Do it for Christ

It might surprise non-evangelicals to know that books about good sex for Christians—“marriage manuals”—are extremely popular; in fact, Tim and Beverly LaHaye's 1978 book The Act of Marriage remains a bestseller in Christian bookstores. In Saving Sex: Sexuality and Salvation in American Evangelicalism (Oxford University Press; $24.95), Amy DeRogatis, a professor of religion at Michigan State University, examines these “marriage manuals” and other evangelical Christian books on sexuality to establish that evangelicals are far from being prudes. The difficulty arises in the prescriptive nature of this discussion: Sex must be done in the “correct” way. Evangelicals also have complicated rules about how to have sex. This is a fascinating look at a surprisingly large subculture that's as obsessed with sex as the rest of us.