Tag: christianity

Book Review-“The Woman They Wanted: Shattering the Illusion of the Good Christian Wife” by Shannon Harris

Book Review by Scott Lohman

“The Woman They Wanted: Shattering the Illusion of the Good Christian Wife” by Shannon Harris

Shannon Harris was married to Joshua Harris, the guy who wrote “I Kissed Dating Goodbye”, a book that was out in the heights of the “purity” era for conservative parts Christianity.  Joshua Harris wrote the book when he was in his early 20’s and was considered brilliant for showing everyone how men and women should meet up, create relationships and move on to marriage.  It was supposed to stop couples engaging in that icky sex.

Shannon Harris was the woman that Joshua “courted” and used their experiences and relationship as the basis for the book.  Joshua went on to be a pastor for churches in the “Sovereign Grace” group.  Shannon chronicles the relationship from what she saw and experienced.  Women in this part of conservative Christianity are not treated well.  Shannon was the wife of one the junior pastors in the church. She was encouraged to start having babies and being the “helpmeet” of her husband.  Roles in both the church and her marriage were strictly set out.  She was discouraged from using her singing and other non-church related talents.  She was told that the man was the boss in the marriage and she was follow his lead in everything.  She even had the senior pastors wife “helping” her, or more like issuing orders on the proper role of women in these churches.

Harris writes the book in essay style with longer sections in the early parts of her life as she establishes her story and background.  Like all memoirs, she is open about what she wants to tell and closed about things she prefers to keep private.  Many of these type of books keep things related to the children out as to keep their lives private.

The lessons Shannon learned from her life in that controlling society, is that conservative Christians of the type she was part of for years, want women quiet, hard working and showing up with a cheerful attitude of service help with perfectly groomed and well behaving family.  Shannon shows that this takes an enormous tole on the women, as they are not allowed jobs of their own, much less being able to follow their dreams of creative careers such as music, writing etc. Women are expected to fall in line, spouses of senior pastors get to rule over those of the junior pastors. And the men are always in charge.

Fortunately Shannon was able to escape and Joshua renounced his book and moved on as well.  Shannon’s story is a warning about the damage and danger of high control religion.  Hopefully her story will help many.

Book Review: “The Sexual State: How Elite Ideologies are Destroying Lives and Why the Church was Right All Along” by Jennifer Roback Morse

  If you’re looking for something new in a discussion about sexuality and society, this is not it.  If you’re looking for insight from the religious side that accepts that sexuality is a normal part of being human, this is not it.  If you’re looking for a book that will look at sexuality from the conservative religious point of view and is willing to admit that attitudes towards sexuality have been changing over decades and longer and not just since the 60’s, this is not the book for you.  If you’re looking for a book which wants to treat sexuality as something humans have to suffer with, treats women as brood mares, gays as bad and birth control as the worst thing ever, then this book is for you.

     Jennifer Roback Morse is the founder of “The Ruth Institute”.  She founded it to counter what she considered the “bad” ideas of the sexual revolution. Morse has a doctorate in economics, which of course makes her an expert in sexuality. She taught and was on facility at George Mason University in Virginia. She has been a research fellow at the Acton Institute and the Hoover Institution. She also worked on California’s Proposition 8, the initiative to make marriage “one man/one woman”.  At one point The Ruth Institute was part of NOM (National Organization for Marriage) and separated from them.  She is Catholic and signed the anti-gay Nashville Statement.

     Published in 2018, the book is divided into 3 parts. Morse looks at three things about sexuality. “The Contraceptive Ideology”, where she talks about the sexual revolution separated sex from pregnancy. “The Divorce Ideology”, where she talks about divorce, child birth and separating sex from both of those.  “The Gender Ideology”, where she talks about homosexuality and transgender issue. 

      Morse and other conservative Christians are obsessed with the 1960’s being the point where sex became exploded into American society.   Somehow they think that if they could just erase that decades social changes, life would be good again. Women would somehow become happy staying at home and raising kids, gays would either go back in the closet and get converted to being straight and no one will have heard of transgenders at all. The problem with this concept is that societal ideas about sexuality have been changing over centuries not just in one decade.  There is a big change in relations between the sexes when marriage changed from being primarily arranged by parents to the individuals making the decision. Aside from the fact that many people never had a formal church wedding. Gays were already making waves about repression well before the Stonewall riots. 

     Morse is also obsessed with how feminism has changed women and not for the good. Being Catholic Morse is totally against comprehensive sex education. She wants it totally out of the schools.  This is another case where conservatives think that sending that home will make it all better. Even though far too many schools are doing the hopelessly bad “abstinence sex education”, it can at least inspire the smarter kids to find way better sex education online. The Unitarians have a great program and there excellent sex educators on the web.  If people think that removing sex education from the schools will solve the issues, maybe we should look at “abstinence drivers education”.  

     Morse is also against contraception.  I find this unfathomable in a female.  She tries to totally sell the Catholic position that contraception is bad.  I can’t buy it and I’m an old white male.  

     Morse’s organization, “The Ruth Institute” is a classic conservative approach to things they don’t like.  Her organization try’s to put out that it is a resource on human sexuality, when they are pro societal control of EVERYONE’S sexuality.  They want no one even trying to ponder that you as individual should have any stray thoughts about sexuality at all.  They don’t want you learning ANYTHING outside of their extremely narrow rules on sex.  

     As with most conservative entries on the “culture wars”, Morse dives right in with assuming she has the most perfect opinion on sexuality and the rest of us should just stop and go with what she says.  I’m sure you’ll find that also like most conservative attacks on various culture war ideas, they’re totally going to be ignored.