Do Christians have the best sex? What kind of sex is best? And what does sex have to do with salvation?
If you have ever wondered how evangelicals seek to answer these questions, then Amy DeRogatis’s recently published book Saving Sex: Sexuality and Salvation in American Evangelicalism is for you. In Saving Sex, DeRogatis meticulously documents how American evangelicals talk about sex and sexuality. Her primary argument is that evangelicals have long attempted to use sexual practice as a marker of distinction from “secular” American culture. In particular, proper sexual practice becomes a symbol of Christian salvation and is imbued with eternal and spiritual significance, which is intended to testify, or serve as a witness, to a broader public. Despite this, evangelicals are not disconnected from popular American culture. Evangelical authors are eager to prove their cultural relevance, even as they claim the authority of scripture to differentiate themselves from one another and American culture at large.
DeRogatis convincingly shows the seriousness with which evangelicals since the 1970s have set out to prove that Christian sex—that is, sex ordered by “biblical principles”—is the best kind of sex. To do this, evangelical authors and leaders are extremely engaged with wider conversations and social trends, debating and discussing issues such as sexual surrogacy, sexually transmitted diseases and sexual health, reproductive rights and contraception, and the gendered dynamics of sexual desire and pleasure. While reading her text, I was struck by the degree to which evangelicals have long sought to convince themselves and others that their lives, in all dimensions—including sex or lack thereof—differ qualitatively (for the better) from the lives of “secular” others. The irony, of course, is that the sheer volume of evangelical popular literature on sexuality suggests that, when it comes to the mechanics and meaning of sex, believers need extra guidance and support in order to materialize the promise of better sex in their own lives.
Sex and Salvation treats evangelical belief and practice with nuance and seriousness. The book is intended to be accessible to a general audience, and DeRogatis delivers. Her tone is even-handed and sympathetic to the internal contradictions, dilemmas, and desires of evangelicals, as she helps to make sense for outsiders of what might be considered strange or retrograde evangelical beliefs. DeRogatis does an exceptional job of breaking down and analyzing several different streams of evangelical literature, teaching the reader much about the desires, practices, and ideals that shape a significant number of American lives. Chapters deal with purity literature, which promotes an ideal of chastity; Christian sex manuals that extol the benefits of marital sexual pleasure; charismatic “deliverance” literature that warns of the invisible negative effects of illicit sex; and Christian Patriarchy/Quiverfull literature, which focuses on sex for reproduction and teaches total submission (including sexual) of wives to their husbands. The final chapter deals with how these ideas are reframed by African American evangelicals who emphasize themes of sexual redemption and healing.
The inclusion of a final chapter on African American evangelical views, after four chapters of predominantly white evangelical discourse, is important: it underscores the diversity of the evangelical movement, which is often treated as homogeneous, but it also serves to highlight the role of race in American evangelical thought. Careful reading of Saving Sex reveals how American evangelicalism is insidiously wrapped up with the production of whiteness—the cultural processes that work to hold up white practices, beliefs, and ideals as superior, natural, and normal. As many critical race scholars have argued, ideas about sexual propriety cannot be divorced from race. Sexual practices have long been used to differentiate and maintain the lines between white Americans and their racial “others.” Sex and Salvation illustrates how white and black evangelical discourses indirectly reinforce a binary whereby white evangelicals are able to define and police the proper boundaries of respectable sexuality, and African Americans continue to be represented (and to understand themselves) as hypersexual and in need of reform. For example, DeRogatis notes white evangelical obsession with metaphors of purity—the spoken desire for unmarried daughters to remain “lily-white” by practicing self-restraint and marrying a suitable spouse—as well the dominance of military metaphors of attack and defense. By contrast, black evangelical leaders affirm many of these ideals, but tend to assume that their unmarried audience has been, or will be, sexually active. Unlike white evangelicals, they acknowledge complicated sexual histories and work with their audience to remove stigmas associated with sexual impropriety. In short, they preach redemption rather than perfection.
However, the book fails to consider the degree to which white evangelicals might obscure their own investment in racial purity by making “secular” culture their primary point of distinction. Much could also be said, for example, about how an extreme focus on fertility and reproduction by white evangelicals might be tied to broader cultural anxieties regarding the collapse of Western civilization and a white “Christian” America.
