Book Reviews

Originally published April 3, 2007, on Townhall.com

Chastity is a misunderstood virtue.

It is more than simply refraining from premarital sex. It’s an attitude, a way of life, and open rebellion against a debauched culture. Contrary to popular opinion, Christians don’t think sex is dirty or evil. Christians believe sex outside marriage is wrong.

The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On is part memoir and part how-to guide on giving up casual sex, embracing chastity, and experiencing “a life more hope-filled, more vibrant, and more real” by putting sex in its proper place. That kind of life, says author Dawn Eden, is the thrill of the chaste.

The thirty-something [now former] New York Daily News editor, blogger, and Christian convert has written a nakedly honest book for a specific audience: single women ready to admit that premarital sex is not making them happy or helping them find the husband they desperately seek.

In The Thrill of the Chaste, Eden contends that our casual sex culture encourages singles to view one another as commodities. Like many young single women, she was caught up in the hype that sex is the way to a man’s heart. Eden began to understand that premarital sex and its attendant baggage actually made it less likely that she’d get married. For example, to protect oneself from the eventual let-down of casual encounters, one must develop a toughness. In Eden’s case, she sabotaged relationships before she got dumped so she could remain in control.

“[T]he same armor that enabled me to tolerate casual sex made me less attractive to the kind of man I most desired.”

Eden says dissolving the hard shell and allowing herself to be open and vulnerable have helped her be more capable of sustaining a long lasting relationship like marriage. Yes, Eden readily admits she wants to get married and believes God has called her to marriage. She also recognizes that some women reading the book want to get married and provides practical advice on how to meet marriage-minded men who share their faith.

Whether religious or not, women reading The Thrill of the Chaste will be able to relate to Eden’s descriptions of awkward morning-after scenarios. No matter what feminists claim, it is futile to deny that women become attached. “Women are built for bonding,” writes Eden. Sex detached from love leads to a feeling of emptiness.

Being chaste has a strong spiritual component, and to practice it requires a purpose beyond mere abstention from sex until marriage. God created us as relational beings to experience his love and show that love to others. The sexual part of the martial relationship bears more than physical fruit (children). Spiritual fruit borne by two uniting together as one is the “gift of self that they give to each other,” writes Eden, which “becomes a gift to the Lord.”

Bucking the culture and remaining obedient to God present the same problems they always have. As Eden writes, “The most challenging part of chastity isn’t overcoming temptation. It’s gaining the spiritual resources to joyfully face day-to-day life as a cultural outsider.” And Christians know that kind of joy is found only in Christ.

The Thrill of the Chaste encourages single women to focus on sharing God’s love with others and growing in grace rather than putting “the goal of meeting a husband at the center of “thoughts, actions, and dreams.” Eden has found fulfillment in chastity, and she’s using her God-given gifts to help others find fulfillment, too.

Originally published in 2003 on Townhall

When the Ayatollah Khomeini first referred to the United States as “The Great Satan” at the time of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, he wanted to invoke the image of the Seducer, the Liar of all liars. According to the Koran, Satan is “an insidious tempter who whispers in the hearts of men.” To Muslims, America is not a superpower to be feared, but a deceiver to be obliterated.

In his concise, best-selling book, The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror, Bernard Lewis examines the religious origins of terrorism and takes the reader through thirteen centuries of the history of Islam. He explores key events leading up to terrorism in the twenty-first century. A follow-up to his best-selling What Went Wrong, this readable, 184-page book includes four maps showing the expansion of Islam in the Middle East from 622 A.D. to the present.

Lewis’s thesis is that Islam’s current obsession with the United States isn’t a recent phenomenon, and its hatred isn’t just about Israel. To Muslims like Osama bin Laden, the war against the “Land of the Unbelievers” is a religious one. Despite President Bush’s pronouncement that Islam is a religion of peace, Lewis makes clear that it is not. The Middle East’s escalating hatred for the West challenges many assumptions Americans–who are baffled by this hatred–may have about Islam.

A Middle East expert, Lewis proffers that Americans are puzzled by this venomous sentiment because their general level of historical knowledge is “abysmally low.” Muslims, however, are defined by their history: who they are, where they came from, and what they perceive as God’s purpose for their lives. “For [Osama] bin Laden, his declaration of war against the United States marks the resumption of the struggle for religious dominance of the world that began in the seventh century,” Lewis writes.

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Originally published March 24, 2006, on Townhall.com

From fatherlessness flows many things.

Fatherless children are more likely to be poor, perform poorly in school, engage in premarital sex, become teen parents, abuse drugs, and commit crimes than children from intact families. Black children are significantly less likely than other children to be raised in intact families. In 2004, a mere 35 percent of black children were living with two parents, compared to 83 percent of Asian children, 77 percent of white children, and 65 percent of Hispanic children.

Despite decades worth of research on the damage wrought by illegitimacy, a research psychologist named Peggy Drexler attempts to argue that lesbian couples and “single by choice” mothers do a better job of raising boys than married couples in Raising Boys without Men: How Maverick Moms are Creating the Next Generation of Exceptional Men.

Drexler, a mother of two and married for 36 years, interviewed a small and limited number of lesbian couples, heterosexual women who volunteered to deprive their sons of fathers, divorced mothers, and their sons. Her “maverick moms” reject “social judgments” and stress “communication, community, and love” in their roles as mothers.

In one form or another throughout the book, Drexler sets up the strawman, “Mother love doesn’t hurt our boys.” I have never heard reasonable people make such a claim. Unlike Drexler, most people believe that “mother love” and “father love” need to balance each other, which is why intact families are best for children. Drexler often exaggerates and uses the most extreme examples throughout the book to support her biases.

Raising Boys Without Men will give aid and comfort to single mothers, but a house full of them, no matter how well off, won’t ever change the fact that boys want and need fathers. Considering the utter devastation fatherlessness has caused in black communities, it would be easy to go off on Drexler, but she makes clear that she focused on mostly white, affluent lesbians and single mothers.

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