After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion
Anthony M. Petro
Abstract
This book demonstrates how Christian leaders and AIDS activists in the United States have posited HIV/AIDS as a religious and moral epidemic and asks how this understanding has informed cultural and political debates about prevention, healthcare, and sex education all over the world. Drawing upon archival research, oral histories, and textual analysis, this book maps the moral language regarding sexuality–and especially homosexuality–through which evangelicals, mainline Protestants, Catholic leaders, and gay and lesbian AIDS activists made sense of and responded to the epidemic. Moving beyond ... More
This book demonstrates how Christian leaders and AIDS activists in the United States have posited HIV/AIDS as a religious and moral epidemic and asks how this understanding has informed cultural and political debates about prevention, healthcare, and sex education all over the world. Drawing upon archival research, oral histories, and textual analysis, this book maps the moral language regarding sexuality–and especially homosexuality–through which evangelicals, mainline Protestants, Catholic leaders, and gay and lesbian AIDS activists made sense of and responded to the epidemic. Moving beyond the politics of the culture wars and the focus on the Christian Right, After the Wrath of God tracks how mainstream religious understandings of sexual morality and AIDS have shaped national and global public health discourse about prevention and care. It also situates the AIDS crisis alongside competing moral concerns, such as those surrounding abortion, drug use, and race, in delineating American religious responses to the epidemic. This history illustrates in turn how the AIDS epidemic has transformed American Christianity by allowing religious leaders and organizations a new way in which to articulate their understandings of sexuality, health, and social activism and to advance new boundaries for national moral citizenship.
Keywords:
American Christianity,
HIV/AIDS,
sexuality,
Catholic history,
Protestant history,
gay and lesbian studies,
citizenship,
public health,
morality
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2015 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199391288 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2015 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199391288.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Anthony M. Petro, author
Assistant Professor of Religion, Boston University, Boston, MA
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