White evangelical teachings on sex, sexuality, and gender not only reproduce ideas of racial purity, they also reproduce ideas of the heterosexual nuclear family as normative, and they communicate much about American ambivalence towards things like feminism and science. DeRogatis discusses, for example, how the Christian Patriarchy/Quiverfull movement is almost exclusively white and promoted by self-publishing women who are outside the evangelical mainstream and remain skeptical of male “experts” and science. These women extol the benefits of large families, natural birth, and strict, traditionally defined roles for men and women. This made me wonder how the Quiverfull movement might be understood in relation to other social movements, such as the more secular “New Domesticity” movement, which DeRogatis does not explore. Like Quiverfull writers, the New Domesticity movement also extols the “natural” role of women as caregivers and homemakers. Both movements position themselves as critiques of second wave feminism and appropriate feminist language of empowerment and control to describe their beliefs and values, though an explicit emphasis on patriarchy is unique to Quiverfull thought.
When it comes to the role of gender in evangelical sex talk, DeRogatis’ text raises difficult questions regarding consent and abuse. Just as Sex and Salvation was published, the news was filled with stories of the collapse of Mars Hill church in Seattle and the downfall of its high-profile pastor Mark Driscoll, whom DeRogatis writes much. Driscoll is notorious for his views on sex, marriage, gender, and family. Though Driscoll is best known for his “Christian hedonistic” approach to sex, Sex and Salvation reveals how he is also indebted to many of the ideas and beliefs found in purity and deliverance literature, including the idea of literal “sexual demons.” Many former members of Mars Hill have started to speak out about the destructive impact of the church’s teachings and Driscoll’s leadership.
It is worth noting here that there is a growing “post-purity” discourse among evangelicals that focuses on experiences of trauma and shame tied to evangelical teaching on sex, sexuality, and gender, and psychologists who work in the evangelical world are starting to raise significant questions about the long-term effects of Christian purity movements on adult sexuality. At the same time, many of these reform attempts follow the familiar evangelical model of focusing on (heterosexual) marital sex as the ultimate and most fulfilling form of sexual practice. To extend DeRogatis’ argument, post-purity discourse might be seen as a new way for those identified with evangelicalism to once again define a “Christian” ethic that resonates with broader conversations about sexual health, wellness, and pleasure.
I approached this text curious to learn not just what evangelicals teach and believe about sex, but how their beliefs and teachings are shaped by American culture. DeRogatis shows how Christian sex manuals build on earlier historical material and are influenced by outside events, such as the rise of the sexual liberation and equality movements. The fact that Mark Driscoll and his wife Grace were, in 2011, writing about anal sex, masturbation, and cybersex speaks to the anxiety that evangelicals feel about proving that their vision of biblical sexuality can accommodate a multiplicity of desires, albeit always within a heterosexual marital frame. At the same time, the evangelical focus on the pleasure-giving, unitive, and mystic dimensions of sex is not particular to evangelicals, and DeRogatis makes some fascinating links to the broader therapeutic and wellness culture that began in the 1960s. A next step would be to theorize how secular and evangelical American discourses on sex are related to a shared cultural, political, and historical horizon. I suspect that the desires, ideals, and themes promoted by secular American culture might not always be as far removed from evangelical ideas as evangelicals themselves imagine them to be.
To be fair, DeRogatis is clear in her introduction about what the book is and what it is not: it is primarily a study of evangelical discourse as it is articulated by key figures and not a study of believers’ lived realities. Thus, it would be impossible to expect her to explore all of the issues raised here. But Saving Sex could easily be the starting point for a broader scholarly investigation of contemporary American evangelicalism and sexuality, which could include historical, literary, and ethnographic studies. What is clear from Saving Sex is that popular evangelical literature (formal and informal) is meant to instruct Christians on proper sexual practice, to place shifting notions of sexuality in a theological frame, and to warn believers about the dangers of illicit sexual activity. Evangelical writers take very different approaches to what is considered godly and illicit sex, and herein lies the value of DeRogatis’s work. In showing the diversity of thought within American evangelicalism, she allows evangelicals to emerge as a complex social category whose views on sex have local and global implications.
Thank you for a balanced review. It is a great invitation to read the book.