Abstract
In August 2017, evangelical Christian leaders comprising the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood gathered in Nashville, Tennessee, and authored a manifesto on human sexuality, which they titled "The Nashville Statement." The statement defines marriage as exclusively heterosexual and monogamous and decries any sexual behavior outside the covenant of marriage. Seemingly without realizing the differences among sex, sexual orientation, gender, and gender identity, the statement also asserts as biologically absolute and sacred a rigid sex binary that matches exactly with divinely ordained gender roles. In this essay, through a close rhetorical-critical reading of the Nashville Statement, I show how the statement's reliance on sacralizing binaries undermines its argumentative coherence. The statement's recognition of intersex people serves as its undoing, revealing a crisis in evangelical Christianity's ontology of human sex.
Citation
ID:
85048
Ref Key:
spencer2019thejournal