Christian sexual ethics operates from a place of privilege when it does not consider those impacted by its moral prescriptions. A large majority of publications on Christian sexual ethics consider choices and images abstracted from lived conditions of the people called to make these decisions. As such, it leaves out many for whom sex is neither welcome nor a choice. As such, these same texts present images of sexual subjects that marginalize those that do not fit. As the book presents, sexuality, both Christian and otherwise, prioritizes a language of purity that strangles the life of those imaged impure. The present book remedies this emphasis through the language of iconoclasm that blasphemes these images and opens theological reflection beyond the boundary of image-based approaches. Utilizing a qualitative study of survivors of trafficking and those who grew up under evangelical purity teachings, Spaulding narrates sexual ethics in light of their testimonies and the theological resources of iconoclasm to articulate a more just and loving sexuality. The new emphasis on sexual ethics not only resists the prescriptions that create the conditions of sex trafficking but the creation of new communities capable of solidarity and mutuality with those caught in the web of trafficking.
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Henry Walter Spaulding III is editorial assistant for the Center for Barth Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary. He also serves as an adjunct professor of Christian ethics at Ashland University, Ashland Theological Seminary, George Fox University, and Indiana Wesleyan University. He is the author of several books including Iconoclastic Sex: Christian Sexual Ethics and Human Trafficking and the forthcoming Between Two Gileads with Cascade. He has published a number of articles in journals such as the Wesleyan Theological Journal, Review and Expositor, and Literary Imagination. He is also pastor at Hope United Methodist Church in Columbus, Ohio.