Kelsy Burke
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780520286320
- eISBN:
- 9780520961586
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520286320.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Sociology of Religion
Christians under Covers shifts how scholars and popular media typically talk about religious conservatives and sexuality. Moving attention away from debates over homosexuality, premarital sex, and ...
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Christians under Covers shifts how scholars and popular media typically talk about religious conservatives and sexuality. Moving attention away from debates over homosexuality, premarital sex, and other sexual sins, this virtual ethnography examines the online world of Christian sex advice—blogs, message boards, and online stores that promote the idea that God wants married, heterosexual couples (but only them) to have great sex. The internet allows evangelical website users to reimagine their faith, drawing from existing religious beliefs while also talking about God in sometimes unorthodox ways. By emphasizing their own sense of piety and God’s rules, Burke demonstrates how website users construct a religious logic that fashions boundaries between themselves and ungodly others (like gays and lesbians) while still taking advantage of the sexual spoils that those ungodly others helped incorporate into the broader culture: sexual knowledge, women’s pleasure, even kinky sex. When one of the mantras of evangelical Christian ideology is the “naturalness” of heterosexuality, Burke offers a new perspective on how religion both constructs and undermines heterosexuality’s power.Less
Christians under Covers shifts how scholars and popular media typically talk about religious conservatives and sexuality. Moving attention away from debates over homosexuality, premarital sex, and other sexual sins, this virtual ethnography examines the online world of Christian sex advice—blogs, message boards, and online stores that promote the idea that God wants married, heterosexual couples (but only them) to have great sex. The internet allows evangelical website users to reimagine their faith, drawing from existing religious beliefs while also talking about God in sometimes unorthodox ways. By emphasizing their own sense of piety and God’s rules, Burke demonstrates how website users construct a religious logic that fashions boundaries between themselves and ungodly others (like gays and lesbians) while still taking advantage of the sexual spoils that those ungodly others helped incorporate into the broader culture: sexual knowledge, women’s pleasure, even kinky sex. When one of the mantras of evangelical Christian ideology is the “naturalness” of heterosexuality, Burke offers a new perspective on how religion both constructs and undermines heterosexuality’s power.
