On a recent evening in Vancouver, I had a game changing moment in conversation with Louise Perry, the author of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution. 

Louise Perry (not to be confused with Louise Penny, the popular fiction crime/mystery writer) is an author and podcaster, who has made a name for herself in casting with clarity a vision that the sexual revolution has harmed women. She lends an inquisitive, calm, and British tone to thorny questions about femininity, masculinity, and sexual ethics.

Hosted by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute at a swanky club, we were probably in the final third of the discussion when I said we can’t just be against the sexual revolution. What can we offer today’s young people by way of a positive vision? 

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She said “Christianity.” 

That was not the answer I was expecting. And I’ve since returned to that one-word answer many times.

What did I think she would say? Perhaps something about the need for long term relationship stability, advocacy for earlier marriage or waiting longer before having sex. Perhaps if things were to get quite controversial, she might have reflected on what it would take to overturn a relationship culture turned upside down by oral contraceptives. 

But “Christianity”?  

Christianity, so we are all told regularly, is oppressive. Christianity holds people captive, unable to realize their own true potential. This is what our culture generally thinks about Christianity in conjunction with sexual ethics.

Of course, there are liberal Christians for whom Christianity is not a foil to the sexual revolution, but an active collaborator. Orthodox Christians, on the other hand, are generally the ones known to offer a counter vision. Traditional Christians. The “wrong” kind of Christian. 

Clearly, I do not buy into this mythology. However, I have also not been the one to put forward Christianity as such as the positive counter vision to a sexual culture run amuck. And as a teenager and young adult, I was right there, making fun of Christians and their ridiculous notions about sex. 

Caveats, of course, abound. 

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The first is that all too often there have been things of which to poke fun. There is no shortage of Christians themselves who make parodies of Christian sexual ethics easy. 

Relatedly, there is also no shortage of Christian hypocrisy. Here we may look to the many pastors and priests who have engaged in sexual misconduct ranging in severity, but always wrong.

Then there’s the caveat that not all Christians share the same theology surrounding sexual ethics. Once we get into the weeds, Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Protestant believers no longer share one clearly defined sexual ethic. 

Those who have been hurt by Christianity, or perhaps better put, by Christian subcultures that may perpetuate sexual ethics that deviate from what Christianity actually teaches, will not be the ones to stand up and promote Christianity as a positive example. 

I would never wish to diminish pain caused by Christians. This is the very worst and most debilitating kind of trauma, precisely because we call Christians to a higher standard and rightly expect otherwise.

But the stark reality is that the tentacles of the sexual revolution have hurt so many more people than Christianity, be it through sex that never results in commitment, loss of life in abortion, increasingly ubiquitous pornography, family breakdown, and the ever-increasing divide between the sexes. That list goes on and very few have not been touched in some way. 

Perry had been, until quite recently, my go-to source for thoughtful secular back-up to what Christians have long said about the sexual revolution. Then I learned she became Christian. 

This dampens her place in my lexicon as the secular backup to my Christian beliefs, however, it is, quite obviously a good moment. What’s more, she’s part of a bigger moment. A book about the power of religious faith by Roman Catholic Ross Douthat (who will speak soon in Canada at a Cardus event in November) is perhaps expected. But other unexpected sources are doing similar things. Take long time secular research and numbers guy Charles Murray writing recently “I Thought I Didn’t Need God. I Was Wrong.” 

We can do empirical research about marriage, and I do. We can use secular sources to speak to Christian truths, and I do. But I ought never forget that there is beauty and a positive vision for all aspects of life in this faith we call Christianity. 

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If anyone can, Perry can help us to see that, and actually express it, anew. 

Andrea Mrozek is Senior Fellow at Cardus Family