Religion, Sex and Politics

By David Pence

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 159526065X
• ISBN13: 9781595260659
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: Aeon Pub Inc
• Length: 172 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.4" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Righting the Wrong in American Society

"It was the best of times; it was the worst of times." Charles Dickens' statement in A Tale of Two Cities seems surprisingly relevant to post-WWII America. In an age of unprecedented economic prosperity, the baby-boomer generation grew up and set aside the meat and potatoes wisdom of their parents' Greatest Generation to select instead some very strange foods to eat with their silver spoons, and they shoved them down the rest of our throats as well. Basically, the angry kids of the Vietnam War Era and sexual revolution built their diet around fritos and twinkies by burning their draft cards, embracing free love, and shooting or doping up. Now, after a 40 year binge, American culture is morbidly obese, and the glittering future promised by the kids of the `60s seems less than glamorous and romantic. In fact, it seems kind of gross and pathetic. And the fallout has been painful and destructive. The explosion of sexuality coupled with the breakdown of the traditional family leads to divorce, illegitimate pregnancies, abortion, not to mention physical disease and emotional emptiness. The rejection of a gendered world in which it means something to be a man or a woman creates a blurry and androgynous haze confusing social relationships in settings ranging from the family to the office to the combat zone. The widespread decline of local community involvement as well as a rejection by elites of patriotism and the duty it requires leave us atomized and vulnerable when we need to be united and strong. The problems are many and severe, but the solution may be very simple. In Dr. David Pence's book, Religion, Sex, and Politics, he argues that our fundamental problems stem from the disordering of man's fundamental loyalties that must be set right. The problem, as he describes it, is that: "Religion, country, and marriage structure agreements with real duties and obligations. Elastic spirituality (no religion and no commandments), world citizenship (no territorial patriotism), and free love (no marriage) are the formless sentiments of our age. As our agreements lose their structure, breaking agreements loses its gravity. Blasphemy, treason, and adultery were once the great sins of disloyalty - to God, to country, and to spouse. Once we held these crimes in contempt; now we have made our peace." The solution he proposes involves a return to sanity, a righting of a decades-long `inversion ritual,' in which the gay pride parades have marched down Main Street up to the doorstep of our churches, our city halls, even our Boy Scout meetings. It is a ritual in which effeminized middle-class men cry on daytime TV talk shows, while lower class men pursue masculinity as predatory criminals. It is a ritual in which many elites now consider the gauge of true patriotism to be the degree to which one is able to defame one's country in a time of war. It is a ritual in which race seems more divisive now than when Dr. Martin Luther King began dreami