Excerpts from Sex and the Single Savior

Dale Martin's book, Sex and the Single Savior is an exciting and brilliant work!  In this book, he surveys many New Testament texts which address [or are used to address questions of] sexuality, gender, and family.  Martin employs amazing arguments and careful research to expose the uncertainty of many New Testament passages.  He is clear that he does not claim that the New Testament advocates or condemns homosexuality, rather he points out the ambiguities of texts and the power ideology has played in controlling our interpretations of them.  Through his many analyses, he emerges with many motifs in the New Testament which contrast contemporary sexism with ancient sexism, critique Western individualism, and challenge modern notions of family.  And, rather than leading us through the nuances and complexities of the text to a place of firm answers, Dale Martin robs us of any recourse to a foundation but (I believe rightly) leaves us dependent upon a Kierkegaardian faith and the grace that makes it possible.  Below are a few excerpts from this work.


"There are many excellent reasons why people in general and Christians in particular should not want to give the state the power to recognize and regulate marriage.  When we give the state the right to legitimize one kind of sexual relationship or social formation, we automatically give it the right to render all other relaiotns illegitimate.  Surely, the church should never cede its own perogatives to the state--especialy a state as bloodstained and beholden to the interests of the powerful as ours is.  But all people should realize this: when you marry, you give power the state over your sexual relations, your person, the most intimate details of your life and body.  To agree to marriage is to agree that the modern, violent, bureaucratic state has the right to control your life in its most intimate realms, public and private, personal and sexual, individual and collective.  Not to put too fine a point on it, marriage cedes your genitals to the government....
...But I believe the church should also get out of the marriage business.  Marriage is an exclusive and exclusionary technology for control.  Modern churches legitimate one kind of social and intimate bonding and therefore declare illegitimate all others.  This relationship is good--in fact, "divine."  All others are bad or at best inferior."

-Dale Martin, Sex and the Single Savior, 122-3

"Bastard children are not created by the absence of marriage, but by marriage itself.  Marriage makes bastards by making the category possible."

-Dale Martin, Sex and the Single Savior, 123

"Our knowlege of Christ is entirely mediated by something that is cultural: language, images, symbols, signs.  Culture necessarily shapes all our experiences and anything we are able to say about Christ whatsoever.  Since all language is cultural, and we can say nothing about Christ without language, everything we say about Christ is culture.  Scripture is not a separate source we have access to apart from cultural experience.  It is part of experience."

-Dale Martin, Sex and the Single Savior, 158