Sexual Liberation: The Scandal of Christendom.

Raymond J. Lawrence, Jr.

Sexual Liberation: The Scandal of Christendom

Greenwood-Praeger, 2007. 172 pp. (Cloth) $49.95

The first 2007 publication to come into my hand for review is a stunningly important one. Raymond J. Lawrence, Jr. has finally looked the monster in the eyeball and stared him down. That monster is the twenty centuries of bizarre distortion in Christendom of the biblical ethic of sex. The Christian Church has made an oppressive monstrosity out of sexual repression virtually since the transition from the Jesus Movement to the rise of the church as we know it, a transition which had happened by the end of the first century. This destructive Christian sexual ethic was certainly in full sway by the establishment of the Christian canon at the end of the third century, and stands in demeaning contrast to the celebrative biblical ethic of human sexuality.

Lawrence argues persuasively that this shift from the Bible to Church ethical moralizing was prompted by the move from biblical theological metaphors and values to the Graeco-Roman philosophical values and principles championed by the Stoics, Cynics, Neo-Platonists, and other strains of pagan culture that were everywhere rampant in the Mediterranean world during the first eight centuries of Christian history. Lawrence's argument is cogent, coherent, tightly woven, and amply illustrated. This is not only a profound contribution to the contemporary cultural interface with biblical principles, relevant to psychospirituality, but it is a highly engaging book. John M. Gessell, Professor of Christian Ethics, declares that it is "a lucid and masterful account of Christianity's shifting attitude toward sex from the positive valuation of its Jewish roots to the contemporary Church's obsessive hysteria about sex. For anyone who is seeking a clue to today's Christian sex wars, this book will provide it."

This volume is endorsed by two Forewords: one by the famed Donald Capps, Professor of Pastoral Psychology at Princeton and the other by Don Jones, Professor Emeritus of Ethics at Drew University. Lawrence's book has an introduction and nineteen chapters, with a postscript, chapter notes, and index. It is unfortunate that though the chapter notes are masterful, extremely informative, and crucial to the quality of the work, there is no alphabetized reference list or bibliography, a thing every author and publisher owes the reader.

Sexual Liberation offers careful and amply illustrated treatment of such themes as The Sexual Life and Teaching of Jesus; Jesus: Legitimate or Illegitimate; The Two Wives of Paul the Apostle; Sexual Pleasure in Judaism; Sexual Conduct in the Early Christian Church; Constantine's Imperial Cooptation of Christianity; The Victory of Monasticism in the West; The Reformation as Sexual Revolution; From Martin Luther to Anton Boisen; Sexual Disarray in the Late Twentieth Century; and Sexual Disarray in the Churches. In addition there is special focus upon 1) the struggle of Bernard of Clairvaux, Abelard, and Heloise; 2) The Cathars; 3) The Sexuality of Teresa of Avila; 4) Paul Tillich and Karl Barth: Sexual Outliers; and 5) the Two Faces of Thomas More. Of additional particular attention for contemporary concerns is a chapter entitled, "Cause Celebre: From Masturbation to Homosexuality."

The interface between psychology, religion, and spirituality has been of great interest to scholars for a century. In the last three decades a broad popular appetite has developed for books that make practical sense of the complicated research on these subjects. Lawrence's volume appears in the series on Psychology Religion, and Spirituality, published by Greenwood-Praeger, and in that series it is, in effect, a companion volume to another recent and related publication, Sex in the Bible: A New Consideration. Both volumes identify, analyze, and evaluate the popular and professional interests in the psychospiritual aspects of human sexuality.

Lawrence's volume demonstrates that its author has seen through the sham and superficiality of much of the Christian tradition's view of human sexuality throughout the twenty centuries of the developing church. Not all of the influences or expression of human sexuality and its relationship with spirituality throughout Christian history have been negative or harbored potentially negative consequences. Indeed, much of the impact of the great religions upon human life and culture, including sexual ethics, has been redemptive, and generative of great good, as Lawrence implies.

Sexuality and spirituality are part of the essence of being human. They are two expressions of the same inner life force. When one is expressed in a distorted manner, it distorts the other. When medieval mystics repressed and sublimated their sexuality, their spirituality became psychotic. Today spirituality in Western culture is truncated and ignored and sexuality has become insanely irresponsible, shearing off sexual gymnastics from meaningful emotion and relationship. When our inner vitality, our life force, reaches out toward relationship with God we call it spirituality. When it reaches for the other near us we call it sexuality. When either is repressed, manipulated, or erroneously controlled as a means of coercion, by church or other authorities, the result has been monstrous and destructive of human wholeness. Lawrence has seen this clearly and has finally said it out loud. He demonstrates with numerous real life illustrations what went wrong with the church's perspective on human sexuality over the centuries.

Donald Capps declares that what makes Lawrence's book so important and readable is not only its tough-minded truth-telling regarding the sex-aversion of Christianity and the destruction that has wreaked upon human lives; but the fact that there are bright spots in this volume which couple an openness to sexual freedom with a lighthearted sense of humor. The generally non-strident tone of this entire work makes it all the more attractive and believable.

Myron C. Madden, Professor of Psychiatry at Louisiana State University Medical School, comments that "the author has the courage to restore Jesus the Jew to his own origins. In doing so he removes the false garments the Church has spun to make Jesus non-sexual and super-human." Capps concluded his remarks with the claim that when the day arrives that Christendom takes Lawrence's perspective seriously, it will be a day when Christians "will turn the corner and begin to walk down a very different street with the lighthearted gait reminiscent" of Christianity's liberating founder.