The intersection of Sex, Religion, and Media: important but still obscure.

Sex, Religion, Media. Edited by Dane S. Claussen. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing, 2002, 320 pages. Cloth, $72.50.

Reviewed by Rev. Debra W. Haffner, Director, Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing, 304 Main Avenue, #335, Norwalk, CT 06851: e-mail: [e-mail].

As a sexologist, a minister, and an advocate of improved media coverage of sexuality issues. I was pleased to be asked to review this book. I agreed with the premise as stated by Dr. Claussen in the introduction: Religion, sexuality, and media all have a tremendous influence on day-to-day life in the United States, and there is a need to look at their impact on our values, attitudes, and behaviors. Unfortunately, Sex, Religion, Media does not fulfill its promise.

It is possible that this book was not written for me, and that it might be more interesting and useful for communications professionals. The majority of the 24 contributors to the volume are in communications departments of colleges and universities. Only four are professionally associated with religion, and none are noted sexologists. Perhaps then it should not have been a surprise that sexological terms were often confused; for example, sex and sexuality are incorrectly used as synonyms throughout the book.

I am even more concerned with the antireligious tone of many of the writers. Religious leaders are presented as monolithic and almost universally sex-negative. Now, it is true that there are many sex-negative voices throughout religious history, but there is another, more sex-positive tradition that is never recognized in this volume. There is scarce recognition of the current religious voices that advocate for sexual rights, education, and justice in today's faith communities and denominations; Instead, the anti-sexuality voices of the Christian Right are presented as the religious norm. For example, one author holes. "Although the academic jury may still be deliberating about media influence, religious institutions and individuals have long bemoaned the ill effects of music, movies, comic books. pornography, and most of all. television" (p. 253).

Claussen affirms this antireligious bias in his conclusion: "Much of this book, in one way or another, also demonstrates what one could call the denial, if not ignorance and incompetence and/or even dishonesty of so many religious beliefs, organizations, and figures regarding human sexuality" (p, 280). I was startled by the way the book ends. The last line in the book is a quote from a media critic about those who oppose his point of view of sexuality: "May God have some mercy on their miserable fucking souls" (p. 280).

I was also surprised by the out-of-date information in many of the chapters. Several of the studies are more than 5 years old. For example, the chapter on teenage sexuality is a study of teenagers in 1992 that begins with a statement that teenage pregnancy is an epidemic in the United States. However, teenage pregnancy and birth rates have been dropping in the United States since 1991, and the birth rate is at historically low levels. The book also includes a 1994 study of teenagers in one denomination, two chapters on Donald Wildmon and the American Family Association in the 1980s, and several historical essays on early coverage of sexuality in silent film and true confessions magazines.

I was also struck by what was |lot covered in a book published in 2002. There was only one chapter on the Internet, and it was concerned with only four Internet sites. There were no chapters specifically on television, which has seen radical changes in its coverage of sexuality issues, nothing on religious-based television programming, and little on popular music beyond one 1997 analysis of religion and sexuality issues in rock videos.

The book's coverage of religion also suffers because of its emphasis on conservative religious movements rather than mainstream denominations. There are chapters on Orthodox Jews, evangelical Christians, the American Family Association, and even a chapter on the media coverage of cults and their sexual practices. There is little about mainstream Protestant denominations, any other form of Judaism, and no mention of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, or Unitarian Universalism.

Considering how poorly some religious themes are treated in this book, perhaps I shouldn't complain about being left out. In an analysis of Cecil B. DeMille's movie Samson and Delilah, the author relies on the King James Version of the Hebrew Bible instead of more recent and more faithful translations, missing much of the sexual content and context of the original text. The one-page survey of the development of Christian thought in the essay by Herndon and Smith is simplistic at best, offensive at worst. Augustine is said to have believed that "sex was psychotic." a hardly nuanced understanding of the writings of the man who wrote the first sexual and religious autobiography, The Confessions. Martin Luther is said to be sex-negative, although Martin Luther wrote eloquently about his own marriage and said that sex is medicine for the soul. I was not surprised when I looked at the endnotes and found that the authors of this chapter did not use a single primary religious text but instead wrote their synopsis from the writings of others who shared their viewpoint.

Although I am not a researcher and certainly not a communications Expert, I also question the validity of some of the research presented. Is it research to watch a movie with four people and then draw conclusions about "evangelicals' attitudes toward nudity"? Does looking at four Internet sites tell us something about coverage of sexuality and religion issues on the Web?

On the positive side, I do recommend three of the chapters. Mark G. Toulouse's chapter on "Protestants' Encounters with Homosexuality Since the 1960s" is a well-done analysis of the development of theology around sexual orientation as reflected in coverage in mainstream and evangelical Christian magazines. But even this article misses key issues, such as the emergence of the Welcoming and Affirming movement in nearly every denomination and the development of queer theologies.

The article by lain A. G. Barrie on the cover-up by the media of a clergy sexual abuse scandal in Canada provides an interesting historical contrast to the 2002 sex abuse scandals and their media coverage in the United States. Battle's summary of the media could apply to the Catholic church hierarchy today as well: "They chose damage control over revelation and action, a tawdry cover up at the expense of innocent children" (p. 69). And I enjoyed Terrence Lindvill's analysis of the portrayal of clergy in early silent films, learning that "early American cinema ... dramatically propagated the idea that ministers were sexual beings."

In the end, $72.50 is a lot to pay for three chapters. In its place, I would suggest readers interested in sexuality and the media consider obtaining the many fine recent reports from the Kaiser Family Foundation on this topic. Research from the adolescent health study (known as Adhealth) by the University of North Carolina and the University of Minnesota provide up-to-date information on teen sexuality and religion. And Unsecular Media by Mark Silk (University of Illinois Press. 1998) is an excellent analysis of the coverage of religion in modern media. However, a really good reference that brings together sexuality, religion, and the media remains to be written.