Sex and Religion: Exploring Erotic Religious Symbolism

Last Updated on 9 September, 2025 by Cara Sutra

Exploring the links between sex and religion, this article dives into how religious symbolism can be subverted, perverted, and reclaimed for erotic pleasure. From taboo-breaking thrills to fetishising sacred icons, it uncovers why mixing faith and desire provokes such powerful reactions.

Celebrating the RedErection and the Life – by Zak Jane Keir

Because religion is all about control and enforcing irrational taboos, particularly around sex, it’s not exactly surprising that subverting and perverting religious symbolism is a massive turn on for a lot of people. Sometimes we like to get off on the things we despise, or the things that we fear, whether that’s in a spirit of gleeful taboo-shattering or as a way of reclaiming our bodies and ourselves from a vicious, harmful mythology that has haunted us for most of our lives.

Probably time for a quick disclaimer here: while I hold all religions in equal contempt (your imaginary friend is not my problem, whatever you choose to call him/her) I’m British-born, white and over 50 so the tropes I grew up surrounded with with are all broadly Christian and I don’t have the in-depth knowledge of the other myth systems necessary to give you any specific suggestions on how to fuck around with them.

Of course, just being female and sexually autonomous is blasphemous in itself: the root of pretty much every religion was finding or making up some special magic reason why human reproduction was the property, responsibility and choice of men rather than women, and that men should be in charge of it. Women choosing for themselves who they will have sex with and whether or not they will engage in PIV sex (the sort that potentially makes babies) infuriates the superstitious. Asserting your right to display your body, to go out seeking sex on your own terms, to take it up the arse or have a 69, to get busy with other women or with several men of your choice at once can have an extra thrill of transgressive pleasure if you have previously been taught that your body is evil or unworthy of attention and your libido a danger to you and everyone else.

Fetish and BDSM lovers can also find the trappings of power, control, transgression and punishment attached to religions very exciting. Many kinky people enjoy a dynamic which involves doing wrong, being punished and then forgiven or rewarded for enduring the punishment – although some of the more po-faced perverts can get really fucking tedious with regard to the ‘spiritual’ woo-bollocks elements of pleasure/pain. (Just for the record, there is no higher power you can connect with by getting your arse whacked or indeed by receiving a particularly good session of oral. If an atheist yells ‘Oh God’ at the moment of orgasm this is just a bit of learned vernacular, not a paranormal experience.) It’s not unheard of, either, to have a particular fetish for nuns/priests/monks – the idea of corrupting the incorruptible because you are so wickedly irresistible is exciting, as is the idea that the more righteous and chaste someone appears to be, the more desperately thirsty s/he is at heart.

Of course, it’s Easter, which is the Christian festival most associated with ‘fertility rituals’  and symbols that are not really that Christian at all – though there is still no agreement, let alone any proof, as to which specific ancient pagan feast  inspired the annual celebration of eggs, bunnies, flowers and binging on chocolate. I wish you all joy and delight in the springtime, whether your bunnies are battery-powered or the sort that moan with joy when you wrap them up in rope, and if you want to mark the occasion by eating a Creme Egg off your favourite playmate’s naughty bits then go right ahead.

And yes, there really is such a thing as a Baby Jesus Buttplug. Whether it is more or less effective than a standard model is something I have yet to investigate, but I can see it serving a purpose as a conversation-opener in a swingers’ club, at the very least…

– Zak Jane Keir

About the writer: Zak Jane Keir describes herself as a maker of stuff, writer of rude words, drinker of much cider, feminist, deviant, atheist, book junkie and morris dancer.

Please click to read Zak’s blog and buy her erotic books on Amazon. 

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