Recruiting Young Love: How Christians Talk about Homosexuality

by Mark D. Jordan

In the view of many Christians, the teenage years are simultaneously the most dangerous and the most promising. At the very moment when teens are trying to establish a sense of identity and belonging, they are beset by temptation on all sides—from the pressure of their peers to the nihilism and materialism of popular culture. Add the specter of homosexuality to the mix, and you’ve got a situation ripe for worry, sermonizing, and exploitation.

In Recruiting Young Love, Mark D. Jordan explores more than a half century of American church debate about homosexuality to show that even as the main lesson—homosexuality is bad, teens are vulnerable—has remained constant, the arguments and assumptions have changed remarkably. At the time of the first Kinsey Report, in 1948, homosexuality was simultaneously condemned and little discussed—a teen struggling with same-sex desire would have found little specific guidance. Sixty years later, church rhetoric has undergone a radical shift, as silence has given way to frequent, public, detailed discussion of homosexuality and its perceived dangers. Along the way, churches have quietly adopted much of the language and ideas of modern sexology, psychiatry, and social reformers—deploying it, for example, to buttress the credentials of anti-gay “deprogramming” centers and traditional gender roles.

Jordan tells this story through a wide variety of sources, including oral histories, interviews, memoirs, and even pulp novels; the result is a fascinating window onto the never-ending battle for the teenage soul.

Genres: Religion, History, Theology, Sociology, Christianity, Queer

296 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2011

About the author

Mark D. Jordan is the Andrew Mellon Professor of Christian Thought at Harvard Divinity School and Professor of the Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. His focus is on European philosophy, gender studies, and sexuality. Much of his early work related to Catholic teachings of Thomas Aquinas. In recent years, he has more specifically focused on religious doctrine and its relation to LGBT issues.

In addition to his scholarship and classroom teaching, Jordan has discussed sexual and religious issues to audiences that range from college lectureships to National Public Radio, the New York Times, and CNN.

Jordan won the annual Randy Shilts Award for nonfiction for his 2011 book, Recruiting Young Love: How Christians Talk about Homosexuality.

Prior to his return to Harvard in 2014, Jordan had held endowed professorships at Emory, Washington University at St. Louis, Notre Dame and at Harvard. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright-Hays grant (Spain), a Luce Fellowship in Theology, and a grant from the Ford Foundation.

Jordan received his BA from St. John’s College and his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. He grew up in Dallas, where he graduated from St. Mark's School of Texas.

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Admittedly dense but insightful read tracing rhetorical homosexual characters in the last century. Jordan's writing style is always a pleasure to read: thoughtful, usually measured, but at times his ethical impulse shines through in provocative yet eloquent statements: "It's time to bring the sodomite to the baptismal font."

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

In addition to tracing the rhetoric Christianity has used to describe the LGBTQ+ community over the last century, this became a sort of alternative history to the one I grew up knowing about the LGBTQ+ community. To steal the title from chapter two, this book became First Reports of Hidden Worlds to me. That chapter, in particular, was fascinating as author Jordan used American Christianity's reaction to the Kinsey reports and the reception of Gore Vidal's novel, The City and The Pillar, to describe a similar language used by Christians in regards to both items.

This study is neither exhaustive of this kind of rhetoric nor a completely linear look at the various movements, reactions, and rhetoric. Regardless, it's still very intelligent and, in spots, sassy.

[Christopher Broadwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1997, Mark D. Jordan published The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology, an account of sexual rhetoric employed during medieval Christendom. As a sequel to that text, Recruiting Young Love: How Christians Talk About Homosexuality, published more than a decade later, examines contemporary Christian rhetoric concerning male homosexuality in the United States, Jordan explains that a fitting alternate title for this text would be The Oblivion of Sodomy in Christian Theology. In short, the ten chapters of Recruiting Young Love utilizes “the archives” — a vast collection of books, letters, surveys, pamphlets, congregational and organizational publications, emic and etic accounts, etc.— to cover the evolution, changes and variances of the word “homosexual” in scientific and popular circles, describes the characters or identities included in the rhetorical frame as well as numerous key figures that have been influential in the last 60 years.

[Mandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, annoyance-inducing (from a lefty's perspective), but so so so dry.