Much needed realignment of Christian teaching on sexuality

A well-researched and holistic biblical approach to sexuality in marriage. The authors rightly push back strongly against inadequate and harmful popular evanglical teaching on sexuality that is frequently embraced, diseminated, and assumed as practical orthodoxy. In particular, the authors demonstrate that many of the most popular evangelical marriage and sexuality books tend to diminish or outright ignore women's spiritual, psychological, and physical needs, many times causing significant harm.

Twenty thousand women were surveyed for this book project, and the results are largely disturbing, exposing a serious gap within Christian discernment, likely perpetuated by biblically deficient concepts of male headship and husbands' (lack of) responsibilities to their wives. Those having read Kristin Kobe Du Mez's, *Jesus and John Wayne* will not be surprised by the findings in this book. Women have taken the brunt of the harm caused by false ideals of masculinity and male entitlement in North American evangelical subculture.

However, the book is not merely critique, and the authors provide a hopeful way forward. They highlight some very right directions for healthy marriages and sexuality. In this regard, what stood out to me was the portrayal of biblical love as applied to marriages as a mutuality of self-giving by both wife and husband in all areas of the relationship, including sexual dimensions. While likely all Christian books might claim to also advocate this, the reality is that they do not, too often presenting a distorted application of love, favouring the husband's physical needs as the trump card for wifely submission. In contrast, the picture of love in this volume was far more extensive and holistic, calling both spouses to demonstrate Christ-like sacrificial giving of oneself to the other.

This book is recommended for all Christians attempting to process these issues, but is especially an important read for pastors and Christian leaders. ( )

My husband and I were both raised in environments where purity culture was prevalent. The resources on marriage and dating that were available to us when we were dating, engaged, and in our early married years were the resources that Sheila and her co-authors critique in The Great Sex Rescue.

Alarmingly, many of the most popular books on dating and marriage that are published by faith-based publishing houses contain really problematic ideas that can promote harm, prevent healing and even perpetuate abuse within intimate relationships. Just as concerning is the fact that these are the very books that are sold in church bookstores and recommended to people who are considering marriage or working through things together as a married couple. (I know that’s how we ended up with them when we were going to premarital counseling and they were being recommended to us!) These teachings are the ones being taught to married couples in church settings. I spent my teenage and early adult years hearing pastors spread the harmful ideas from those books in pulpits.

I am grateful that I married a good and wise man who saw through the lies those books were telling and that I never bought into them myself (I realize just how privileged I am to be able to say that), but I have also learned from Sheila’s book about just how much of an impact those kinds of teachings can have on marital relationships, even when we don’t believe the untruths. The harm that is being done to marriages within faith-based settings by books like those mentioned in this one is, frankly, chilling and abhorrent.

Throughout the book, Sheila and her co-authors discuss the results of a large survey (over 20,000 participants) with some very interesting results. They break down which types of teachings, language and ideas found in the critiqued books leave room for harm and abuse in relationships and discuss how they were able to observe the effects of those teachings on relationships via the survey results and interviews they conducted as part of their research. The data presented throughout the book is compelling.

There is also a heavy focus on truth-telling and re-framing narratives to help readers understand how to reject harmful teachings and promote healthy relationships instead.

My husband and I read this book together, had many really great discussions about the information presented therein, and would both highly recommend it to anyone who is either married or considering marriage. We also both agree that this book should be required reading for anyone in a position of leadership within a faith-based setting. It is definitely worth picking up a copy. ( )

Things that I think needed to be covered more in depth, possibly in another book: what consent actually is and how that can look in a marriage, and purity culture and its effect on marriage and sex. ( )

One does not have to spend long looking into the world of greater Evangelicalism to discern the Evangelical Marital Industrial Complex: all of the messages that relate to sexuality and the expected exercise of sexuality in marriage leading to having children. Perhaps few things over the past thirty years have become as definitively Evangelical as this marital industrial complex: everything from purity culture to "Christic manhood" to "Biblical womanhood" is covered within it.

We are watching a great reckoning taking place with this Evangelical Marital Industrial Complex, especially in terms of its toxic excesses. The Josh Harris arc and the long line of traumatized men and women tells us all we need to know about the ugliness of purity culture. Du Mez has well analyzed the American conservative anchoring of what passes for Evangelical masculinity in Jesus and John Wayne. Yes, there are many movements toward full egalitarianism about, yet even some who would maintain a more "complementarian" posture are exposing the toxic excesses of what passes for "Biblical womanhood."

