Journal: Eikon
Volume: EIKON 05:2 (Fall 2023)
Article: The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You’ve Been Taught And How To Recover What God Intended
Author: Jeremiah Greever

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The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You’ve Been Taught And How To Recover What God Intended

Jeremiah Greever

Jeremiah Greever is the Senior Pastor at First Baptist Church of Sedalia, MO. He also serves an adjunct professor at Missouri Baptist University and is the committee co-chair for the Founders Midwest Conference.

Sheila Wray Gregoire, Rebecca Gregoire Lindenbach, and Joanna Sawatsky. The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You’ve Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2021.

Introduction

According to the authors of the book, The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You’ve Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended, evangelical Christianity needs a new understanding regarding sex. Writing primarily to Christian women, while also periodically addressing men, the authors repeatedly state their goal to “deconstruct harmful ideas” from the prima facie view of marital sex (36). Using sociological data, the authors “want to call Christians back to first principles about sex the way God intended” (13). By seeking to redefine definitions, interpretations, and expectations, the book’s focus is to give Christian marriages greater intimacy, sex, and marital satisfaction.

Summary

Sheila Gregoire joins her daughter, Rebecca Lindenbach, and epidemiologist Joanna Sawatsky to ask the question, “Are Christian women having great sex,” and if not, why not? To answer these questions, the authors surveyed over twenty thousand evangelical women “about their sex lives, their marriages, their beliefs about sex and marriage, their upbringing, and more” (11). The goal of the book is to determine if evangelical teaching is the culprit for marital dissatisfaction. To make this determination, the authors selected the top thirteen rated Amazon books on Christian marriage (and a secular bestselling marriage book as comparison) that discussed sex and evaluated them as

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either harmful or helpful. The assessment found the great majority of Christian marriage books to be inadequate (and explicitly labeled them as harmful) due to their teaching in the categories of infidelity and lust, pleasure and libido, and mutuality. Popular books such as “Love & Respect,” “His Needs, Her Needs,” and “Every Man’s Battle” were especially rated as harmful.

The authors address various aspects of sex and sexuality in the book — everything from mutual pleasure, understanding spousal preferences, lust, and obligation intimacy. Potential readers should be wise to the fact that although the book is not sordid, it is blunt about sex...