by Debra Hirsch
InterVarsity Press, Downers’ Grove, Ill. 227 pages
REVIEWED BY DONNA MARSH
The first thing to embrace in “Redeeming Sex” is the irony. In order to elevate sexuality into a healthy relational context and to draw the church out of an obsession with sexual behavior into a more gracious ecclesiology, the author is not shy about playing with sexual language. (Or perhaps it was a gleeful editor who subtitled the introduction “Foreplay and conclusion: Climax.”) Whether one winces or winks at the breathless packaging of the topic, Debra Hirsch is already doing what she does best: jolting her readers out of their comfort zones into a vitally important, Christ-centered conversation that resonates with the realities of modern life.
This book is not a linear theological argument, a thoroughgoing biblical exegesis or a collection of anecdotes. Rather, Hirsch blends research, Scripture, theology and her own varied experience of sexuality and ministry into what she calls “a testimony and a challenge to the church.” She brings admirable honesty and vulnerability to this mix, and the way she tells her own story models the humility and dignity to which she calls others. Hirsch speaks from within the evangelical community and primarily to the evangelical community — defined in the broadest possible sense. However, this book is important for the whole church. Everyone can agree that our culture has problems with sex, and that Christians sometimes overcompensate by ignoring sexuality in all its forms, making sex taboo or idolizing marriage and family as the only alternative to promiscuity. Thus, Hirsh begins by tracing the roots of these errors and reintegrating sexuality with spirituality. Relying on the relational nature of the Trinity, the imago dei in humanity, the universality of human sin, the full humanity and divinity of Jesus Christ and the range of healthy relationships in the Gospels, Hirsch is generally on solid theological ground. Hirsh also tackles the timely topics of orientation and gender identity with nuance, compassion and particular sensitivity to transgendered persons.
She remains on the orthodox side of the theological chasm that divides us by affirming God’s original design in Genesis as normative, while “Every human being on the planet is sexually broken … All of us are on a journey toward wholeness, not one of us is excluded … To be saved we have to know what it means to turn to [Jesus] in repentance, with all our broken parts, to reorient our lives toward God and his kingdom.” She acknowledges both the healing that is possible through Christ and the fact that most people’s struggles are not resolved in this life.
So the question is: How shall we live and love and be the church together? Hirsch calls us to a missional ecclesiology of radical grace and inclusion. She sketches a compelling vision of a “welcoming and mutually transforming” community whose priority is for people to come to know Jesus first and to deal with everything else after that. That (risky) vision requires trusting God to lead the process of sanctification — which includes redeeming sex.
This is primarily a relational book and not a doctrinal or mechanical one, so we are left with questions about how to articulate and implement this vision in our own contexts. Happily, we have also begun a relationship with Debra Hirsch, and I hope the conversation will continue.
DONNA MARSH is an associate pastor at the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., and serves on the board of The Fellowship Community.
