Church, Sex, and “Judeo-Christian” Family Life Education

Chapter 3 argues that liberal Protestants and their engagements with social science transformed sex education into family life education beginning in the mid-1920s. Three liberal religious influences interconnected to bring about this transformation: (1) the leadership of Anna Garlin Spencer; (2) the alliance Spencer forged between ASHA and the Federal Council of Churches; and (3) the careful balance struck by Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish family life educators for encouraging the interfaith ideal of “Judeo-Christian” family values while rejecting marriage across religious lines. The shift to family life education activated churches and some synagogues in sex education work, effectively making the FCC a practical arm of the sex education movement. Shared interest in social scientific concerns about family life and methods of counseling grounded the partnership, with both ASHA and the FCC convinced that strengthening marital sexuality would improve society.

Theologie im Tauchbad

This article surveys three centuries of rabbinic culture in Schnaittach (Central Franconia) on the basis of unexplored Hebrew sources. Located in an enclave within the Nuremberg territory, the Schnaittach rabbinate served four rural communities and variously exerted jurisdiction over large areas of Franconia, Upper Palatinate, and Bavaria. As a provincial authority, the rabbinate was oriented toward the political centers in Amberg, Munich, and Vienna, as well as toward the Jewish hubs of Fürth and Frankfurt. The rabbis of Schnaittach produced literary works in the fields of responsa and homiletics that this study contextualizes within a multilevel network of social relations. Early modern rabbis interacted with local tribunals, Christian theologians, Jewish fellow scholars, and migrant students while guiding rural Jews in their daily lives. Several documents show how they mediated, jointly with their wives, in issues of marital sexuality and cared for the female space that was the ritual bath.

Historical Views of Homosexuality: Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece featured at least five different varieties of same-sex relations: (a) pederastic relations, typically between adolescent boys and adult men who were not yet married; (b) relations between male youths of approximately the same age; less frequently (c) homosexual relations between fully adult men; (d) age-differentiated relations between females; and (e) relations between adult females. The origins of pederasty appear to be related to the relatively late age of marriage for males, which evolved as a response to needs to limit population growth in the scarcity-driven economy of the 7th century bce. The contexts of pederastic socialization (athletics, military comradeship, hunting, cockfighting, and intellectual/musical performance at elite symposia) point toward masculinizing pedagogy and mentorship as key social functions. However, social attitudes toward pederasty were not uniform throughout all Greek city-states in all periods. Evidence from several domains suggests that as Athens became more democratic and saw greater distribution of prosperity throughout all social classes, the age of male marriage declined; larger families became socially desirable, while non-procreative alternatives to marital sexuality became less fashionable and even morally dubious. What had always been characterized as an elite habitus during the archaic period and first half of the 5th century no longer seemed at home in a political system where appeal to the common man defined success and popularity. Some philosophical texts from the 4th century bce characterize physical sex between males as para physin (“beyond nature”), whereas others recognize the possibility that it is determined through natural processes grounded in anatomy or spiritual heredity. Of most interest for modern politics is the question of what Greek historical evidence can tell us about the ability of adolescent boys to consent to intimate relations with adult men. Modern jurisprudence, especially in the United States, assumes a universal inability to provide informed consent until well after the onset of puberty, and even voluntary relations between adolescent boys and men are heavily sanctioned in the criminal justice system. Although classical Athens featured a robust tradition of criticizing pederasty for a number of reasons, the notion that pre-adult sex with an older partner was psychologically harmful to boys was not among them. The Greeks viewed adolescent (and even younger) boys as inherently sexual, and the widespread practice of nudity in athletic exercise and daily life conditioned Greek boys to a greater degree of frankness and physical disinhibition. Both iconographical and textual evidence show that Greek adolescents were quite capable of rejecting adult suitors or discontinuing relationships that no longer pleased them.

OS DEGREDADOS FILHOS DE EVA DE ONTEM E DE HOJE

No Catolicismo, a veneração à Virgem Maria perpassa séculos. Uma quase milenar devoção é a oração da Salve, Rainha, atribuída ao monge beneditino HermannusContractus, em 1050. Este artigo tem como objetivo analisar parte da oração da Salve Rainhae propor uma reflexão sobre “os degredados filhos de Eva” a partir da Doutrina Moral Sexual da Igreja Católica. Para tanto, o artigo coloca em evidência uma das causas da situação de abandono das crianças no período histórico do Brasil Colônia e Império e, no tempopresente de nossa história, a identificação de quem são esses filhos degredados hoje: crianças enjeitadas e discriminados sexualmente. Como resultado, a situação de degredo gerou as Santas Casas, com a célebre “roda dos expostos” que acolhiam diretamente as crianças enjeitadas e favoreciam indiretamente a sexualidade extramatrimonial que gerou os degredados de ontem e de hoje. THE EXILED SONS OF EVE, IN THE PAST AND TODAYAbstractIn Catholicism, the veneration of the Virgin Mary goes back centuries. An almost millennial devotion is the Hail Queen's prayer, attributed to the Benedictine monk Hermannus Contractus, in 1050. This article aims to analyze part oft the Hail Queen's prayer and to propose a reflection on “the exiled Sons of Eve” from the Sexual Moral Doctrine of the Catholic Church.To this end, the article highlights one of the causes of the abandonment situation of children in the historical period of Colonial and Empire of Brazil and nowadays of our history, the identification of who are these exiled children today: rejected children and sexually discriminated. As a result, the situation of exile generated the Holy Houses, with the famous “Wheel of the exposed” that directly welcomed the rejected children and indirectly favored the extra-marital sexuality that generated the yesterday's and today's exiled.

“Thou Shalt Meet Thy Sexual Needs in Marriage”: Southern Baptists and Marital Sex in the Postwar Era

This article traces the changing sexual politics of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) from the 1950s through the 1980s. It argues that the moderates who led the denomination in the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s joined other supporters of “sexual containment” during the early Cold War to develop a theology about the salvific power of marital sex—and the personal, social, and national harm created by extramarital sex—which undergirded the sexual conservatism of the denomination's fundamentalist leadership who rose to power during the 1970s and 1980s. This analysis reframes our understanding of Southern Baptists within the broader religious right coalition as it reveals how the SBC's commitment to marital sexuality, which was forged during the early Cold War, informed its approach to later hot-button issues like abortion and homosexuality. Rather than simply reacting against the loosening sexual mores of the 1970s and 1980s or in favor of the rising visibility of other politically engaged Christians on issues of sexual morality, the SBC instead drew on longer traditions within the denomination to engage with a changing political and sexual landscape.

Complementarity and Intimate Life

This chapter focuses on the community of lay Catholic women who wrote for the magazine Marriage, a magazine for Catholic couples. Transitioning gender roles were a major preoccupation in the magazine in the years during and following Vatican II. Catholics debated issues of vital importance to the identity of Catholic laywomen, including complementarity, gender essentialism, working women, male headship in the family and feminism. The chapter also examines Catholic attitudes toward marital sexuality after the Rhythm Method was largely abandoned by American Catholics as a means of contraception. Although the magazine remained moderate in its responses to the women’s movement, analysis suggests that attitudes about Catholic women’s role in the church, home, and the workplace shifted significantly. Acceptance of complementarity was waning by the mid-1970s as increasing numbers of Catholic laywomen challenged cultural beliefs about Catholic womanhood.