And Gregoire et al have set their sights on the toxic ugliness of what passes for Evangelical sexuality in marriage.

While I have discussed other toxic features of the Evangelical Marital Industrial Complex, the authors focus only on the advice given regarding sex in marriage in many commonly recommended Evangelical marital resources and as reflected in the teaching and instruction men and women (ok, mostly women) have received regarding sex in marriage in greater Evangelicalism.

The authors do very well at making their clear contrast between what has generally been taught in Evangelicalism and what is a more healthy and Biblical understanding of sexuality: in these Evangelical resources, sex is a need of men and women ought to give it to them without any real expectation that it will be much good for them. According to God's purposes in marriage, sexuality is a mutually beneficial gift within the marriage relationship, and ought to be a means by which each partner ought to prioritize the pleasure of one another over themselves.

The authors work out this general principle according to the many dimensions it has been abused in greater Evangelicalism: the importance of getting to know one another vs. just rushing right into it after the wedding; getting to know one another's bodies and desires as opposed to just assuming the man always wants it and the woman never does; the importance of loyalty and the need to resist temptation and porn, and for the man to own that, as opposed to expecting the wife's body to be the means by which he can resist porn; the difficulty with the expectation of "duty sex" and how many men do not even understand how thoroughly ingrained it is in women to always say yes even if they don't want it; the reality of marital rape vs. a galling lack of concern for consent in many Evangelical marital guides. The authors do attempt to encourage their readers about means by which they can improve their sex lives and get beyond the distortions and toxicity they have encountered in Evangelical marital guides.

I personally must confess that I have often recommended the Love & Respect material, primarily because I have believed that its general message about communication in relationships has proven useful in marital contexts. I personally had not thought much of its advice regarding sex and sexuality, even though its perspective is not my own. But having it put this way absolutely shows how toxic its views on sexuality can be in a marriage relationship.

The authors well manage how 1 Corinthians 7:1-5 ought to be interpreted, especially in light of the mutuality of love in Philippians 2:1-4 and Ephesians 5:25-33. My one significant qualm involves how the authors handle Ephesians 5:22-23: in the text itself, they rely on their survey research to demonstrate what they deem the problematic nature of expectations of the husband making the final decision, and in their note in the back their exegesis does not work much better. Yes, the verb is elided in v. 22 because it is carried from v. 21 (although it shows up again in v. 24); yes, there is to be a mutuality in submission, no doubt. But Ephesians 5:22, and 24, are there for a reason; there are different expectations for the husband and wife listed there for some reason, after all; and in a work that has otherwise done very well at respecting the witness of the Apostle, the stark contradiction here is all the more disappointing. It would have been better to emphasize that the subjection of the wife in vv. 22, 24 is never expected to be a coerced thing, but a freewill offering; if the wife does not feel as if she has been heard, that's a failure of leadership in her husband. I don't doubt the quality of the survey research, but it ought to be asked: how much of that strife and difficulty comes from the premise that wives are to offer their subjection as a freewill offering to their husbands, or how much of it comes from husbands not loving their wives as Christ loved the church and caring for them as their own bodies according to Ephesians 5:23, 25-29? I am concerned this might be a bit of an over-reaction. Likewise, when discussing the (often galling and awful) emphasis that wives should make sure they don't gain weight yet said books never say much about the husband, it is understandable to emphasize how male weight gain can lead to serious difficulties in sex, but if I were not reading that section carefully and noted that they did speak about both maintaining that kind of concern, it would have been easy to think that they were just doing the opposite of that which they were rightly condemning; a little bit more clarity there about how both spouses should give thought to how their bodies are helping or hindering their ability to enjoy sex would go a long way).

I do not want these criticisms to suggest that I have major concerns with the work; far from it. This book needs to be considered far and wide in greater Evangelicalism to offset the damaging instruction given in the Evangelical Marital Industrial Complex. The authors of the marriage guides, the Lemans and Eggerichses of greater Evangelicalism, should repent, immediately rewrite their material, and make their repentance known; otherwise they should be ashamed of themselves. Until then, the message of this book needs to be reshared and given over and over again until it becomes the prevailing norm in greater Evangelicalism; may it be that many will be as ashamed of the poor sex advice as they have become about purity culture.

Also - when is greater Evangelicalism going to recognize the judgment that it is under, the pain and distress it has caused, and begins to repent of all of its adherence to American cultural conservatism in ways that have seriously compromised its pretense of holding firm to Jesus?

**--galley received as part of early review program ( )