Writing my review for She Deserves Better made me realise that I never wrote a review for The Great Sex Rescue – probably because I was too busy talking about it to all the people in Church. So I decided to reread The Great Sex Rescue and write a review.

If you’re a Christian (or you live in North America), you’ve probably come across Christian marriage advice. But how much of this advice is actually good or Christian? The three authors, Gregoire, Lindenbach and Sawatsky decided to conduct a study on 20,000 evangelical women and dissect some of the most popular Christian marriage books to determine how all this marriage advice affected women.

The findings are startling. Women are being taught that men are naturally predisposed to lust, that they need to be their husband’s ‘methadone’ from porn, that is their duty to cheerfully provide sex, and much more. It’s not just the orgasm gap that we have to worry about – we also have to think about the effects of coercive sex (yes, including marital rape). As someone who didn’t really read any of the marriage advice books before this, I found this to be eye-opening in explaining why there’s such a big turning away from the evangelical Church – why would you want to belong to an organisation that teaches that women are essentially objects of lust? Then again, if you have read The Making of Biblical Womanhood, then you probably won’t be surprised that this is the fruit of patriarchal teaching.

By contrast, the recommendations that the authors make seem very basic. The golden rule – do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Love one another as Christ loved us. See one another as beloved children of God and coheirs with Christ. It’s pretty much what you were taught if you spent any significant time in Church and the more surprising thing is that this even needs to be said.

All these recommendations, by the way, apply equally to both men and women. To take an example from the chapters on lust: just as men are to see women as whole people instead of triggers of lust, so are women to see men as people who can control themselves instead of automatically lusting once they see a woman.

Overall, I found this book to be an eye-opening read. Even though the study was done on women, I think this book could be beneficial for both sexes, given that there are a lot of discussion questions. Additionally, I think this book would be helpful for those who have suffered from bad teachings about marriage or are in a position where they regularly counsel and/or recommend books to couples. This is especially so given the rescuing and reframing sections at the end of each chapter – I feel that it’s helpful both as a summary of the chapter and as a way to turn from toxic to Christian teaching.

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