At Religion News Service today, Jana Riess interviews Marie Griffith, author of the just-published Moral Combat: How Sex Divided American Christians and Fractured American Politics. Riess asks Griffith what surprised her as she did research about the fixation of American Christians with sex and power historically.
Since Griffith's response is absolutely pertinent to what I posted here earlier today, I want to share it with you:
I suppose it is perennially surprising that so many women have fought in favor of gender hierarchy and sexual restrictions. It's not just men, or simple misogyny. Women themselves have often participated in upholding patriarchy and "traditional" gender values.
The other surprise, I would say, is how deeply entwined I came to realize these ideas are with patriotism and American nationalism. The folks I'm studying on the conservative side really believed that God gave America a destiny: America is exceptional, and it's divinely ordained to lead the world. That’s a deeply ingrained idea that has permeated our nation's history. And they also see loosening sexual morals as deeply threatening to that divine place. There's something about changing gender roles and sexual behavior that feels like it's deeply against God, and those changes make God gravely displeased with the nation. So sex kind of stands in for so much else about national destiny, and that’s why those issues get so much attention and have so much political weight.
I would add only one unavoidable qualifying word here — unavoidable particularly in light of what has just happened in Alabama: "white." The other surprise, I would say, is how deeply entwined I came to realize these ideas are with patriotism and American white nationalism.
Many of us want to keep doing a dance around race as an absolutely indispensable category of analysis as we try to understand our culture and churches today. Alabama reminds us all over again of our fatuity in pretending that we can justifably lump all evangelicals, white, black, and Hispanic, together in one big lump.Race matters.