Sex, Religion, Media (review)

Given the title, Sex, Religion, Media, one might expect this volume, edited by Dane Claussen, to bring together scholars from sexuality and gender studies, religious studies, and media and cultural studies. However, that is not the case. Despite its ambitious title and the possibility of exploring new territory in the intersection of these topics, the book is largely written from a media studies perspective and hardly supports the claim of studying "religion," given the almost exclusive focus on Protestant Christianity.

The conceptual problems with the book become immediately apparent in the organization of its nearly twenty substantive chapters. The first section explores media depictions of sex and religion, religion in sex, and sex in religion. The second section looks at conservative Christian responses to popular discourse about sexuality, which turn out largely to be a reaction to media depictions of sex. The third section explores media responses to religious attitudes about sexuality and related issues, "how media and entertainment content producers and reformers/activists have confronted . . . a traditional, conservative, and largely religious population on sexuality issues" (xvi). Finally, the fourth section focuses on "media agenda-setting and cultivation of religion and sex," although what this means is not made clear (xvii).

Had the book really explored the "nexus of these three fields/issues," as Claussen claims it does, the content and organization would have been very different. For example, it is conceivable that one section might have focused on scholarship in religious studies that explores sexuality and media, another on religion and sexuality explored from the standpoint of media and cultural studies, and another on media and religion from the perspective of sexuality and gender studies. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and the volume does little to advance the field theoretically except for a fine essay by Felix Herndon and Valerie Smith. Had their contribution served as the frontispiece of the book from which all other studies and essays branched out, it would have been a much stronger and more exciting contribution to literature in this area. However, as Herndon and Smith note, "[s]exuality has long been interpreted as a subsidiary function in theories whose main foci are elsewhere" (218). Unfortunately, there is ample evidence of this trend within Sex, Religion, Media, with the further problem that religion also receives subsidiary treatment by many of the contributors.

The book that resulted from Claussen's efforts is nothing like the scholarly "nexus" he believes it to be. Of the twenty-five contributors, only two are explicitly committed to the study of religion, which accounts for the sloppy theoretical treatment of that topic. While a handful of scholars, including Mark Toulouse and Brian K. Simmons, wrote fine pieces exploring issues of sexuality and religion, most presumed a vague understanding of religion implicitly defined in almost all cases as Protestant Christianity.¹ Furthermore, it becomes apparent throughout the book that many contributors—including Claussen himself—object to the concern of "religion" with sexuality at all. In his study, "Media Cultivation and Perceptions of Sexual Morality," Simmons observes that television and religion serve very similar functions in society to the extent they could be considered competitors. Claussen and other contributors certainly presume this, with an added caveat: they think "the media" should occupy the place religion tries to carve out for itself, at least regarding sexuality. Indeed, in his conclusion Claussen writes:

Much of this book . . . 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. . . . Many American churches (and many other religions worldwide) . . . essentially oppose anything and everything sexual, sometimes with the sole exception of sex within marriage for the purposes of procreation only.

". . . May God have (some) mercy on their miserable fucking souls." (280)

Never once does it seem to occur to him that religious communities might...