home\/what-christians-can-learn-from-bridgerton-about-sex\/5161.article\">WomanAlive.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m a woman, I love period dramas and I\u2019m Black. So when a new Netflix series called &#8220;Bridgerton&#8221; was said to have been blind cast and with a diverse group of actors, I was already sold. Set during the Regency era in England, &#8220;Bridgerton&#8221; is the story of a small London community and the attempts&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":630,"featured_media":35690,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-television"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What Christians Can Learn From &quot;Bridgerton&quot; About Sex<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2024\/05\/what-christians-can-learn-from-bridgerton-about-sex.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What Christians Can Learn From &quot;Bridgerton&quot; About Sex\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I\u2019m a woman, I love period dramas and I\u2019m Black. So when a new Netflix series called &#8220;Bridgerton&#8221; was said to have been blind cast and with a diverse group of actors, I was already sold. Set during the Regency era in England, &#8220;Bridgerton&#8221; is the story of a small London community and the attempts&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2024\/05\/what-christians-can-learn-from-bridgerton-about-sex.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Idol Chatter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-05-16T15:12:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/87\/2024\/05\/bridgerton_credit-Netflix.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"900\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Guest Contributor\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"What Christians Can Learn From \"Bridgerton\" About Sex","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2024\/05\/what-christians-can-learn-from-bridgerton-about-sex.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"What Christians Can Learn From \"Bridgerton\" About Sex","og_description":"I\u2019m a woman, I love period dramas and I\u2019m Black. 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