Review of Lynne Gerber, Seeking the Straight and Narrow: Weight Loss and Sexual Reorientation in Evangelical America, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2011, ix + 288 pp., ISBN-13: 987-0-226-28812-3

Abstract

Religions have long been in the business of regulating bodily desires, particularly those deemed ‘unruly’ or ‘deviant’. In Seeking the Straight and Narrow Lynne Gerber analyses this effort on the part of two evangelical Christian ministries: a popular weight-loss program called First Place, and a network of exgay ministries called Exodus International. Based on fieldwork in each of these organizations, Gerber demonstrates how body size and sexual orientation are compelling issues of faith for their members. Her analysis is rich in complexity and nuanced by sensitivity to her subjects as she explores the tensions and ambiguities – between change and its limits, sin and salvation, sickness and health, morality and biology, discipline and freedom, godly and worldly ideals, and even success and failure – that permeate their efforts to lose weight and reorient sexuality. Ultimately, her study illuminates not only how religious faith is (re)produced in relation to the body through the process of (re)negotiating moral codes and physical urges, but also how such faith interacts with the culture around it in ways that call into question clear-cut distinctions between ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ norms, ideologies, and experiences. The book itself is organized into three main parts. The first examines how body size and sexual orientation are moralized through the categories and rhetorical strategies each ministry deploys. The language of ‘sin’ is central to both endeavours, though Gerber shows that this terminology is not without problems. While it provides a necessary basis for identifying what needs to be changed (whether in terms of body size or sexual desire), it also conveys a judgmental stance that could alienate those these ministries seek to save. In this light, the secular discourses of mental and physical ‘health’ that both ministries incorporate not only ‘soften the blow of calling something sin’ (p. 39), but also ease tensions between