This Year's Hot Book on Social Science, Religion, Higher Education and That Other Thing

Our gentle readers' attention is of late being given to a newly published book with the provocative title Sex and the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance and Religion on America's College Campuses. Clearly if the author, Donna Freitas, had figured a way to work Brittney Spears and American Idol into the title too, she could have an even-bigger seller.

The book's contents appear to be most interesting, and so we refer our gentle readers to the most informative review we've seen so far, at Inside Higher Ed. Freitas's findings include the following, which we quote from the review:

At Catholic colleges, Freitas writes that many students were apathetic about faith traditions and some “literally laughed out loud” at the church’s teachings on sex. And at Catholic and nonsectarian public and private colleges, hookup cultures — hookups are defined as physically intimate encounters occurring outside long-term relationships — dominate the social scene.

But Freitas finds that many students who participate in the hookup scene do so with
serious qualms – and “suffer in silence.” . . .

By contrast, she finds that students at evangelical institutions are extraordinarily well-anchored. “Religion and sex are inseparable. You can’t even begin to think about sex without grounding that reflection in God and your Christianity.” But, Freitas points out, for students who feel they can’t live up to or fit into the pervading purity culture, the anchor weighs them down – sometimes tragically.

There's more, of course, including observations about the difficulties of students who experience same-sex attraction on evangelical college campuses. That bit is suffused with the usual identification of sexual attraction with "self," a move that SWNID finds uncritical and problematic.

Still, our heart is strangely warmed by another observation made by Freitas:

“On the flipside at evangelical campuses, what I saw that I didn’t see at other places was a level of integrated community. Talk about educating the whole person. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Freitas says. “Watching a community build itself around shared values was pretty extraordinary and I think really fulfilling for most of the students even if it can be stressful.”

We figure we ought to read this book, and we figure everyone who cares about any issue in the title might want to give it a look. On the other hand, we note that only one reader of Inside Higher Ed deigned to comment on the review, a low number for a hot topic at a web site that normally gets a dozen or so comments on ordinary articles. This suggests to us the general refusal of the "secular" and "spiritual" higher-ed community to take any interest in the sexual behavior of its undergraduates, for such interest would lead to taking responsibility to address their behavior, the last thing these folks seem to want to do.