Episode #17: Reading from the Book that the Gospel Coalition Apologized For Last Week, Part 1

This week we are taking a quick pause from our series “The Sex Education We Wish We Had,” to focus on some news from the Evangelical wing of the internet.

This week there has been controversy surrounding Joshua Butler's new book, Beautiful Union: How God's Vision for Sex Points us to the Good, Unlocks the Truth, and Sort of Explains Everything.

And yes, that is the real title.

The Gospel Coalition, a media source for conservative evangelicals, published an excerpt from Joshua Butler's new book, which was so horrendous, even THEY had to take it down.

Julia summarizes: “Typically evangelical groups thrive on harsh criticism with the adage that this criticism is supposed to happen because Jesus told us that the world will hate us and hate our message, and this criticism is evident of that.”

We were incredibly curious to see what piece of writing could be so bad, even the evangelicals had to apologize for it.

So that is what we are doing for the next few weeks! Enjoy as we navigate the introduction and first chapter to Joshua Butler’s Beautiful Union.

Why we are reading Butler (9:05). “This book has not been published, which means that, although this might sound shockingly similar to Christian messaging from Focus on the Family and other groups around sex from the nineties and early 2000s, this book represents the Christian philosophy and ethic of the Evangelical and Pentecostal world in the year 2023,” Jeremiah explains how eerily similar this book sounds to all the other negative messaging around sex from evangelical groups since their rise. We wanted to read this today, not only to unpack the unhelpful and dangerous messaging in this book but to show the evangelical church’s development has progressed forwards but instead remains in a circle. “Frankly, this is terrifying. The dangerous rhetoric purported in this book and other similar sources around marriage consent, bodies pleasure, gender, et cetera, are all alive and well with massive political and relational consequences. I wish that I did not have this much job security. Thank you, Josh Butler. I am curious if some of my upcoming clients could send their bills to you. Let me know.” Julia adds to Jeremiah’s thought but emphasizes how all this harmful messaging around sex is still alive and thriving.

Christian Hodgepodge (16:00). “How could such a God really care about the dilemma of that unplanned pregnancy or your sobbing on the floor in the wake of a third miscarriage? What about the bland or painful sex in an unaffectionate marriage, or the frustration of a dead bedroom?” Jeremiah read from Butler’s book, to which Julia says, “I need to think of a word for this play that Christian authors use when they take a bunch of sexual events or sexual behavior. Some of them are traumatic, some of them abusive, some of them completely neutral, right? Some of them potentially very positive, some of them painful emotionally or psychologically or physically, and just lump them together into one big thing and, then escalate from this event that could have any number of emotional experiences too, at a one night stand.” Butler uses sexual events/behaviors that have nothing to do with one another and compiles them into one sentence. It is a typical Christian trope, as Julia notes, but one that is particularly damaging because it sends the message that the good, traumatic, painful, and confusing elements of sex and sexuality all exist on the same plane and cannot be separated from one another.

“Sex is the icon of the mystery of our salvation” (21:00). “This is actually setting up a really interesting theme in the Evangelical church. The Evangelical movement is centered around this question, what happens when Jesus, whose death represents this process for saving us, from suffering? What happens when Jesus becomes your significant other? And I think that that's what's being set up here in this sentence,” Jeremiah notes after Butler essentially puts sex on a pedestal. This idea of sex being connected to spirituality and a higher power is not new but is complex. When sex is only tied to spirituality, that’s when it becomes a problem because it is put above the people actually having sex. Mystifying sex has not proven to be very helpful, and can actually be very traumatic, as it may spur guilt and shame.

Sexualizing Neutral Things (25:30). “Christians love to sexualize random neutral things and, and it's both hilarious, but also really heartbreaking. We had talked about what it was like growing up and being like 10 years old and being anxious about the tank top that I would wear. Because like my 10-year-old shoulders, I was wondering if [I was] going to be sexualized. This is another great move by the Christians. A power play, and it also leads to fear-mongering. Your children are getting like sexual messages from their toys at Target” Julia says. It is heartbreaking for a child, especially a young girl, to be so aware and feel so much shame about her own shoulders. This is not a feeling that comes naturally, this is an ingrained shame of our own bodies, and when sexuality is tied to guilt, it is hard not to feel ashamed when you are told by adults that your shoulders are inappropriate.

The Purpose of These Books (32:00). “The only thing that I would add would be that sex is a window, not just to look through salvation, but to look through and see who God is. I'm sure that the salvation part is like very caked into that because the purpose of many of these books is to communicate to the reader, you are a sinner, but turn to Jesus, Jesus will save you. Come join our churches. Come give us money. That shit.” Jeremiah says how many of these books, despite different writing styles, despite trying to repackage the same messaging in different words, still have one goal: go to church and give us money! If Butler’s words sound like they could have been written in the ‘90s, there is no new ideas to be had, just the same ones in a different delivery.

We only read through the introduction; next week, we’ll read chapter 1, where Butler relies on some…disturbing imagery to link sexual health with the relationships between God and the church.

(Please note that due to our reading from someone else’s writing, we’ve chosen not to publish our episode script for this or next episode.)