The Little Friar

Continuing in Chapter 4, "Loveless Sex is Not Empowering", from Louise Perry's book, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution ...  In our last post, we noted Perry's argument that the "liberation" of the sexual revolution largely favors men, who typically score higher on measures of sociosexuality (i.e., an openness to sex with strangers, desiring multiple sexual partners, and an interest in uncommitted sex).  By "favors men", Perry means that a woman's natural desire for sex to be meaningful -- connected to intimacy and love -- has to be suppressed in order to meet the standards of hook-up culture, where sex is "just sex," devoid of any intimate, loving connection. In this world, should a young woman ever develop "feelings" about her sexual partner, should she get emotionally "attached" or -- horror of horrors -- fall in love, well, that young lady is branded as clingy, needy, and "crazy."  The mandate is ...

We're in Chapter 3 of Louise Perry's book The Case Against the Sexual Revolution still, a chapter entitled "Loveless Sex is Not Empowering."  The argumentative lever Perry pulls in this chapter concerns the sexual psychologies of men and women regarding a trait psychologists call sociosexuality . Sociosexuality is the degree to which a person is interested in causal, uncommitted sex.  Persons high in sociosexuality are happy to have sex with strangers, desirous of having multiple different sexual partners across their lifespan, and are both interested in and willing to have sex without any intimate commitments.  As Perry describes, men, across all cultures, score higher on measures of sociosexuality than do women.  The obvious datapoint here is gender asymmetry we observe in the buying and selling of sex.  By far, men are more willing to buy sex from a stranger. Returning to a point I made earlier, evolutionary psychologists believe the gender differences we ob...

We now reach Chapter 4 of Louise Perry's book The Case Agains the Sexual Revolution , a chapter entitled "Loveless Sex is Not Empowering."  And a reading note:  There's profanity in this post . In this chapter, Perry is going to return to and dwell upon the sexual differences between men and women, using those differences to make criticisms about modern discourse and expectations about sex.  We've already introduced and discussed some of these topics, but Chapter 4 is the deeper dive. Perry begins Chapter 4 by describing how women today are now being asked to "have sex like men," and by that she means causal, meaningless sex, where the body of another person is simply used to achieve an orgasm.  Casual, meaningless sex isn't masturbation exactly, but it's pretty close to masturbation in both its agenda and motivational profile.  Perry's description of "having sex like a man" comes from the first episode of Sex in the City , that agi...

In Chapter 2 of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution,  "Some Desires are Bad," Louise Perry describes how the sexual revolution displays moral impoverishment in the face of the mainstreaming of sexual desires that most of us would consider objectively bad.  One example she discusses are cultural attempts to normalize pedophilia, and how liberals struggle to resist these trends given their reductive focus upon consent.  Perry argues: Paedophilia is now condemned by liberals and conservatives alike, alongside a clutch of other paraphilias, including necrophilia and bestiality.  For liberals, the wall between licit and illicit sexual behavior is now built upon an emphasis on consent ....  The problem with paedophilia, according to this argument, is that children can't consent, and therefore any sexual activity involving them will always be unacceptable ... But upon closer scrutiny, the consent argument fall apart.  Liberals may be able to accept the banning ...

In Chapter 3 Perry argues that taboos serve a positive function in society, and that when we lose taboos, those bright moral lines in the sand, the moral fabric of a society can quickly unravel.  This argument, of course, cuts against the progressive grain of the sexual revolution, which has prided itself on breaking and transgressing sexual taboos.  Perry starts the chapter by discussing the moral foundations research of Jonathan Haidt.  I expect many of you are familiar with Haidt's work.  For our purposes, Haidt's research has shown how the moral code of liberals and progressives reduces to concerns about harm and equity .  This is why the moral sensibility of the sexual revolution reduces to consent .  If no one is being harmed, then no one should object about what consenting adults are up to in the bedroom. If everyone is consenting, you can do anything you're into.  There are no taboos. And yet, human societies possess moral sensibilities beyond ...

If we argue for a "natural" inclination in sexual evolutionary biology, we garnered from my last post about Perry's argument, for any psychological or behavioral inclination, this has the potential to reduce moral culpability.  This is the materialistic version of the religious "the devil made me do it."  But in this case, it's not the devil, it's evolutionary history.  Your biology, your brain chemistry, your genetics caused you to act a certain way.  Darwin made you do it.  In moral philosophy this is often called "the naturalistic fallacy" or "the appeal to nature," which is related to Hume's dictum that you can't get an ought from an is .  That is to say, there is a temptation to think that if something is natural then that something is good .  But as we know, natural things aren't always good.  Think of food.  Rocks are natural, but it's not good to eat rocks.  In the world of social psychology you can make a stro...

