Devotions and Desires: Histories of Sexuality and Religion in the Twentieth-Century United States ed. by Gillian Frank, Bethany Moreton, Heather R. White

Abstract

Reviewed by: Devotions and Desires: Histories of Sexuality and Religion in the Twentieth-Century United States ed. by Gillian Frank, Bethany Moreton, Heather R. White Andrea L. Turpin Devotions and Desires: Histories of Sexuality and Religion in the Twentieth-Century United States. Edited by Gillian Frank, Bethany Moreton, and Heather R. White. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018. Pp. xii, 303. Paper, $32.95, ISBN 978-1-4696-3626-9; cloth, $90.00, ISBN 978-1-4696-3625-2.) The story is a familiar one: as the United States has grown more secular over the course of the twentieth century, it has simultaneously grown more permissive and more positive regarding sex—because, as everybody knows, religious belief corresponds to negative and restrictive views on sex. The story is wrong. Devotions and Desires: Histories of Sexuality and Religion in the Twentieth-Century United States demonstrates why. This edited volume brings together thirteen essays on the intersection of two historical fields that have more often stared awkwardly at each other from across the room than embraced in the same bed: religious history and the history of sexuality. Taken together, the essays argue that American religious traditions have led to a wide variety of sexual views and expressions. Religion per se has not automatically led to particular beliefs about sex. There is a growing scholarship on the complex relationship between liberal religious traditions and sexuality in the twentieth century; there is less work complicating the relationship that exists for conservative groups. This volume therefore helpfully puts the histories of a wide spectrum of religious traditions in conversation with one another. For example, essays on same-sex desire in the Young Women’s Christian Association and on the mainline Protestant rationale for embracing birth control constitute nuanced explorations of theological rationales for changing sexual attitudes. Meanwhile, essays on Catholic sex education reformers and Mormon sex advice for married women demonstrate how conservative religious traditions nurtured sex-positive theology and practice among some adherents. Catholicism gets extensive treatment as other essays explore how Catholics protested eugenic impulses in American policy for post–World War II Japan and how American Catholic activists succeeded in encouraging public censorship as late as the mid-twentieth century by adopting a more secular vocabulary for their aims. Significantly, Devotions and Desires also explores the developing sexual beliefs of less common subjects of American religious history. The collection is particularly strong on Judaism: essays analyze how Jewish concerns influenced [End Page 939] that tradition’s approach to marriage counseling and theology of heterosexuality; how the Women’s League of Conservative Judaism related in a surprising way to the politics of legal abortion; and how another branch gradually shifted its perspective on homosexuality. Two essays also explore the influence of eastern religions on American sexual practices: one on different streams within the American yoga movement during the long twentieth century and one on gay communes in the 1970s. Finally, an additional two essays explore the role of same-sex desire and practice within two religious communities that defied traditional religious categories: Father Divine’s Peace Mission movement and the Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco. As is by now evident, this collection also covers a wide variety of topics under the heading of sexuality: norms of heterosexual marriage practice, same-sex desire, same-sex practice, birth control, and abortion, to name major unifying themes. The scope of this many diverse topics and religious communities could result in lack of coherence. Happily, it does not. Great credit goes to the editors, who insert into many essays references to other chapters in the volume that develop a particular theme in similar or contrasting ways. The essays thus read as a conversation from which trends emerge in how the development of American religious communities and sexual practices interacted during the twentieth century. Devotions and Desires is a model edited volume. Gaps do, however, exist, and they are noted by the editors. Perhaps most glaring, no essay considers conservative Protestantism, a major player in twentieth-century culture wars about sex. Much scholarship exists on this topic, and the volume seeks instead to break new ground. Other gaps include less well covered topics, such as...