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Mark D. Jordan

The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology (Volume 1997) (Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society) Paperback – October 15, 1998

by Mark D. Jordan (Author)

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In this startling original work of historical detection, Mark D. Jordan explores the invention of Sodomy by medieval Christendom, examining its conceptual foundations in theology and gauging its impact on Christian sexual ethics both then and now. This book is for everyone involved in the ongoing debate within organized religions and society in general over moral judgments of same-sex eroticism.

"A crucial contribution to our understanding of the tortured and tortuous relationship between men who love men, and the Christian religion—indeed, between our kind and Western society as a whole. . . . The true power of Jordan's study is that it gives back to gay and lesbian people our place in history and that it places before modern theologians and church leaders a detailed history of fear, inconsistency, hatred and oppression that must be faced both intellectually and pastorally."—Michael B. Kelly, Screaming Hyena

"[A] detailed and disturbing tour through the back roads of medieval Christian thought."—Dennis O'Brien, Commonweal

"Being gay and being Catholic are not necessarily incompatible modes of life, Jordan argues. . . . Compelling and deeply learned."—Virginia Quarterly Review

Print length

200 pages
Language

English
Publisher

University of Chicago Press
Publication date

October 15, 1998
Dimensions

8.99 x 5.99 x 0.59 inches
ISBN-10

0226410404
ISBN-13

978-0226410401
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Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

In this reexamination of what it means to have a tradition, Catholic and otherwise, Mark D. Jordan offers a powerful and provocative study of the sin of erotic love between men. The Invention of Sodomy reveals the theological fabrication of arguments for categorizing genital acts between members of the same sex.

About the Author

Mark D. Jordan is the Reverend Priscilla Wood Neaves Distinguished Professor of Religion and Politics at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University. He was previously the Richard Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Divinity and Professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University and also taught at the University of Notre Dame and Emory University. He is the author or editor of more than a dozen books.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Chicago Press; New edition (October 15, 1998)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 200 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0226410404
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0226410401
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.99 x 5.99 x 0.59 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,290,940 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #44 in Jordan History
- #2,269 in LGBTQ+ Demographic Studies
- #22,945 in Christian Theology (Books)

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3.7 out of 5

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Alexa W.

Thanks!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 15, 2022

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Great Quality! Thank you!!

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Thomas W Fiechtl

One questions why the Church's coverup.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 3, 2013

Verified Purchase

The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology, did not disappoint me. What I expected was a conformation to what I've questioned in Christianity's condemnation of homosexuality. This book presents undeniable evidence that Early Church Fathers spoke of something other than homosexuality. This book does not address the sin of the Church but does present enough evidence as to present homosexuality as a scapegoat for the Church's sin. One can not read this book without wondering why someone has not yet written about the Church's gravest sin.

9 people found this helpful

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Kaleb

He wanted them to know he was a God of LOVE. The law given by God to the people ...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 13, 2018

God is God.

Since the beginning of Christian theology, God has revealed himself. We see a God that is loving; sometimes vengeful; soft, other times loud as thunder; merciful and yet also a seeker of justice. There are many places in the Bible that give us a glimpse of how God meets the needs of his people, in so-much that they see him as their God.

Here is an example. The people of Israel were wandering in the desert on their way to the land God promised them and they grew thirsty. God told Moses in Exodus 17:6 “Behold I will stand there upon a rock in Horeb; and thou shall smote the rock and there shall come water out of it that the people may drink...”

God told Moses to exercise an act of faith. And what was needed, was given. Years later the people grew thirsty again. Moses and Aaron went before God. This time was different. Moses was told to Speak to the rock and water would come forth. But Moses was upset.-

Numbers20:10-12
10. “And Moses and Aaron gathered the congregation together before the rock. And he said unto them, Hear now ye rebels.Must we fetch water out of this rock?
11. And Moses raised up his hand and with his rod he struck the rock twice: and water came out abundantly. And the congregation drink, and their beasts also.
12. And the Lord spake into Moses and Aaron. Because you believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them.”

God didn’t want Israel to see the thunder and lightning. He didn’t want them to see another rod hitting a rock. He didn’t want them to see the same thing they saw time and time again.
He wanted to be “Sanctified” in the eyes of his children. Now why did the God of ALL heaven and earth want to be “Sanctified” in the eyes of his people? Look to the scripture. All Israel knew was a God of the Law, a God of the pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day. A God of the ground opening up and swollowing their brothers and sisters that turned against him.
This time God wanted them to see that he’s not only the God of Power. He wanted them to know he was a God of LOVE.

The law given by God to the people of that time had little to no room for error. And most of it ,not all, was to teach the people coming out of slavery how to behave; not like animals, but as how a prosperous God fearing people would.
After all, God could have easily chose a different people. Well established like the Egyptians? But no. God was and still is a God who works in mysterious ways. He took a people that no one would want. Gave them a land and a name. For later out of these people ;numbered as the stars like his promise to Abraham.
Gods son would be born.

Then came Jesus, the Son of God many centuries later. Speaking on the mountain said in Matthew 5:17 “ Think not that I have come to destroy the Law or the prophets, I have come to Fulfill.”

Fulfillment means.-to Achieve something desired, promised or predicted.

God ,at this point in time thru his son Jesus ,Achieved the goal the past laws were set to attain. Because Jesus said he had come to fulfill. That includes ALL the Law; not just bits and pieces.

When was the last time you needed to sacrifice a unblemished lamb or bullock for a particular sin of yours?
Or sacrifices of unleavened bread or frankincense with fine grain? I would hope never. Not in our life time. Because that law of God like all those others in that time were for that time.

