Sexuality and the Religious Imagination

An exceptional book that makes us question things we have taken for granted. The author begins with a simple question: Given the centrality of sex, sexuality and gender to our experience and our imagination, "[ho]w can it possibly be that the numinosity and sacral significance of sex has been officially ignored through two thousand years of Christian tradition?" [from page xiv, in the Preface.] The answer we get is rich with historical references and insights into the psychological effects of this cultural pathology - for pathology it is, as TePaske shows us. He cites countless references to competing ideas, both in the western tradition and, in his chapter on the Hindu Tantric tradition, in the east; and by the time we finish reading this book, we are convinced that the whole Judaeo-Christian world needs radical psychotherapy. The book is well written, well studied, and passionate: not just a history book, but a book intended to change the world. While giving us a convincing critique of "patriarchalism" by showing us how the association of the female with the lower aspects of the physical interferes with our growth and inhibits our psychological integration (the author is a Jungian analyst), this book might also serve as a powerful argument for what we in America now call "feminism."