Books on Religion and Morality
Is celibacy the only moral alternative to marriage? In answering provocative questions on the nature of sexual relationships, Bishop Spong proposes for the church a positive and pastoral response to the changing patterns of human relationships in the world today.  McNeill, an ordained priest and practicing psychotherapist, reveals the freedom that lesbian and gay Christians can find by connecting with the spirit of God that dwells within.  "Divine Sex examines every Biblical reference to human sexual practice. By using tools of modern scholarship, evidence is produced to show that the Bible does not actually say what generations of professional religionists have told us. The Bible does not forbid all sexual activity other than monogamous heterosexual intercourse. Instead it treats us to a wide range of God-approved, and sometimes even God-supplied, sexual possibilities that the church has never told us about. "God is the Architect both of human sexuality, and of sexual pleasure. The passion, pleasure and possibilities of sex are His gift to humanity. Like any proud parent, Father God is pleased and honored when His kids delight in His gift/ God made sex to be fun. He is not embarrassed nor is He angered when we enjoy it. Sex as God designed it to be is truly Divine." - From the publisher's page  An extremely well-researched work on the origins of marriage, with a great deal of material touching on the religious history behind the sanctioning of heterosexual marriage as the "one true legitimate form" of intimate relationship.  God Forbid: Religion and Sex in American Public Life Since the 1980s, religion has been most visible in American public life when issues of sexuality and reproduction are at stake. Paradoxically, however, the voices that speak most loudly in the name of religion are often unschooled in religious history, world religions, theology, or ethics. As a result, religion in America is misrepresented as anxiously and obsessively concerned with sex, and as uniformly supporting the conservative agenda of "family values." This volume corrects that distortion in American public discourse. Its thirteen articles introduce scholarly perspectives on issues including the family, gay rights, abortion, welfare policy, prostitution, and assisted reproduction... Here, contributors put forth views of sexual ethics that are compassionate, respectful of cultural pluralism, and attentive to democratic processes. |
 The Reverend Raymond J. Lawrence, Jr. is a Methodist and Episcopal cleric, married to a Presbyterian minister, and has a distinguished career spanning four decades in both parish and institutional ministries. This book, which tackles the challenge of clearing up centuries of Biblical misinterpretation regarding sexuality and relationships. His effort was so successful that Poisoning of Eros won the book award at the 1989 World Congress of Sexology in Caracas, Venezuela. The Reverend Mr. Lawrence explores the Old and New Testaments and the work of the early church fathers in crafting his exposition on the origins of the sex negativity now commonly associated with Christian thought. He looks at the influences of neo-Platonic, paganistic philosophies on the doctrines of the early church, and examines scripture from a Hebraic rather than Hellenistic viewpoint. The Reverend Mr. Lawrence was a presenter at the 2002 ITCR Building Bridges Conference.  John Boswell's highly acclaimed study of the history of attitudes toward homosexuality in the Christian West challenges received opinion and our own preconceptions about the Church's past relationship to its gay members, among whom were priests, bishops and even canonized saints.  A wonderful collection of personal essays describing the search for, and discovery of, the mystical unity between sexuality and spirituality, from the perspectives of lay people, clergy, and spiritual seekers of all persuasions and paths. 
Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe In this long-gestated companion to his controversial landmark study, [Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality,] [John] Boswell... summarizes the histories of both heterosexual matrimony and same-sex unions in the Greco-Roman world, presents the views of early Christianity on heterosexual and same-sex couplings, traces the development of nuptial offices in the church, compares heterosexual and same-sex ceremonies of union, and discusses the checkered history of tolerance for same-sex unions during the Middle Ages. |
 Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World surveys the ways in which Christian ideas and institutions shaped sexual norms and conduct from the time of Luther and Columbus to that of Thomas Jefferson...The volume explores such topics as marriage and divorce, fornication and illegitimacy, clerical sexuality, witchcraft and love magic, homosexuality, and moral crimes. It examines learned and popular notions of sexuality in and outside of Christian Europe, the development of institutions to enforce Christian standards, and the role of class, race, family, economy, and local traditions in shaping sexual behavior.  This bold work asks whether traditional Christian sexual morality, with its emphasis on sexual abstinence outside of heterosexual marriage, is harmful. Appealing to sociological studies, anthropological theories, and contemporary theological ethics, Hartwig develops a model of sexual virtue around the concept of a poetics of intimacy and applies this model to particular challenges faced by the divorced, married couples, gay men and lesbians, single adults, and people with mental and developmental disabilities. He concludes that mandated long-term and lifelong sexual abstinence for those outside heterosexual marriage is not only harmful, but compromises many features of Christian morality.  "While no book is going to be the final word on what the Bible means and how to apply it to one's life, this book provides insight into the cultural mindset of the authors of both the Jewish and Christian scriptures and helps one get behind arcane regulations and statements to what their intended purpose actually was...It is a good resource on the overall subject of sex and the relationships which revolve around it." Reviewer Clyde Zuber on Amazon.com  The powerful voices of 31 bisexual people of faith are heard for the first time in this work. Authors speak about the intersections of their sexual orientation and their faith practice, about ritual, about community, about theology and about their personal journeys into wholeness. |