What Arouses Evangelicals? Cultural Schemas, Interpretive Prisms, and Evangelicals' Divergent Collective Responses to Pornography and Masturbation

Abstract: This study elucidates the puzzle of evangelical grievance selection by comparing evangelicals’ divergent collective responses to pornography use and solo-masturbation. Drawing on eighty in-depth interviews and content analyses of fifty-five evangelical monographs, I show how internal and e...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Perry, Samuel L. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Oxford University Press [2019]
In: Journal of the American Academy of Religion
Year: 2019, Volume: 87, Issue: 3, Pages: 693-724
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Evangelical movement / Sexuality / Pornography / Masturbation / Religious psychology
RelBib Classification:AG Religious life; material religion
CB Christian life; spirituality
KDG Free church
Online Access: Volltext (Resolving-System)
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Description
Summary:Abstract: This study elucidates the puzzle of evangelical grievance selection by comparing evangelicals’ divergent collective responses to pornography use and solo-masturbation. Drawing on eighty in-depth interviews and content analyses of fifty-five evangelical monographs, I show how internal and external influences shape evangelicals’ evaluations of and responses to the two issues. Internally, evangelical cultural schemas of biblicism and pietistic idealism necessitate that grievances be connected directly to the Bible and believers’ “hearts.” Pornography is more aptly linked to explicit biblical proscriptions against heart-lust and consequently perceived collectively as a moral threat, compared with masturbation, which is neither directly addressed in the Bible nor unambiguously connected to lust. Externally, the growing influence of psychology within evangelicalism heightened concern about pornography’s harms while debunking myths associating masturbation with mental illness. These cultural influences provide “interpretive prisms” through which evangelicals differentially perceive the two issues, resulting in fervent anti-pornography activism and relative ambivalence toward masturbation.
ISSN:1477-4585
Contains:Enthalten in: American Academy of Religion, Journal of the American Academy of Religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1093/jaarel/lfz024