Varied views on the human body in the Bible and church tradition shape modern Christians’ attitudes about sexuality, ethicist Melissa Browning told a [Baptist] Conference on Sexuality and Covenant.

Christians need to formulate “an embodied theology … that is rooted in and takes seriously our relationship to our bodies,” Browning told participants at the April 19-21 event at First Baptist Church in Decatur, Ga. The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and Mercer University’s Center for Theology and Public Life sponsored the conference. That kind of theology rooted in experience challenges Christians to re-examine their views on same-sex relations, she asserted.