17AR22-42

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AR 22:42 - The battle over sexual norms and Christian purity

In this issue:

MORALITY - "when many evangelical Christians were not against - and some even actively supported - abortion"

+ secular sociologists consider evangelical claims that "personal decisions about sexuality will have broader impact on collective well-being"

Apologia Report 22:42 (1,362)

November 22, 2017

MORALITY

Moral Combat: How Sex Divided American Christians and Fractured American Politics, by R. Marie Griffith [1] -- from the publisher: "Moral Combat is a history of how the Christian consensus on sex unraveled, and how this unraveling has made our political battles over sex so ferocious and so intractable. ... In the 1920s, after women gained the right to vote nationwide, a longstanding religious consensus about sexual morality began to fray irreparably. The slow but steady unraveling of that consensus in the decades that followed has transformed America's broader culture and public life, dividing our politics and pushing sex to the center of our public debate. ... The origins of these conflicts, historian R. Marie Griffith <www.goo.gl/uEeV55> argues, lie in sharp disagreements that emerged among American Christians a century ago. From the 1920s onward, a once-solid Christian consensus regarding gender roles and sexual morality began to crumble, as liberal Protestants sparred with fundamentalists and Catholics over questions of obscenity, sex education, and abortion. Both those who advocated for greater openness in sexual matters and those who resisted new sexual norms turned to politics to pursue their moral visions for the nation."

From Kirkus (Oct 1 '17) we read: "Thoughtful study of the great schism between religious conservatives and progressives about women's control over their own bodies. It may be hard to believe, but there was a time when many evangelical Christians were not against - and some even actively supported - abortion and its legalization. Indeed, writes Griffith ... in 1969, a survey of Texas Baptists revealed that 90 percent 'felt their state's abortion law should be loosened.' What happened in the intervening years? By the author's account, the story stretches back a century and more, to the time of Margaret Sanger on one side and Anthony Comstock on the other and their war over the issue of contraception. Through Comstock's agitation, the federal government had made it illegal, as long ago as 1873, to even possess a pamphlet advocating contraception. Sanger's militant working-class Catholicism, lashed with socialism and other progressive causes, would have made her a public enemy in her time in any event, but interestingly, as Griffith notes, she was strategically crafty in recruiting Protestant clergy to what boiled down to a fairly simple thesis: laws governing the 'morality' of women should be 'crafted by women themselves.' Though academically rigorous, Griffith's account is both accessible and eye-opening: it simply astonishes that Christian organizations were instrumental in 'family life' - meaning sex - education. But that's one flavor of Christianity, of course; the other is a rigorously fundamentalist one, and the two eventually pitched 'a battle over the moral framework in which sexual knowledge would be embedded and over who had the right to determine just what those frameworks would be.' As with every other battle in every other arena in which conservatives and progressives face off, the heat rose with the rise of Donald Trump; Griffith hopes that one day the rancor will finally 'rouse a fractured nation to build a bearable peace.' A welcome addition to the vast library on American religious discord."

Publishers Weekly (Oct 9 '17) adds: "Griffith opens not with the free-wheeling sexual revolution of the 1960s but in the '20s.... Griffith goes on to use D.H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover as her prime example of how sensibilities around sexuality changed dramatically during the 20th century - the novel first appeared in America, abridged, in 1928, and could not be published in full until more than three decades later. With her account of the role played by prominent clergy and religious movements working to liberalize abortion law, Griffith argues that Roe v. Wade is best understood not solely as part of the women's liberation movement but in the context of religious support for abortion rights. Likewise, her account of the theology that justified racial segregation illustrates an area where religious and cultural beliefs clash. Griffith's remarkably comprehensive book will be of interest to scholars and lay readers alike."

In her review of Virgin Nation: Sexual Purity and American Adolescence, by Sara Moslener [2], Eliza Young Barstow (Ohio State University) reports: "A historian, Moslener [Religion, Central Michigan University] demonstrates that American evangelicals have long utilized the rhetoric of sexual purity to buttress their arguments that evangelical Christianity is critical to national stability. As Moslener explains, evangelicals have asserted that a lack of sexual self-discipline is a slippery slope not only for the individual but also for human civilization as a whole.

"The Silver Ring Thing and True Love Waits - contemporary groups that both promote adolescent abstinence - stem from some of the same trends that led to the emergence of megachurches, Christian rock, and evangelical therapeutic culture; that is, each of these phenomena developed, in part because of what Moslener calls the 'individualistic turn in American evangelicalism.' Moslener argues, however, that 'sexual purity needs a far broader historical trajectory.' She asks readers to reconceptualize the timeline of the evangelical purity movement, looking to the late nineteenth century for the origins rather than the 1970s.

"According to Moslener, 'the history of sexual purity in the United States begins with a reversal of traditional teachings about men and women.' In the nineteenth century, some feminists argued that women, instead of being the morally weak (à la Eve), were in fact the moral foundation of society. Francis Willard, the president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, is a key example of this mindset.... Willard promoted the need for sexual boundaries between whites and non-whites....

"Reading the Oxford historian Arnold J. Toynbee (who wrote about the rise and fall of 21 civilizations) and sociologist Pitirim Sorokin ..., the neo-evangelicals of the postwar era found arguments that linked sexual immorality to the decine of civilization. ...

"In the late twentieth century, evangelical fears moved beyond concerns about national decline to broader concerns about cosmic battles between forces of good and evil. As such, groups such as the Silver Ring Thing deploy the language of fear, urging young adults to recognize that personal decisions about their sexuality will have broader impact on collective well-being." Sociology of Religion, 77:3 - 2016, pp307-8.

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SOURCES: Monographs

1 - Moral Combat: How Sex Divided American Christians and Fractured American Politics, by R. Marie Griffith (Basic, 2017, hardcover, 416 pages) <www.goo.gl/b6jdn9>

2 - Virgin Nation: Sexual Purity and American Adolescence, by Sara Moslener (Oxford Univ Prs, 2015, hardcover, 232 pages) <www.goo.gl/8qeaV5>

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