This Saturday marks the starts of my “This Week in Sexuality” weekly feature. Every Saturday I will spotlight the “sexuality” stories I came across in the previous seven days.
Real Marriage
The biggest sexuality story hands down has been the release of Mark Driscoll’s Real Marriage. The book has barely been out two weeks and it already has just shy of an hundred reviews on Amazon. Egalatarians hate the book because Driscoll is a complementarian and believes in “traditional” marriage. No shocker there. However, the book is even getting mixed reviews from people that are in basic theological alignment with the Seattle pastor. A lot of the controversey stems from the fact that the book has a seemingly inordinate amount of its content dedicated sexual intercourse and various sex acts. I have yet to read the book but I do recall Driscoll’s teaching on the Song of Solomon being fairly messed up. I do eventually plan to pick up since it will be a significant influence on Christians.
Here are some of the better reviews I came across:
- Deny Burk has lengthy review here.
- Tim Challies has a short review here.
- Doug Wilson did a mutli-parter: pt. 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5.
Sidenote: The best book I’ve read on marriage so far is Doug Wilson’s Reforming Marriage. I’d recommend Ed Wheat’s Intended for Pleasure if you are looking for something that focuses on the sex act.
Babies are Good
Mark Oppenheimer’s latest article in the New York Times on Evangelicals shifting their views regarding contraception is worth checking. Here is a short quote:
“Since then, however, there has been a shift in evangelical thinking about contraception, and therefore about big families. You can see it in the Duggar family, the enthusiastic Santorum supporters who star on the reality television show “19 Kids & Counting.” You can read about it in books like “Quiverfull,” Kathryn Joyce’s 2009 account of Christians who forgo contraception to add children to the Lord’s army. And you can hear it in the teachings of theologians like Russell D. Moore, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary dean who warns evangelicals to be skeptical of the ‘contraceptive culture.’”
Oppenheimer gives a fairly accurate, albeit brief, history of Protestant views on birth control and then attempts to get a few modern pastors to comment on the subject. I was very disappointed with the cowardice expressed by a few of pastors quoted towards the end of the article.
Civil Rights for Everybody
Over at LifeNew.com, Andrew Bair wrote a timely article entittled, “What Would Martin Luther King, Jr. Have Thought of Abortion?” Here is the money quote from Alveda King:
“Were he alive today, he would be working to secure peace and justice for those in the womb and healing for a nation that is still pained by over 53 million missing lives.”
Poisoned Pie
Staying on the subject of abortion, Al Mohler wrote a chilling post over on his blog about one feminist’s claim that “Abortion is as American as Apple Pie.“
“Abortion is as American as apple pie.” [Merle] Hoffman made that statement in a recent interview about her book. She laments that abortion is the cause of shame in some women and that shame attaches itself to abortion in the larger culture, even now. In her view, if women would start talking more honestly and directly about their abortions, the shame would be removed and women would discuss their abortions like they speak of “a bikini wax.”
Disturbingly honest.
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M. Scott Foster is a former youth pastor and church planter. He currently is studying pastoral theology at ClearNote Pastors College in Bloomington, IN. You can contact or follow him on 
