Sex and the Modern Christian Male: A Case Study on the Effects of Participation among Religious Activities on the Sexual Behavior of Heterosexual Male College Students

Abstract

Rapidly increasing population, poverty, and crime rates were the primary antecedents of conducting this study. These are some of the major products of irresponsible and mismanaged sexual behavior that critically affect our country for the past years up to present and probably will have a greater impact on the future if not solved immediately. Annual local surveys show most critical figures among the youth age population regarding sexual risk behaviors. This trend has been observed a decade ago and is still continuing to surge on an increasing level. International literature supports the assumption of the study that religious activities affect the sexual behavior of heterosexual males, particularly, inhibiting male sexual behavior; but locally there are only a few and mostly unprofessional researches in the field. The bulk of the credible researches in this field are surveys which are purely untreated statistical data that need proper analysis and interpretation. This calls for the need to establish the topic. Statistics of local surveys clearly show that attention should be focused on the issue, yet in our country, especially the government, provides minimal programs and policies focused on solving these social problems. Specifically, the study assumes that first, high participation among religious activities reduces the frequency of sexual activity; and second, high participation among religious activities increases sexual restrictiveness (in terms of contraceptive method, and number of sexual partners). The instrumentation of the study is divided into two parts which are first, filtering of respondents and second, Key Informant Interviews with the selected case study subjects. To filter the respondents, the population was taken from Manila. Among the thirty-three colleges and universities in Manila, three schools were randomly selected to represent the male college students in Manila. To be able to find the representative sample population, a research was first conducted to get a list of all the names of universities and colleges in Manila. Thirty-three schools have been listed. To get a sufficient number of representatives from the population, ten per cent of the number of the population will be selected. Thus, three schools were selected by picking a school from the list every after twenty-five counts. Thus, FEATI University, Technological University of the Philippines (TUP), and Centro Escolar University of the Philippines (CEU) were selected to represent the male college students in Manila. Thirty sexually active, 18-25 year old male students, ten each school, were given questionnaires. The questionnaires were designed to gauge the religious and sexual activity of the students. Then for the second part, from the three schools, only one was chosen to be included in the case study proper. Centro Escolar University was chosen for having the highest rate of participation in religious activities, highest rate of church attendance, highest frequency of reading the Bible, and lowest frequency of sexual intercourse. Five respondents with a combination of highest religious activity and lowest sexual activity were selected as case study subjects to get in-depth information on how and why their behavior and cognition has shifted from not religious and sexually active to religious and sexually abstinent, on a processual basis. The interview was centered on five themes: a life-changing religious event, peer guidance, religious exploration, religious commitment, and living the Gospel. Through the gathered, analyzed and interpreted data from the purposive sample, it was concluded that religious activities do affect male sexual behavior by means of reducing the frequency of sexual activity and increasing sexual restrictiveness; but it was found that religious activities regulate the reduction and inhibition of male sexual behavior to the extent stopping it via temporary abstinence - respondents have zero sexual activity for years and have vowed to commit again into sexual intercourse only after marriage. It was also noted that upon the respondents' abstinence, restriction of sexual behavior and sexual cognition was facilitated independently of religious activities. This means that male sexual behavior, which was previously controlled and restricted by religious activities have shifted to being controlled and restricted by the individual's cognition. Furthermore, the teachings and doctrines incorporated among the religious activities the individual attends such as Gospels and Homilies have been instilled in the individual's mind and are practiced in his everyday life. This concludes that religious activities are a very powerful tool for controlling and shaping behavior. And in future researches, it may not be impossible to discover an inverted relationship between religious activities and other risk behaviors which are not only limited to the youth such as alcoholism, drug addiction, and gambling. Conducting studies in this field might also be another step for solving the problems of our contemporary society. It is recommended that further studies in this field be pursued such as conducting nationwide quantitative surveys to support the findings of this study, discover new trends, generate more analyses, and generalize conclusions.