Moral Combat

October 1, 2017
Thoughtful study of the great schism between religious conservatives and progressives about women's control over their own bodies.It may be hard to believe, but there was a time when many evangelical Christians were not against--and some even actively supported--abortion and its legalization. Indeed, writes Griffith (Director, Danforth Center on Religion and Politics/Washington Univ.; American Religions: A Documentary History, 2007, etc.), in 1969, a survey of Texas Baptists revealed that 90 percent "felt their state's abortion law should be loosened." What happened in the intervening years? By the author's account, the story stretches back a century and more, to the time of Margaret Sanger on one side and Anthony Comstock on the other and their war over the issue of contraception. Through Comstock's agitation, the federal government had made it illegal, as long ago as 1873, to even possess a pamphlet advocating contraception. Sanger's militant working-class Catholicism, lashed with socialism and other progressive causes, would have made her a public enemy in her time in any event, but interestingly, as Griffith notes, she was strategically crafty in recruiting Protestant clergy to what boiled down to a fairly simple thesis: laws governing the "morality" of women should be "crafted by women themselves." Though academically rigorous, Griffith's account is both accessible and eye-opening: it simply astonishes that Christian organizations were instrumental in "family life"--meaning sex--education. But that's one flavor of Christianity, of course; the other is a rigorously fundamentalist one, and the two eventually pitched "a battle over the moral framework in which sexual knowledge would be embedded and over who had the right to determine just what those frameworks would be." As with every other battle in every other arena in which conservatives and progressives face off, the heat rose with the rise of Donald Trump; Griffith hopes that one day the rancor will finally "rouse a fractured nation to build a bearable peace."A welcome addition to the vast library on American religious discord.

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Starred review from October 9, 2017
Religion historian Griffith (American Religions) takes a sweeping look at the roots of today’s culture wars over abortion, sexual identity, and the intersection of sexuality and racial differences in this exceptional cultural history. Griffith opens not with the free-wheeling sexual revolution of the 1960s but in the ’20s with Margaret Sanger’s efforts to make contraception more widely available. Griffith goes on to use D.H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover as her prime example of how sensibilities around sexuality changed dramatically during the 20th century—the novel first appeared in America, abridged, in 1928, and could not be published in full until more than three decades later. With her account of the role played by prominent clergy and religious movements working to liberalize abortion law, Griffith argues that Roe v. Wade is best understood not solely as part of the women’s liberation movement but in the context of religious support for abortion rights. Likewise, her account of the theology that justified racial segregation illustrates an area where religious and cultural beliefs clash. Griffith’s remarkably comprehensive book will be of interest to scholars and lay readers alike. Agent: Geri Thoma, Writers House.

November 15, 2017

Griffith (director, John C. Danforth Ctr. on Religion & Politics) has written a timely introduction to religious and political debates about sex that have animated American public life since the Progressive Era. While political divisions over human sexual behavior are often portrayed as secular progressives vs. religious traditionalists, Griffith examines how Christian values have been invoked in support of, as well as against, liberalizing change. In eight thematic chapters, Griffith examines controversies over birth control, obscenity and censorship, interracial marriage, Alfred Kinsey's sex research, sex education, abortion, sexual harassment, and LGBT rights. While most of these subjects have been treated at greater length in previous works, the strength here is a coherent narrative that seeks to understand the history of legislating sex through the lens of Christianity. As Griffith observes, over the 20th century, some American Christians chose to value extending "access to power and influence for persons once excluded," while another group, "worked to sustain the old sexual order." VERDICT 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.--Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook, Massachusetts Historical Soc.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2017
Griffith offers a carefully reasoned examination of the century-long political and religious controversies over sexuality that color our national character. Her book begins in the 1920s with Margaret Sanger and the battle for birth control, and concludes in the wake of Donald Trump's election as president, which, Griffith argues, revealed the depth of the national divide over gender and sexuality. Between Sanger and Trump, she examines such hot-button issues as censorship of literature and popular entertainment, segregation and race, the Kinsey revolution, sex education in the sixties, the abortion war, sexual harassment at century's end, and same-sex marriage. Throughout, she deplores the virtual civil war that has come to seem such a disheartening and permanent part of our nation's social and political fabric. Given the passions engendered by these controversies on both sidesconservative and liberalshe demonstrates that comity and compromise are perennially elusive, while consensus seems to be a word in an incomprehensible language. Happily Griffith brings welcome clarity and light to what otherwise might have been impenetrable murkiness.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)