Off the Map of Christian Sex–Why We Need More Than Rules

I’ve written about Amy Frykholm’s lovely new book before (here) and my latest post at the Christianity Today women’s blog explores it in more detail:

“Christian mythology,” writes Frykholm, “teaches that Christian sex protects us from heartache”—that if a believer keeps good boundaries and abstains from bad behavior, he or she will never get hurt.

While she, acknowledges that rules “can guide people onto solid ground,” Frykholm worries that rules have become almost “the only way that American Christians know how to talk about religion and sex,” despite the fact that, rules or no rules, True Love Waits participants delayed sexual intercourse by only 18 months compared with their secular counterparts; that more than half of the men at a Promise Keepers stadium event said they had used pornography within one week; a recent study showed that 80 percent of young evangelicals had premarital sex, choosing abortion in one-third of their unplanned pregnancies. “Many people are hungry to understand why they cannot place themselves on [the] map” of Christian sex.

Read the rest of the post here. Buy Amy’s book here.