Sex and the Church: Gender, Homosexuality, and the Transformation of Christian Ethics (review)

The evolution of fundamentalism has been a transforming process of organized religion as perceived in American society. Sex and the Church would be useful in college and graduate courses dealing with the role of women in the church or gay and lesbian theory, as well as in courses pertaining to Christian social ethics. Rudy has looked objectively at fundamentalist thought and argued intelligently against the ideology of the Cult of Domesticity.

The issue of homosexuality in mainline denominations in recent years has led to a call for religious renewal and transformations similar to the Great Awakenings in American history. Many fundamentalist religious leaders have left their pulpits to embrace the political arena in order to denounce homosexual persons and practices. Their desire is to reinvent the traditional family structure in which women stayed at home and men went off to work. This Victorian concept pertained to a woman’s purity and the spiritual life of the family. “Women were thought to be the point of contact between God and the entire family” (20). Gender roles were clearly defined. With the development of industry, fewer man hours were needed to produce the same amount of product. Families became smaller; the man was head of household and woman was caretaker of family and home. “Religion played an ideological role in the development and maintenance of the Cult of Domesticity” (20). Unfortunately this idea of the Cult of Domesticity is false. The fundamentalist notion of one working parent as seen in 1950s and 1960s television is not a valid depiction of the family structure in American culture. To embrace this ideology, one must ignore every marginalized cultural group in American society such as Native Americans, Blacks, Latinos, and the working poor. “[T]he ideology of the 1950’s strove to keep women and Blacks out of the white, male work force not through legislation, but through an ideology that valorized ‘traditional’ family configurations” (28). Although some marginalized individuals rose financially to middle-class status, the majority that privileged the Cult of Domesticity were the white middle class and the rich, making this concept not only sectarian but also racist.

Today we hear the cry to return to traditional family values: male as head and female as second. The Religious Right wish to impose their understanding of family on all American society. “In this interpretation of Christianity, anyone who does not fit the paradigm of their biological sex is excluded from the church. The family has become the method for securing gendered theology” (44). This concept is skewed. Historically the traditional family contained not only mother and father, but also the extended family. The church family had always been an extended family of believers that took care of and nurtured one another. Yet, since World War II, both secular and religious structures have changed radically. The growth of suburbs transformed physical communities, and Christians began to focus more on self and less on each other. Religion became more personal and less communal. As individuals began to look selfward, their focus turned introspective. The Christian family was transformed from community to singularity.

Rudy looks at this transformation from communal to individual and finds it problematic. The religious ethic in the early church was loving one another and sharing all resources in the community with one another. According to Rudy, the structure of mainline Christianity today has become self centered and judgmental. Sharing, loving, and caring are the traditional trademarks of the Christian, yet somehow we have fallen away from this structure.

In order to return to the true meaning of family values we need to look at the gay community and see how it functions as a family. Rudy argues that the protection and unconditional love that is given in gay male communities is an example of what the Christian community should be. By observing the communal model in gay male culture, “rather than condemning these communities...