This one surprised me. I haven’t really thought twice about the evangelical affect on sex and the bodies and minds of young women as well as the effect on men as blame for their sexual sin is laid at the feet of these women. Why not? Maybe because I’m old and my daughters are strong women who have stood their ground in the face and presence of the men and church leaders in their lives. I’m experiencing my personal error of moving on when this just isn’t a dynamic I have a right to move on from if our churches are places where we call each other family.
The book is The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You’ve Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended – Sheila Wray Gregoire, Rebecca Gregoire Lindenbach, Joanna Sawatsky.
This category of book is a different trajectory for me brought on by my daughter’s recommendation of The Roys Report podcast. Esp. this episode about evangelical teaching on sex enabling abuse that includes a talk by one of the authors. It’s easily an extension of the Church Culture category with a hat tip to Pagan Christianity on my 2022 list and Jesus and John Wayne on my 2023 list.
The Great Sex Rescue is one step in an effort to place Jesus at the center of an adulterated evangelicalism and correct the damage done by evangelical leaders on the topic of sex and marriage that lay the blame of men’s sexual sin at the feet of women and even young girls. Unlike the evangelical standards like Love and Respect and His Needs, Her Needs, the authors of The Great Sex Rescue included the largest quantitative study of women and their place in the marriage. They also evaluated the best selling books on Sex, both Christian and secular, using a rubric of 12 questions in order to quantify the study. You can find the evaluation criteria in the appendix of The Great Sex Rescue. Here are their results:
Helpful Books
- The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John M. Gottman (tie—scored near perfect)
- The Gift of Sex by Clifford and Joyce Penner (tie—scored near perfect)
- Boundaries in Marriage by Henry Cloud and John Townsend (tie)
- Sacred Marriage (Revised 2015 edition) by Gary Thomas (tie)
- Intimate Issues by Linda Dillow and Lorraine Pintus
Neutral Books (minimum score 24; must pass every section)
- The Meaning of Marriage by Timothy and Kathy Keller
- Intended for Pleasure (Revised 2010 edition) by Ed and Gaye Wheat
Harmful Books
- Sheet Music by Kevin Leman
- The Act of Marriage (Revised 1998 edition) by Tim and Beverly LaHaye
- His Needs, Her Needs (Revised 2011 edition) by Willard F. Harley Jr. (tie)
- The Power of a Praying Wife (Revised 2014 edition) by Stormie Omartian (tie)
- For Women Only (Revised 2013 edition) by Shaunti Feldhahn
- Every Man’s Battle by Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker
- Love & Respect by Emerson Eggerichs
Christianity Today published what I thought is a helpful article about the work of the authors that also includes links to statements from some of the books on the harmful list.