Has a repressive morality been the primary contribution of Christianity to the history of sexuality? The ascetic concerns that pervade ancient Christian texts would seem to support such a common assumption. Focusing on hagiographical literature, Virginia Burrus pursues a fresh path of interpretation, arguing that the early accounts of the lives of saints are not antierotic but rather convey a sublimely transgressive "countereroticism" that resists the marital, procreative ethic of sexuality found in other strands of Christian tradition.Without reducing the erotics of ancient hagiography to a single formula, The Sex Lives of Saints frames the broad historical, theological, and theoretical issues at stake in such a revisionist interpretation of ascetic eroticism, with particular reference to the work of Michel Foucault and Georges Bataille, David Halperin and Geoffrey Harpham, Leo Bersani and Jean Baudrillard. Burrus subsequently proceeds through close, performative readings of the earliest Lives of Saints, mostly dating to the late fourth and early fifth centuries--Jerome's Lives of Paul, Malchus, Hilarion, and Paula; Gregory of Nyssa's Life of Macrina; Augustine's portrait of Monica; Sulpicius Severus's Life of Martin; and the slightly later Lives of so-called harlot saints. Queer, s/m, and postcolonial theories are among the contemporary discourses that prove intriguingly resonant with an ancient art of "saintly" loving that remains, in Burrus's reading, promisingly mobile, diverse, and open-ended.

Product Description: This is the first comprehensive account of the development of the ideas on gender of Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) among his English followers. It traces the changes in thought on gender and sexuality in such esoteric traditions as alchemy, Hermeticism and the Cabala...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This provocative work provides a radical reassessment of the emergence and nature of Christian sexual morality, the dominant moral paradigm in Western society since late antiquity. While many scholars, including Michel Foucault, have found the basis of early Christian sexual restrictions in Greek ethics and political philosophy, Kathy L...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

In this important study, Ford summarizes the Christian understanding of marital and sexual ethics, contrasting modern ideas and customs with those principles and practices universally accepted by the Christian Church in past epochs.

Product Description: Deals with what Christian Churches are saying now and have said in the past about sex. It provides a basic theological resource for those who want to explore issues around sex and sexuality from a Christian point of view but feel they need to acquire a broader, more informal perspective on the historical background and the contemporary developments>...read more

Product Description: This collection of articles present a variety of broadly-Christian responses to issues such as sexuality and gender, sexuality and spirituality, gay and lesbian sexuality, sexuality and violence, sexuality and singleness, and the family.

Book by Dauw, Dean C.

Product Description: Since the days of the Early Fathers, sex and death have formed a theological equation known as "sexual pessimism"--an aversion to the carnal which consequently elevates the virginal and the chaste. Here, Osborne gives a bracing account of how we imagine one of the most intimate aspects of our lives...read more