Jesus, the Son of God, gave us only two commandments to follow.

Matthew 22: 37-40
37.“And Jesus said, Love the Lord God with all thy heart, with all thy soul ,and with all thy mind.
38. This is the first and great commandment.
39. And the second is like unto it. Love thy neighbor as thy self.
40. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

The children of God were known in that day as the children of Israel. Now after Jesus came, God “Spoke to the ROCK of our salvation.” Told him to come die for us, his children, ALL the world, so God can be Sanctified in our eyes... God is God... he is limitless in what he can do. God speaks and gives all he has promised.

In Romans Paul,(a Roman himself) says that “...men shall not lay with men. And woman with woman. “

In Caesar’s time. The Romans would come home from a battle and throw lavish sexual parties.
Paul saw this and saw the affliction and disease spreading because of it “... recompense of your error is due.”
There was a reason for that comment at that time.
Paul never once spoke against a Monogamous, God fearing relationship between two men or women, lovers of God ,that is likened unto the relationship of David and Jonathan. Which was not built by any law but built solely on love. David states in 1Samuel 18:3 that he “...loved Johnathan as much as his own soul.” Then as this relationship grew. He told johnathan in 2 Samuel 1:26 “...Very pleasant hast thou been unto me. Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.”
And remember David was the apple of Gods Eye.. Even when he was Loving a man.

I implore you; use love and knowledge equally when using the word of God.
Lest you be found striking the rock. When God wants you to see the sanctification of his love and power. With out limits.
He says “be still and know that I am God”
That’s what we need to do...
Galatians says. 3:28 “There is neither Jew nor Greek, Bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for we are all ONE in Christ Jesus.”
Go in peace. And judge not lest ye be judged.
Amen

The book brought to mind they things are not always as they seem. Read with a open mind.
Would like to see more:)

3 people found this helpful

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penname

The Bible...the better choice.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 12, 2016

The author here must deny that the abominable sin of sodomy was never 'invented' but was actually practiced almost since the creation of mankind by God. And this book contradicts God's own, the Holy Bible, in which God says....

"But the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly." (Genesis 13:13)

"Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination." (Leviticus 18:22)

"For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet." (Romans 1:26,27)

"Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire." (Jude 7)

That last sentence should give some pause....

9 people found this helpful

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Jim Rockford, P.I.

The Road to Nowhere

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 8, 2015

"Advocacy scholarship" from start to finish. Nothing is included that does not fit the narrative.

6 people found this helpful

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Joseph W. Marohl

The Un-sexing of Sexual Morality?

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 3, 1998

This book addresses some of the same terrain as John Boswell's 1980 book CHRISTIANITY, SOCIAL TOLERANCE, AND HOMOSEXUALITY, but with important points of contrast, one of which is it's half the earlier book's length in pages.
Jordan takes a Christianized, quasi-Foucauldian approach to the subject, whereas Boswell's approach was essentialist, stressing historical continuities which Jordan opposes. Boswell equated the modern concept of homosexuality with the medieval concept of sodomy, whereas Jordan does not.
Instead, Jordan argues that the term "sodomy," as used by early church fathers and pre-Renaissance theologians, was a usefully vague invective, employed not altogether differently from the ways "philistinism" was used later or, for that matter, the way "homophobia" is used in some circles today.
But parallel to what Jordan says about the term "homophobia," "sodomy," too, has been used politically not as a precise explanation for human behavior, but as "a placeholder for an explanation yet to be provided" (167-68).
[Arguably, as philosopher Judith Butler does argue elsewhere (cogently), the same could be said for the current uses of "gay," "homosexual," "queer," etc., or for that matter, "sex."]
Jordan's book is an important one for people who identify themselves as either Christian or gay (--or both) because it addresses issues underlying the clash of values and "culture wars" being played out in society now. If indeed, as Jordan suggests, "sodomy" was invented to fill a gap left by Christendom's refusal of the "erotic"--even between two sexes, perhaps progress lies in our seeking a place for the erotic INSIDE the moral, instead of persisting in (often hypocritically) dichotomizing the two--something, in response to a previous reader's comments, Plato did NOT do (though the later Platonists did).

47 people found this helpful

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norman

If my church denomination is about to be pulled apart I would like to know why

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 31, 2017

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It depends on what you are looking for. I was looking for a book that would make some sense of how ‘church tradition’ on this specific issue came about. How and why did sodomy progress from a possible mention, under a different name, in the earliest church fathers to becoming a capital offense at the end of the Middle Ages? If my church denomination is about to be pulled apart I would like to know why! There are a lot of answers here. I would also recommend ‘The Construction of Homosexuality’ by David F Greenberg The Construction of Homosexuality which gives a wider sociological perspective across human history.

Linda Sutherland

One lunatic writing about others

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 24, 2017

Verified Purchase

This is not a linear history of theological attitudes to sodomy. The author's perspective is more that of a theologian than a historian. He takes five medieval authors and examines, in some depth, their views on sodomy. It takes him nearly 200 pages of fairly heavy going to demonstrate that those views are nonsense.

A reasonable person could do the same in a short paragraph. Like this. "A false starting point implies any proposition. The claims of religion are false. Therefore anything deduced from those claims need not be taken seriously."

So you can save yourself the trouble of wading through a moderately long book, concerned with the writings of long-dead crazy authors.

The most disturbing thing about the book is that the author - who is obviously well-educated - appears to treat his sources with great respect, instead of calling them out for the nonsense that they are. He must have been infected with religion, probably as a child, and remains seriously ill.

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