College Hookup Culture and Christian Ethics

College Hookup Culture and Christian Ethics weaves together original ethnographic research, theological reflection on full human living and loving, and a justice-oriented analysis of sexual norms and campus culture in a way that is engaging, insightful, and thought-provoking even if, at times, it is also unsettling and uncomfortable ... For anyone interested in learning more about student experiences and working toward creating more just and supportive environments for college students, College Hookup Culture and Christian Ethics is an engaging and worthwhile read. --Abbylynn Helgevold, Reading Religion This book offers an astonishingly new and courageous perspective on questions of sexuality, especially in the context of contemporary student sexual practice in American colleges and universities. Without being 'moralistic,' Jennifer Beste intriguingly combines student empirical research with both secular and Christian anthropological, theological, and ethical proposals. In its fullness, this is a book that brilliantly probes both pain and pleasure, love and happiness, justice and care, hope and community-illuminated within the complex sphere of human sexuality. --Margaret A. Farley, Gilbert L. Stark Professor Emerita of Christian Ethics, Yale University Divinity School Few works in Christian sexual ethics draw upon ethnographic methodologies to take into account the perspectives of the moral agents themselves. Professor Beste's study does just that. The amount and richness of the gathered qualitative material alone makes this book well worth the read. But Professor Beste goes well beyond field description to trenchant analysis of the allure and dangers of hook-up culture for young adults. This book will be a benchmark in both ethnographic theology and qualitative sociology on the subject. --Todd Whitmore, Associate Professor, Department of Theology and Department of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame Beste writes: 'At root is the fundamental fear that vulnerability to being hurt and betrayed represents failure, which has become the greatest social taboo of all.' Risk taboo. Risk knowing the young people around you. Risk reading what you don't want to know. I am an ordained minister and a mother. I teach at a university notorious for hookup culture. Read this book. --Amy Laura Hall, Duke University Divinity School