1. Home
  2. Issues
2020
No. Nr (13), Oral History - Emotions 2019
No. (12), Public History 2018
No. (11), Cultural History of Knowledge 2017
No. (10), Anthropology – Folklore – History 2016
No. (9), Cultural Heritage 2015
No. (8), Anthropology and History 2014
No. 1 (6), Semiotics of History No. 2 (7), History and Gender 2013
No. 1 (4), On Representation No. 2 (5), Genealogies of Culture 2012
No. 2 (3), Readings of the Past No. 1 (2), Anthropology / history of the Contemporary World 2011
No. 1-2 (1), Preliminaries
ISSN 2084–1418
The paper edition of the Anthropology of History Yearbook is the definitive version

2019, No. (12), Public History

Grzegorz Wiktorowski
Afirmation of sexuality in evangelical and fundamentalist American protestatism

PDF version
Keywords: sexual ethics; Evangelicalism; Protestant Fundamentalism; sex; sexuality; youth guides

Abstract:
The author of the article believes that the Bible on which Christianity builds, and Evangelical Protestantism in particular, does not represent a full or comprehensive model of sexual ethics. Basically, it deals with body and sexuality temporarily and fragmentarily, and a deeper reflection on these issues is residual. The attitude to the body and sexuality present today in cultures that grew out of (or processed by) Judeo-Christian tradition is the result of later (re)interpretations. Therefore, it does not originate from the biblical text itself, but from the cultural, social and historical conditions of its interpreters. The pessimistic and negative post-Augustian anthropology created in Western (Latin) Christianity was undertaken by Protestantism. Within it, however, it underwent a kind of diversification. On the one hand, the body was still radically harassed, especially against all sorts of "lusts". On the other hand, sex and sexuality were dedemonized by placing them in the context of a romantic marriage bond. Thus, the apotheosis of virginity and celibacy in Catholicism was undermined. The material for the analysis are guides written from a religious and confessional perspective. Their function is to distribute ideas and reproduce attitudes represented by Evangelical communities. The stylistic and rhetorical means used by the authors, including metaphors, show a positive attitude towards human sexuality and sex as an act. However, this approach has some restrictions. They result from the patriarchal order, which is considered to be divine and complementary anthropology. Sex and sexuality are locked in a heterosexual, monogamous and romantic marriage space.

About Author:
GRZEGORZ WIKTOROWSKI – cultural anthropologist, PhD student at the Doctoral Studies of Culture at the University of Wrocław, employee of the Medical University of Silesian Piasts in Wrocław. E-mail: grzegorz.wiktorowski[at]umed.wroc.pl. ORCID 0000-0002-3298-9867.

References
Go back