I read a book review article in World Magazine which I found interesting. For a change, the teachings of Jesus and the Bible on marriage were presented in a secular book in a positive rather than a negative light (see the sources below). Since the masthead on this Paraclete newsletter reads, “Advocating for the Truth of the Christian Faith,” I believe this topic to be appropriate for comment.
It was the Holy Spirit’s will that the Gospel be preached by Paul first to the Greek culture rather than to Asia, Bythinia, and further east (Acts 16:5-10). Consequently, the Christian faith spread to Europe and America. The development of this Western Civilization cannot be understood apart from Christian influence. To have a secular writer on the history of marriage and sexual morality acknowledge this in a positive way is commendable.
Author Conn Carroll recognizes that the foundational teachings of the Bible established monogamous marriage as the joining of one man and one woman in “one flesh” (Genesis 2:24); that sexual immorality comes from within a person; and that the biblical standard applies equally to masters and slaves alike (Exodus 20:14; Matthew 5:27-28; 15:19-20; 19:3-6). Carroll observed that the resulting “nuclear family” (Ephesians 5:22-6:4) was a foundational value of Western society, which gave it great stability and became the means of obedience to the mandate of God (Genesis 1:28).
Finally, Carroll cites America as the exemplar of what good, long-term exposure to Christian marriage and biblical sexual ethics can do for a society. However, he also says that recent modern alternatives – “hook-up culture, polyamory, low-commitment cohabitation, and loneliness” – are not positive developments. Conversely, they are contributing to the decline of the nuclear family. He says that the demise of the historic Christian sexual revolution in the West is a “return to something much more cruel.”
I believe this is insightful and reveals honesty from an unlikely source.
Source: “The Monogamy Revolution,” David Freddoso in World Magazine, January 2025, pp. 38-9. A review of the book Sex and the Citizen by Conn Carroll, Bombardier Books.
