"Explores more than a half century of American church debate about homosexuality to show that even as the main lesson--homosexuality is bad, teens are vulnerable--has remained constant, the arguments and assumptions have changed remarkably. The story is told through a wide variety of sources, including oral histories, interviews, memoirs, and even pulp novels; the result is a fascinating window onto the never-ending battle for the teenage soul."--from publisher's description.

Come Now, Let Us Argue It Out provides a look into a community that challenges common narratives about what it means to be LGBTQ and Christian in the contemporary United States. Based on his participant-observation fieldwork with a faith-based organization called the Reformation Project, Jon Burrow-Branine provides an ethnography of how some LGBTQ and LGBTQ-supportive Christians negotiate identity and difference and work to create change in evangelicalism. Come Now, Let Us Argue It Out tells the story of how this activism can be understood as a community of counter-conduct. Drawing on a concept proposed by the philosopher and historian Michel Foucault, Burrow-Branine documents everyday moments of agency and resistance that have the potential to form new politics, ethics, and ways of being as individuals in this community navigate the exclusionary politics of mainstream evangelical institutions, culture, and theology. More broadly, Burrow-Branine considers the community's ongoing conversation about what it means to be LGBTQ and a Christian, grappling with the politics of inclusion and representation in LGBTQ evangelical activism itself.

In this reexamination of what it means to have a tradition, Catholic and otherwise, Mark D. Jordan offers a powerful and provocative study of the sin of erotic love between men. The Invention of Sodomy reveals the theological fabrication of arguments for categorizing genital acts between members of the same sex.

Provides an inside look at the entry-level college recruiting game.

Unleashing the Passion of Young People in Your Church Is Possible! Churches are losing both members and vitality as increasing numbers of young people disengage. Based on groundbreaking research with over 250 of the nation's leading congregations, Growing Young provides a strategy any church can use to involve and retain teenagers and young adults. It profiles innovative churches that are engaging 15- to 29-year-olds and as a result are growing--spiritually, emotionally, missionally, and numerically. Packed with both research and practical ideas, Growing Young shows pastors and ministry leaders how to position their churches to engage younger generations in a way that breathes vitality, life, and energy into the whole church. Visit www.churchesgrowingyoung.org for more information.

“Fascinating, thoughtful, and important. [Jeff Chu] captures the fractures and conflict at a moment when the issue of what to do with L.G.B.T. people is tearing Christian denominations apart. Does Jesus Really Love Me? deserves to be widely read.” —Dan Savage, New York Times Book Review In this timely work—part memoir, part investigative analysis—a prize-winning writer explores the explosive and confusing intersection of faith, politics, and sexuality in Christian America. When Jeff Chu came out to his parents as a gay man, his devout Christian mother cried. And cried. Every time she looked at him. For months. As a journalist and a believer, Chu knew that he had to get to the heart of a question that had been haunting him for years: Does Jesus really love me? The quest to find an answer propels Chu on a remarkable cross-country journey to discover the God “forbidden to him” because of his sexuality. Surveying the breadth of the political and theological spectrum, from the most conservative viewpoints to the most liberal, he tries to distill what the diverse followers of Christ believe about homosexuality and to understand how these people who purportedly follow the same God and the same Scriptures have come to hold such a wide range of opinions. Why does Pastor A believe that God hates me, especially because of my gayness? Why does Person B believe that God loves me, gayness and all? From Brooklyn to Nashville to California, from Westboro Baptist Church and their god hates fags protest signs to the pioneering Episcopal bishop Mary Glasspool, who proclaims a message of liberation and divine love, Chu captures spiritual snapshots of Christian America at a remarkable moment, when tensions between both sides in the culture wars have rarely been higher. Both funny and heartbreaking, perplexing and wise, Does Jesus Really Love Me? is an intellectual, emotional, and spiritual pilgrimage that reveals a portrait of a faith and a nation at odds.

At a moment when "freedom of religion" rhetoric fuels public debate, it is easy to assume that sex and religion have faced each other in pitched battle throughout modern U.S. history. Yet, by tracking the nation's changing religious and sexual landscapes over the twentieth century, this book challenges that zero-sum account of sexuality locked in a struggle with religion. It shows that religion played a central role in the history of sexuality in the United States, shaping sexual politics, communities, and identities. At the same time, sexuality has left lipstick traces on American religious history. From polyamory to pornography, from birth control to the AIDS epidemic, this book follows religious faiths and practices across a range of sacred spaces: rabbinical seminaries, African American missions, Catholic schools, pagan communes, the YWCA, and much more. What emerges is the shared story of religion and sexuality and how both became wedded to American culture and politics. The volume, framed by a provocative introduction by Gillian Frank, Bethany Moreton, and Heather R. White and a compelling afterword by John D'Emilio, features essays by Rebecca T. Alpert and Jacob J. Staub, Rebecca L. Davis, Lynne Gerber, Andrea R. Jain, Kathi Kern, Rachel Kranson, James P. McCartin, Samira K. Mehta, Daniel Rivers, Whitney Strub, Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci, Judith Weisenfeld, and Neil J. Young.

This volume addresses three things many people do not discuss candidly with strangers or mere acquaintances: God, sex, and politics. These can easily become topics of fierce debate, particularly when taken together, as has been the case with same-sex marriage legislation, the Vatican’s criticism of “gender ideology,” or the repeatedly asserted claim that Islam, homosexuality, and gender equality are essentially incompatible. This volume investigates what is at stake in these constructions of religion and homosexuality in public discourses. Starting with the Netherlands as a special case study, it proceeds with contributions on other predominantly postsecular countries in central, northern, and southern Europe as well as several postcommunist and postcolonial countries “beyond Europe.” Combining contemporary and historical perspectives and approaches from both the humanities and the social sciences, the contributors explore how national and European identities are constructed and contested in debates on religion and homosexuality. Chapter 2 and Chapter 8 of this book are available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com.

Dominic Janes is at pains here to highlight the role played by Christianity in the history of homosexuality in Britain. His story deals not merely with genital relations but also with identities both embraced and refused. Necessarily, coded expressions of desire as well as creative blurrings between religious idealism and queer gender and sexuality are integral to Janes s account. A special focus for Janes is the way in which visual images and imaginary visions of suffering in ecclesiastical contexts were used to develop concepts of male same-sex desire that projected the self as dutiful and penitent rather than shameful. And so, a model (and in ways a substitute) for same-sex relationships was readily available in idealizations of the person and body of Christas unmarried queer martyr. Homosexual desires and identities prove to have unfolded in creative dialogue with religion during and since the 19th century. Various figures enter into Janes s history, from Cardinal Newman and Oscar Wilde to artists such as Simeon Solomon and Frederick Rolfe, and the plot thickens with forays into Victorian monasteries that functioned as queer families, with fascinating side trips into Rolfe s Christmas cards as expressions of queer aesthetic/identity. He brings the account full circle with a concluding chapter on the life and works of Derek Jarman. Janes uses this case to show that the experience of the AIDS epidemic led to a reconnection with older modes of queer self-expression specifically concerned with the endurance of suffering. The religious roots of queer creativity are a vital resource for modern churches and openly gay men and women to learn from."

Through a detailed study of the sexually-charged rhetoric of one of America's largest conservative women's organizations, Concerned Women for America (CWA), 'Righteous Rhetoric' argues that the absolute, ordered platforms for which CWA is known are not the linchpin of its political power. Rather, such absolutes are the byproduct of a more fundamental rhetorical process called 'chaos rhetoric', a type of speech designed to create a heightened sense of social chaos.