Regulating Sex in the Roman Empire: Ideology, the Bible, and the Early Christians. By David Wheeler-Reed

Abstract

Regulating Sex in the Roman Empire: Ideology, the Bible, and the Early Christians challenges the view that current American sexual mores—ones that sustain heterosexual marriage and family—are “Judeo-Christian” values. Conversely, the sexual morality that guides conservative Americans, argues David Wheeler-Reed, does not reflect that of early Christians, who largely advocated an end to marriage and child-bearing. If conservative Americans want to look for an ancient corollary to their focus on the family, then according to Regulating Sex in the Roman Empire, they should look to the imperialist policies of the Roman Emperor Augustus. Relying on Foucault and Althusser, Wheeler-Reed examines discourses about sexuality, marriage, and procreation in both Roman antiquity and modern America (xv and 105), and asks how these discourses variously operate as ideologies that support the regulation of procreation—and in the case of the Roman state or America, shore up nationalistic interests (xiv). His argument is not that American conservatives have consciously adopted Roman imperial policies, but rather that there are strong structural similarities to their focus on procreative, heterosexual marriage with the Emperor Augustus’s marriage legislation. Moreover, Wheeler-Reed demonstrates that early Christian discourses of sexuality were not “novel” or “unprecedented” in the ancient world, but that what they cultivated over time was the promotion of celibacy, often in opposition to those who championed marriage and family (xvi–xviii).