The numbers don't lie: in November 2016, 81 percent of self- identified evangelical voters chose a thrice-married, self- confessed sexual assaulter over a highly experienced public servant who happened to be the first female nominee for president. This surge of support helps to explain why Donald Trump thrashed Hillary Clinton among her own demographic, white women. A similar pattern, but with a consequentially different outcome, occurred a year later in the special Alabama Senate election: Roy Moore matched Trump's percentage among white evangelicals, although high turnout among African Americans saved the day for Doug Jones, Moore's Democratic opponent.Moral Combat, that rare academic work that weaves incisive research into a spellbinding tale of American piety and its restless twin, sex. The John C. Danforth Distinguished Professor at Washington University in St. Louis and the author of God's Daughters, Griffith is a leading scholar on evangelical women and the myriad ways they shape our culture and politics. She comes by her arguments honestly -- she and I share a Southern Baptist background, a Tennessee hometown, and a university -- and spins her story with skill and grit. As with Frances FitzGerald's magisterial The Evangelicals, Griffith breathes spirit into dry history, fashioning sinew and muscle onto brittle bones.moral argument for contraception but also a political argument for contraception -- or at least for the right to talk about it. With this argument, she recast contraception advocacy from something radical into an all-American pursuit, and opposition to birth control as fundamentally anti-American."The Rainbow was labeled obscene. It contained scenes of lesbianism, nakedness, and exuberant sex, all depicted in graphic detail . . . to Lawrence, the most dangerous critics were the censors, and he refused to concede any ground. His work was in no way smut, he argued, for it focused not on the dirtiness but the very holiness of sex." Griffith taps a wealth of stories that we've forgotten, such as the uproar over The Races of Mankind, Benedict's tract that dared to argue for equality, stirring the old ghosts among unreconstructed Southerners. A breach was coming. Moral Combat hews to a simple argument -- those who seek plurality and change will wrestle unto death with those invested in tradition and order -- making its case with vivid anecdotes. In the postwar years, Alfred Kinsey, the "biologist-tuned-sexologist," galvanized American Christendom, earning the ire of a young Billy Graham; a prominent Catholic editor published a letter: "As for you, Dr. Kinsey, I . . . consider you as one of the most loathsome wretches ever produced in human form." With a growing acceptance of birth control, and findings such as Kinsey's, women -- including Christian women -- were beginning to acquire a new level of control over their own sexuality.Roe v. Wade . Howard R. Moody, the Southern Baptist turned liberal New Yorker; Frances Kissling, a blue- collar Catholic from Queens; Gene Robinson, an Episcopal priest who tried to pray away the gay only to find his voice as an advocate for LGBTQ Christians -- these figures served as counterweights to strident conservatives, further wedging apart God's children. Mortal Combat lags as Griffith moves into well-trod territory from the '90s, Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill, Bill Clinton and Paula Jones. It's difficult to add anything fresh here. The book picks up its pace again, though, as Griffith dissects how and why Donald Trump -- professional louchebag of "Two Corinthians" fame -- captivated evangelicals of both sexes: "Among Trump's most loyal base, men and women alike cheered his putdowns of Clinton . . . For many, Trump, the avatar of a patriarchal and largely white Christian right, was distinctly preferable to Clinton, the so-called elitist pseudo-Christian feminist who could appear to be, as one evangelical periodical made explicitly clear two months before the election, the Grim Reaper, à la her pro-choice stance on abortion."Mayflower and as young as #MeToo, with perspicacity and grace. Hamilton Cain is the author of a memoir, This Boy's Faith, and a former finalist for a National Magazine Award. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Reviewer: Hamilton Cain
The Barnes & Noble Review
★ 10/09/2017
"[Griffith] shows that at every turn in the culture wars of the last century or so, religious leaders have battled to obstruct gender, sexual, and racial equality.... The juxtaposition of deep dives and aerial views makes...a propulsive read. As do the wrinkles that complicate any easy political assumptions."—Laura Kipnis , New York Review of Books Moral Combat is an impressive history of a massive fault line running through American history and politics: namely, sex."—Washington Post Moral Combat is a vivid illustration of a principle that liberals understand well and that religious conservatives usually do not: Culture precedes politics."—Wall Street Journal Christianity Today Los Angeles Review of Books Linda Gordon , New Republic The Gospel Coalition Publishers Weekly (starred review) Booklist Kirkus Reviews Decatur Daily Washington Times Book Riot Moral Combat ] is a coherent narrative that seeks to understand the history of legislating sex through Christianity... This book will appeal to a range of readers seeking an entry point into the historical and religious context of today's high-stakes political struggles."—Library Journal Moral Combat is a momentous book about the deep, irreparable divisions that the politicization of sex has inflicted on our society for the past century. Loaded with memorable characters and keen insights, Marie Griffith's elegantly written account of the culture wars' most heated flashpoint is both absorbing and sobering. And it is required reading for anyone trying to understand the fiercest political agitations of our day."—Darren Dochuk, author of From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism Moral Combat ably examines the sharp intra-Christian divisions of opinion on twentieth-century flashpoints of controversy over contraception, obscenity, interracial sex, sex education, abortion, sexual harassment and same-sex marriage. By tracing these divergences to their embeddedness in differential responses to feminism and women's self-determination, Marie Griffith supplies an analysis needed to understand the conflicts and blind spots in sexual attitudes today."—Nancy F. Cott, author of Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Destiny and Power Moral Combat is essential reading. R. Marie Griffith, a distinguished historian of American religion, shows that the fierce and bitter contests among Christians in the twentieth century over good religion vs. bad religion, good sex vs. bad sex, have been and remain at the core of the most explosive issues of American public life. Women's health, African American civil rights, marriage, the cruel fantasy of white supremacy, workplace behavior, the public reputation of science, and more—God and sex are implicated in all of them. The United States is not a God-obsessed nation, as some would have it; it is a God-and-sex-obsessed nation. And the stakes are high: at the heart of this brilliant work of religious and political history is the question of the future of American democracy itself."—Robert A. Orsi, author of History and Presence
2017-09-19