  We now reach the second chapter of Louise Perry's The Case Against the Sexual Revolution entitled "Men and Women Are Different." Thus far, I've mentioned a couple of times how Perry claims that the sexual revolution works well for men but not so well for women.  The reason for this, according to Perry, is that men and women are different.  Men and women have distinctive and unique sexual psychologies, and these differences intersect with the sexual revolution in particular ways. Conservative Christians might be quick to jump in here to say, "Of course men and women are different!  That's how God created them."  But again, Perry isn't writing as a Christian.  In this chapter Perry will describe the origins and differences between men and women by appealing to evolutionary biology.  Which, I'm guessing, is not the move most conservative Christians would make. Much of Perry's argument is well known.  The basic idea goes like this.  In the anc...

Louise Perry ends Chapter 1, "Sex Must be Taken Seriously", in The Case Against the Sexual Revolution by talking about some of the hypocrisies of what C.S. Lewis described as "chronological snobbery," how younger generations look back with distain and superiority upon the beliefs of their elders and prior generations.  As Perry recounts, we look back with humor and horror upon the repressed sexuality and patriarchal gender norms of the 1950s era of "Father Knows Best."  No one wants to go back to that era.  And Perry agrees.  And yet, Perry goes on to note that today's "liberated" culture still enshrines a focus on satisfying men's needs. Perry writes, In 2016 an extract from a 1950s home economics book offering 'tips to look after your husband' went viral on social media.  The housewife was advised that, when her husband got home from work, she should have dinner on the table, her apron off and a ribbon in her hair, and that she...

To the messenger of the church in Ephesus, let it be written:  Thus says the Holder of the Seven Stars in His Right Hand, the Walker in the Middle of the Seven Lampstands of Gold. I know your deeds and your toil and endurance, and that you are not able to bear the evil ones.  And you have tested those calling themselves apostles but are not, and you have found them false.  And you have endurance and have borne for the sake of My Name and have not grown fatigued.  But I have against you that you have let go your first devotion.  Remember therefore whence you have fallen and do the first deeds.  If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, should you not repent.  But you have this, that you detest the deeds of the Nikolaitans, which I also detest.  Who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the victorious:  I will give him to eat from the wood of life that is in God's Paradise. *** To the messe...

Last time, we saw that sex is now meaningless.  Sex is considered to be "no big deal," devoid of anything particularly sacred or special.  Perry goes on to describe how many women, even liberal feminists, actually don't believe this to be the case.  There's an odd, confusing, and very dissonant conversation going on about sex among women.  On the one hand, sex means nothing.  But on the other hand, sex really is unique.  To illustrate this, Perry points to the discourse during the 2017 Me Too movement.  She writes: [L]iberal feminists do seem to recognize this disproportionate impact [of disenchanted, transactional sex upon women] as demonstrated by the popularity of the Me Too movement ...  This outpouring of rage and sorrow was evidence of a sexual culture that wasn't working for women.  The stories that came out of Me Too included plenty of unambiguously criminal behavior, but there were also a lot of women who described sexual encounters ...

What has happened to sex as a result of the sexual revolution?  According to Louise Perry in The Case Against the Sexual Revolution , sex has become "disenchanted," stripped of its special, sacred character. Sex is "no big deal." So don't get hung up about it. It's "just sex," after all. As Perry will argue, the disenchantment of sex has a relational and emotional price, a cost mostly paid by women. Perry making this argument: It is in their interest [the Hugh Hefners of the world, and playboys like him] to push a particularly radical idea about sex that has come out of the sexual revolution and has proved remarkably influential, despite its harms. This is the idea that sex is nothing more than a leisure activity, invested with meaning only if the participants choose to give it meaning. Proponents of this idea argue that sex has no intrinsic specialness, that it is not innately different from any other kind of social interaction, and that it can th...

Perry begins The Case against the Sexual Revolution by comparing and contrasting the sexual histories of two American icons, Hugh Hefner and Marilyn Monroe.  I don't need to recount the stories of Hefner and Monroe, you likely know enough to appreciate why Perry deploys this contrast right out the gate.  Specifically, the "benefits" and "liberations" of the sexual revolution have not been shared equally between men and women.  This is Perry's big overarching theme:  The sexual revolution has been very, very good for men.  Case in point, Hugh Hefner.  But the sexual revolution has not been so good for women.  Case in point, Marilyn Monroe. As I mentioned in my introductory remarks, The Case against the Sexual Revolution is not a Christian book.  Perry's criticism of the sexual revolution comes from a feminist perspective, a perspective that many conservative Christians will find difficult.  Perry's argument will have an asymmetrical feel for ...

