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A review by josiahdegraaf
The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended by Sheila Wray Gregoire, Rebecca Gregoire Lindenbach, Joanna Sawatsky
4.0
I'm not really the target audience for this book as an unmarried guy who practices chastity. A friend had recommended this book to me since they still found it helpful to read as an unmarried guy. I'm not sure I found it as helpful as he did for this stage of life? But perhaps mileage varies.
At any rate. One of the things this book made me appreciate is the non-trendy nature of my church culture growing up. Because holy moly do several trendy Christian marriage books from the 2000s have some messed up views & teachings about sex. It shouldn't have taken this long for someone like Gregoire & co. to be making this a major discussion point in Christian circles. But good on them for doing so, because there have been some legitimately toxic teachings spread in certain Christian spheres over the past twenty years.
One of the major marketing points of this book is the massive survey the authors did on women's experiences and then discussed here. I tended to have mixed feelings about the insights drawn from the survey, however. While there are many revealing and true points that Gregoire & co. make from the survey, I at times had questions about their methodology and framing. There's a lot of correlation/causation questions that aren't really explored in this book. Gregoire & co. often argue that bad biblical teachings have caused dysfunctional sexual habits. But they don't always prove causation. And sometimes they seem to fall prey to the ecological fallacy, arguing that because something is true for the group as a whole, that means it's true for each individual in that group. I found this to be especially the case in their discussion on gender roles in marriage, and would have liked to see more careful analysis that investigated if what was true for each large group of people was also true for each sub-group within that larger group. Their framing also seemed a bit biased at times. At one point, they also claim that 51.3% constitutes "most of the women in this survey" (perhaps on a technicality? But "half" would really be a more accurate framing).
As a result, I generally found that the sections relying on biblical reasoning and common sense were more helpful than the sections relying on statistics. Because you really shouldn't need statistics to prove that, say, wives aren't responsible for keeping their husbands from watching porn. (Then again, given some of the Christian authors that have said this... maybe we do need such statistical arguments. :/ )
At any rate, the best sections of the book IMO were the sections talking about what a positive view of sexuality looks like. Most of the book is focused on rebutting unhealthy views of sexuality, which makes sense given how widespread many of those ideas are. But as someone who was already on the same page with Gregoire & co. on that, I gleaned more from the vision-casting the authors did for what healthy sexuality should look like than from the rebuttals. I would guess that here again, though, mileage varies, and people who have grown up hearing these bad views will really appreciate these rebuttals.
At the end of the day, this wasn't the most helpful book for me personally given my unmarried status and church background. But while I do have some statistical issues with the book, most of it was really quite good, and I could see it as being really helpful for people in different stages or from different backgrounds than myself. Certainly if it leads to more people breaking free from bad teachings, that's a great success.
Rating: 3.5-4 Stars (Good).
At any rate. One of the things this book made me appreciate is the non-trendy nature of my church culture growing up. Because holy moly do several trendy Christian marriage books from the 2000s have some messed up views & teachings about sex. It shouldn't have taken this long for someone like Gregoire & co. to be making this a major discussion point in Christian circles. But good on them for doing so, because there have been some legitimately toxic teachings spread in certain Christian spheres over the past twenty years.
One of the major marketing points of this book is the massive survey the authors did on women's experiences and then discussed here. I tended to have mixed feelings about the insights drawn from the survey, however. While there are many revealing and true points that Gregoire & co. make from the survey, I at times had questions about their methodology and framing. There's a lot of correlation/causation questions that aren't really explored in this book. Gregoire & co. often argue that bad biblical teachings have caused dysfunctional sexual habits. But they don't always prove causation. And sometimes they seem to fall prey to the ecological fallacy, arguing that because something is true for the group as a whole, that means it's true for each individual in that group. I found this to be especially the case in their discussion on gender roles in marriage, and would have liked to see more careful analysis that investigated if what was true for each large group of people was also true for each sub-group within that larger group. Their framing also seemed a bit biased at times. At one point, they also claim that 51.3% constitutes "most of the women in this survey" (perhaps on a technicality? But "half" would really be a more accurate framing).
As a result, I generally found that the sections relying on biblical reasoning and common sense were more helpful than the sections relying on statistics. Because you really shouldn't need statistics to prove that, say, wives aren't responsible for keeping their husbands from watching porn. (Then again, given some of the Christian authors that have said this... maybe we do need such statistical arguments. :/ )
At any rate, the best sections of the book IMO were the sections talking about what a positive view of sexuality looks like. Most of the book is focused on rebutting unhealthy views of sexuality, which makes sense given how widespread many of those ideas are. But as someone who was already on the same page with Gregoire & co. on that, I gleaned more from the vision-casting the authors did for what healthy sexuality should look like than from the rebuttals. I would guess that here again, though, mileage varies, and people who have grown up hearing these bad views will really appreciate these rebuttals.
At the end of the day, this wasn't the most helpful book for me personally given my unmarried status and church background. But while I do have some statistical issues with the book, most of it was really quite good, and I could see it as being really helpful for people in different stages or from different backgrounds than myself. Certainly if it leads to more people breaking free from bad teachings, that's a great success.
Rating: 3.5-4 Stars (Good).