What Would Jesus Do? Sexuality and Salvation in Protestant Evangelical Sex Manuals, 1950s to the Present

Bibliographic Data

ID3399786
AuthorsAmy Derogatis (0000-0002-1554-0152, corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume74
Issue1
Pages97-137
Publication date2005-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueChurch History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0009-6407 • E-ISSN: 1755-2613
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0009640700109679
OpenAlexW2160721103
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited22

When President Bill Clinton testified before a Grand Jury hearing on August 17, 1998 that he "did not have sexual intercourse with that woman, Miss Lewinsky," the American public learned at least two important lessons. First, the definition of sex was debatable and second, the authority to define sex as sexual intercourse was the crucial factor in the meaning of that pesky verb "is." The questions of what is sex and, more importantly, who defines it have been studied and discussed thoroughly by scholars of U.S. history and culture. In American popular culture the social scientific findings published in the Kinsey Reports (1948, 1953) and William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson's Human Sexual Response (1966) provided information (or "scientific facts") for lay people regarding the diversity and possibility of human sexual expression: what sex "is." The growing awareness since the late 1950s that sex is more than one specific act has led many people to question whether sex as we learn it from our parents, teachers, clergy, friends, books, and science is "natural" (a matter of biological response) or socially constructed (a matter of cultural control). Opinions vary, tempers flare, and the mountain of sex advice manuals available at local bookstores attests to the U.S. public's insatiable appetite for knowledge about sex

Diversity (politics) · Human sexuality · Immorality · Meaning (existential) · Morality · Political science · Protestantism · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Law · Psychology · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity