How will these resources help you?

The sexual revolution of the twentieth century, and western society’s increasingly liberal views of sexual ethics today, seem to have left mainstream religious moralism far behind. The British Social Attitudes survey (2012) draws a direct correlation between the decline of religious observance and more open attitudes to sex and having children outside marriage, homosexual relationships and trans issues. Countries with less permissive attitudes to relationships also tend to be more religiously conservative and these moral strictures often seem to amount to human rights violations. So is there something inherently un-Godly about sex and relationships? These texts explore a range of different views on this topic, from moral conservativism to feminist and queer theology. My students find these discussions fascinating – it is important for them to recognise that social conservatism is not always designed to hurt and exclude, and that religious thought can include liberal views too.