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Sex and the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance, and Religion on America's College Campuses

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This is a carefully researched and elegantly written book on the relationship between sexuality and spirituality on US college campuses. It is pretty well known among scholars that high school kids are quite religious in the US. When they go to college they start turning away from the religions of their parents, often toward more generic spirituality. Why does this happen? Freitas thinks sexual experience might hold the key. In other words, as college students start experimenting sexually they push away from religion, since religion is in their view "anti-sex." That's the argument, or part of it. But at the heart of the book lie stories about these students. Kids at evangelical, Catholic, and secular schools struggling with faith and sexuality. It's brilliantly done. It's sad in many ways to see the binds that "hookup culture" put young people in. It's balanced in that there are things in here that will infuriate (and delight) conservatives and liberals alike. And it's timely. Makes me wonder what the next generation is in for heading off to college.

There's been a lot of very good material written in the past couple of years on the detrimental emotional and psychological effects that unrestrained sexual behavior is having on American young adults; primarily college students. Donna Freitas' Sex and the Soul is a worthy addition to that material. The reason the book is as valuable as it is stems from the approach that Freitas took to present the information. As is the case with any scientific study, Freitas provides a factual definition of the issues through the use of raw data gathered through observation (in this case, surveys that she and her staff organized). However, instead of stopping with the data, she gives the study depth by incorporating comments from students on their views regarding sexuality and spirituality. The comments not only put a human face on the issues, they also make what would be a dry study readable. Both the data and the interviews bolster Freitas' conclusion that there is a discontentment with the options of promiscuity and chastity. In order to address this discontentment, Freitas develops practical recommendations for finding the middle ground between spiritual goals and sexual practice.

As I stated earlier, Sex and the Soul is the latest addition to a body of material which persuasively argues that promiscuity as a means to explore one's sexuality is not an emotionally healthy lifestyle. What distinguishes Sex and the Soul from these other books is that Freitas respects the role that both spirituality (in either a religious setting or non-religious setting) and sexuality have in one's life. She takes pains to show that the issue doesn't need to have an "either/or" answer; but, is instead broad enough to allow for one to express sexuality within a religious context. Because of this even-handed approach, Sex and the Soul rises to the top of the list of books that have been written on this subject in the past few years.

This is an excellent ( at times appalling - at times hopeful) book. I don't usually find sociology books that I can't put down, but I read through this one in short order. What the author does quite brilliantly is weave her study of college students and how they integrate faith/religion and sex, around the personal stories of the students that she interviews. If you are a parent (like me) it is disheartening to see the influences that kids come under when they go away to college, and the soul-destroying nature of casual "hook-ups" with people one may or may not know well.

The book is hopeful (to my way of thinking) in that it is almost exclusively the evangelicals (I am one) who believe that there is a connection between spirituality and sex, and that it is important. While it is no surprise that virtually everyone struggles with how far to go physically before marriage, it is nice to see that evangelicals are generally trying to follow what they believe God desires in regards to dating and marriage.

I just received my master's degree in higher education and this book was part of my curriculum. It really sheds a lot of light on the topic of students' views of sexuality, and it looks into how Christians and non Christians view it differently. It written from an interesting perspective. The Author is a nominal Catholic who is certainly not anti-religion, but she does not subscribe to the same views as mainstream evangelical Christians. Good food for thought no matter what you believe.

Sex & The Soul
Sean McDowell

For those of you who care about young people today, Sex & The Soul is a must read (Donna Freitas, Oxford Press, 2008). Freitas is a professor at Boston University who became interested in how college students relate religion to sexuality. She interviewed hundreds of college students from public, private, and evangelical schools and amassed data from thousands more through online surveys. What she founds was eye-opening, alarming, and yet hopeful.

One of the most significant findings of the book is that dating, as is typically conceived, is virtually non-existent on college campuses (with the exception of evangelical schools). She says, "According to students...most relationships develop like this: one night after a party, two people hook up, then it happens again, then it becomes a regular thing, and eventually they find that they are in a relationship...If any coffees, dinners, or `just talking' romantic encounters occurred with these students, these experiences typically happened after multiple hookups and the decision to become a couple...Students don't see many avenues to committed relationships aside from hooking up" (139). Thus, most students go on dates only after they've been sexually intimate for quite some time. At most universities the hook up has replaced the first date. The old formula was dating first, and then sex. Now it's sex first, and then dating.

One of the most popular (and growing) college activities is theme parties. They have become a campus tradition at many schools. They are often labeled, "naked parties," "maids and millionaires," "lingerie parties," "professors and schoolgirls," and "jock pros and sport ho's." At theme parties, male students dress up as CEOs, sports jocks, and millionaires, while girls dress suggestively as whores. At some parties, reports Freitas, many girls have to wear lingerie or "next to nothing" to get in. The explosion in the growth of these parties can be directly linked to the wide accessibility of porn. While there have been "wild" college parties going on for some time, theme parties drop the bar of sexual standards to a new low.

