Book Review: "Bringing Sex Into Focus: The Quest For Sexual Integrity" By Caroline J. Simon -- By: Megan K. DeFranza

Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 26:3 (Summer 2012)
Article: Book Review: "Bringing Sex Into Focus: The Quest For Sexual Integrity" By Caroline J. Simon
Author: Megan K. DeFranza


Book Review: Bringing Sex Into Focus: The Quest For Sexual Integrity By Caroline J. Simon

Megan K. DeFranza

Megan K. Defranza is Adjunct Professor of Theology at Gordon College, wenham, Massachusetts. She holds an MA in theology and MA in biblical languages from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a PhD in religious studies from Marquette University. She lives with her husband, Andrew, and two daughters in Beverly, Massachusetts.

Is it possible to see clearly in the midst of sexual confusion today? Caroline Simon believes it is, provided we take the trouble to submit ourselves for regular vision tests along the way. A valuable addition to any undergraduate course on human sexuality or sexual ethics, Bringing Sex into Focus offers tools and skills for evaluating the conflicting messages about sexuality proffered by contemporary culture, media, academia, and even conflicting Christian traditions. Simon is a philosopher, not an exegete, but writes in an accessible style that will benefit professors, students, pastors, and educated laypersons. Even more, the multiple lenses she offers for evaluating sexuality provide her readers with tools necessary for reading the Bible as well as interpreting their own sexual feelings and perspectives.

A seasoned educator and chaired professor at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, Simon is familiar with the anxieties of some college students (and even more parents) that undergrads will lose their own perspective amid the myriad options presented in the academy. Modeling the best kind of evangelical scholarship, she leads students through, rather than around, so-called “secular” approaches (romantic, expressive, plain sex, and sex as power) in ways that will help even those suspicious of Christian sexual mores to see the wisdom of the covenantal and procreative lenses. Writing as a Protestant, she presents the covenantal view as dominant, all the while modeling self-critique as she shows how this perspective can and should be enriched by other views: “We need to become more aware of lenses through which we and others are viewing sexuality, concentrating on our own eyes, lenses, and blind spots before presuming to diagnose others” (21).

With these tools, she launches into evaluations of marital sexuality, virginity, chastity, flirtation, seduction, homosexuality, casual sex, sexual consent, prostitution, pornography, and erotica. Particularly helpful is her use of virtue ethics, which provides a helpful and nuanced vision of sexual virtue as chastity and continence, in place of the simplistic, often harmful, idea of virginity as purity preserved or lost once and for all. This nuanced approach can be seen in her helpful evaluations of flirtation—a topic not typically covered in texts on sexual ethics, however needful. Similarly, her evaluations of homos...

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