{"id":6139,"date":"2014-02-12T11:01:13","date_gmt":"2014-02-12T11:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/&#038;p=6139"},"modified":"2015-10-13T19:34:37","modified_gmt":"2015-10-13T19:34:37","slug":"selling-the-sin-free-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/2014\/02\/12\/selling-the-sin-free-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Selling the Sin-Free Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='citation'>\n    <span class='authors'>Jeremy N. Thomas, <\/span><span class='link'><a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1111\/jssr.12052\/full\">&ldquo;Outsourcing Moral Authority: The Internal Secularization of Evangelicals\u2019 Anti-Pornography Narratives,&rdquo; <em>Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion<\/em>,<\/a><\/span><span class='year'> 2013<\/span><\/div>\n<p>Evangelical Christianity is in the business of saving souls, but sex still sells.<\/p>\n<p>In his recent <em>JSSR<\/em> article, Jeremy N. Thomas identifies three key arguments against pornography that have developed in the U.S. since the 1950s. The first is the \u201ctraditional values\u201d argument: porn offends God\u2019s will by encouraging sinful behavior. The second is the \u201cpublic-performer harm\u201d argument, which emphasizes the harm done to women when men buy and sell their sexual performance. Finally, church leaders\u2019 \u201cpersonal-viewer harm\u201d narrative emphasizes how porn hurts the <i>viewer<\/i>, leading to addiction, compulsive sexual behavior, and other psychological harm.<\/p>\n<p>Using content analysis to closely read articles from 54 years of\u00a0<i>Christianity Today, <\/i>Thomas finds that the proportion of the \u201ctraditional values\u201d arguments against pornography started to drop steadily in the mid 1970s. It\u2019s been replaced by a growth in the \u201cpersonal viewer harm\u201d narrative since the mid \u201890s. Evangelicals didn\u2019t stop believing that pornography is against God\u2019s will, Thomas believes. Instead, the articles have started to \u201coutsource\u201d their moral authority by calling on arguments about personal health and wellbeing over claims about divine rules.<\/p>\n<p>Changing arguments may mean that religion is losing its influence in a secularizing world or that religious leaders are just developing new strategies to better reach the people. Either way, the shift demonstrates the impact of social change on religious rhetoric and practice.<\/p>\n<p><!-- TSP testing --> <ins><\/ins>\/\/ <\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-2638\" alt=\"Picture 2\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/files\/2014\/03\/Picture-2-330x38.png\" width=\"330\" height=\"38\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jeremy N. Thomas, &ldquo;Outsourcing Moral Authority: The Internal Secularization of Evangelicals\u2019 Anti-Pornography Narratives,&rdquo; Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 2013 Evangelical Christianity is in the business of saving souls, but sex still sells. In his recent JSSR article, Jeremy N. Thomas identifies three key arguments against pornography that have developed in the U.S. since [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1893,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[14907,3107,1047,42,10342,120],"class_list":["post-6139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","tag-sociology-of-culture","tag-morality","tag-pornography","tag-religion","tag-rhetoric","tag-sex"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1893"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6139"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8293,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6139\/revisions\/8293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}