While the hook up culture is rampant on college campuses, it was surprising to read how many students, according to Freitas, are deeply unsatisfied with it. Many think hook ups hurt their ability to form lasting relationships and healthy friendships. In fact, 41% of students used words such as regretful, shameful, disgusted, miserable, used, dirty, awkward, empty, alone, and duped when describing their experience (152). If they are so unsatisfied, then why do many continue? One reason is that hook ups seem easier than steady relationships as students are simply so busy today with school, sports, work, friendships, and partying. It takes effort (and potential heartbreak) to begin a relationship. Second, students simply see no alternative to their behavior. Their professors, parents, and church leaders either avoid the subject entirely, or seem hopelessly out of date.

What role does religion play in the sex lives of college students? According to Freitas, the answer is none. Many students were shocked at the question itself, and others laughed that religions would have anything to contribute to sexuality. College campuses today (with the exclusion of some evangelical schools) are predominantly secular. Students compartmentalize any faith commitments they have during their college years. And the professors reinforce this view. "Regardless of its origin, students at nonreligious institutions experience a separation of church and college" says Freitas, "an expulsion of religion from the public square that is so extreme that many of them are rendered mute on the subject" (35). Freitas says, "The dominant but implicit attitude on campus, not just among students but also perceived among faculty and administrators, is that spirituality and religion are private--not matters for public consumption" (217). Religion simply does not inform the sexual decisions of the vast majority of college students today.

Those of us who work with youth cannot ignore these critical insights.

Freitas has created a nice mix of fact and research with personal insight and anecdotal interviews. By carefully selecting a variety of college campuses she is able to critique both liberal and conservative approaches to campus social life. She also suggests possible solutions to the failings she sees at both places.

Freitas gives a very American perspective on a very American dilemma: how to negotiate our cultural hang-ups about sex with "spirituality/religiosity" (the primary reason for our hang-ups about sex). Freitas doesn't share perspectives from non-believers, either because she considered them outliers from her research or there weren't any. She does encounter a lot of kids who consider themselves "spiritual but not religious" -- the cop-out for the institutionally burnt-out. At least one subject she interviews claims not to believe in God but still claims some form of spirituality. Freitas has obviously worked hard on this dissertation and did well in her stats courses, but the larger question is what do surveys on college students' faith and "hookups" matter to American culture? It is natural for a culture to be youth-oriented, since these are the kids that will be next up to make the Big Decisions, and given our Puritanical heritage, sex and religion are all flummoxed. So yes, Freitas's dissertation committee is validated in signing off on this.

Freitas is certainly ideal to take on this sort of work. She's somewhat dismissive of atheists, she's sympathetic to the "spiritual but not religious" crowd, she's a Roman Catholic who questions the authority of the Pope, she's a liberal but possesses a liberal's tolerance for difference: i.e., those nutty evangelicals. Although I'm about as far from the evangelical worldview as you can get, I really appreciated Freitas's ability to resist any temptation to condescend or dismiss their view point. She retails all of their extremist opinions about the eternal deadliness of sexual activity and the "natural" second-class role of females without opionating about it. Far better objectivity than I could ever muster (obviously). Equally impressively, she takes that anthropologist perspective to let her kids be kids for the most part, except when it comes to certain "alpha males" who rub her the wrong way. (Flashbacks to college boyfriends?)

She emphasizes the fact that she approached this with a feminist "lens" (her word), and unless you're a true troglodyte, it's impossible NOT to be a feminist when taking on this subject matter. All the stuff about "theme parties" and hookups are the sort of adolescent highjinks that have been around since before Freitas or I were born, and it's a tall order any time you want to push against established cultural trends. How do you change the attitudes of youth? American culture won't help. The market depends on making sex look free and easy while reminding folks that they are not attractive enough to participate until they INVEST in the economy (via clothes, beauty products, electronics and all other sundry products). So if American youth culture is going to be changed, Freitas's approach is really the most viable way: talk to individual kids and get society to reflect on what's happening one mind at a time. We'll always be hung-up about sex, and some of those hang-ups are good protective devices for us. For the most part, though, a lot of these moral conundrums about sex (you HAVE to be married, it HAS to be procreative) can't die soon enough. All-in-all, a well-researched, sensitive portrait of well-to-do American youth with the world at their feet.

(The only quibble: Freitas mentions the focus on gender as being in part to the exclusion of race. Her subject pool seems very racially un-diverse, particularly lacking in African-Americans, whose views on the nexus between the sexual and the sacred is indispensible to any overview of American youth culture attitudes on this subject.)