  I'm going to start a new series on Perry's Case against the Sexual Revolution:  A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century .  I started this book last April, and finally have had a chance to work my way -- intentionally, which is to say, rather slowly -- through it.  There's so much here that demands pastors deal with the content that I think a sustained series is best, rather than a simple, one-off book review. Why? Over the past few years, I've reached a couple of important conclusions about the nature of the sexual revolution as a pastoral-theologian.  The first is that the sexual revolution, while liberating in many ways, has brought with it a suite of desolations.  Desolations that I see in my students and in the world at large.  Given the cultural narratives regarding sex, these desolations are rarely mentioned or discussed.  We just don't talk about the dark side of the sexual revolution.  I'd like us to talk about that. I'd like us to t...

In January's hush, the world turns white, A silent dance of flakes in cold embrace. Each crystal whispers tales of winter's grace, Softly falling, a tranquil, pure delight. The trees adorned in glistening attire, Nature's canvas painted with frosty strokes. A quiet symphony, as stillness evokes A serenade beneath the moonlit spire. Footprints left on the path of icy dreams, Crunching softly 'neath the boots of time. A pristine landscape, a frozen rhyme, In January's sleep, the earth redeems. So let the snow weave tales of peace untold, In January's arms, a tranquil cold.

1.  The church can worship anywhere because we are the temple. 2.  That doesn't mean buildings are irrelevant to the fullness of the church and her mission. 3.  A building makes the church publicly visible, a permanent presence in the world. 4.  A church building testifies to the political character of the church as a real-life, on-earth outpost of the heavenly city to come. 5.  A building has its own temporality; it links generations.  It's a site of communion between the dead and the living:  "My grandfather worshiped here." 6.  A church building should possess a beauty that exhibits the glory of God, inspires awe, and imposes silence. 7.  The church's interest in the architectural is not primarily aesthetic, but ecclesiological .  A suitable building is one that manifests the truth about the church.

Jesus Christ's unveiling, which God gave him to show to his servants what ought to happen with speed.  And he made it known, having sent through his messenger to his servant John, who testified to the Word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, as much as he gazed at.  Blessed those reading and those hearing the words of this prophecy and guarding what in it has been written, for near the season! John, to the seven churches in Asia:  Grace to you, and peace, from the Being and the Was and the To Come, and from the seven spirits in the sight of his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the Faithful Witness, the Firstborn of the dead, and the Ruler of the kings of the earth.  To the one devoted to us and loosing us from our sins through his blood (and he has made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father), to Him glory and rule to the eons of eons.  Amen.  See, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, and those who pierced him, and because o...

In 2018, I told my wife that I was convinced then-president Donnie Trump was engaging in behavior and language reminiscent of any number of totalitarian "leaders" throughout history.  I knew then he would never relinquish the Office of the President of the United States of America peacefully.  He would use any means available -- including military -- in order to remain in power.  My wife -- and everyone else who heard me make that claim -- insisted I was being reactionary.  "That can never happen here", they retorted. Then the 6th of January, 2021, happened.   Liz Cheney's new memoir, Oath and Honor , recounts the aftermath of the 2020 Presidental Election.   On January 6th a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol.  As the rioters attempted to break down the doors to the House chamber, members were told they needed to prepare to hide under their chairs. "We need to get the ladies off the aisle", announced Trump loyalist ringleader Ohio R...

As we approach Christmas, we enter one of the two (the other is Easter) periods of the year in which large numbers of people claim that all popular Christian things are really pagan things.  Some of this is perhaps Puritan hangover; some early Protestants refused to celebrate Christmas because they read the symbolism as Catholics acting like pagans.  If you have a religion of almost pure text and moral discipline, you naturally read any substantive symbolism as a sort of heathenry.  Some of it is out-of-date anthropology still floating around.  It's this that gives us the entirely unsubstantiated notion that the eggs and bunnies of Easter trace back to pagan fertility celebrations.  And some of it is just an irrational taste for pissing on other people's customs; one often recognizes these people by the fact that the insist so vehemently that this or that custom is really some other prior custom, even if it is quite clear that the current custom is not practiced...