Compromising Positions Sex Scandals, Politics, and American Christianity
Compromising Positions Sex Scandals, Politics, and American Christianity
- ISBN 13:
9780190924072
- ISBN 10:
0190924071
- Format: Hardcover
- Copyright: 12/02/2019
- Publisher: Oxford University Press
List Price $47.99 Save
TERM | PRICE | DUE |
---|---|---|
Free Shipping Both Ways
Highlight/Take Notes Like You Own It
Purchase/Extend Before Due Date
List Price $47.99 Save $0.48
Usually Ships in 3-5 Business Days
We Buy This Book Back!
Free Shipping On Every Order
Note: Supplemental materials are not guaranteed with Rental or Used book purchases.
Extend or Purchase Your Rental at Any Time
Need to keep your rental past your due date? At any time before your due date you can extend or purchase your rental through your account.
Summary
Smith shows that sex scandals involve the use of four very powerful social tools--gender, race, politics, and religion-- that together create a rhetoric about what America is, who is eligible to formally represent it, and what types of symbolic religiosity such leaders must display to legitimize their power. Americans tend to condemn or excuse the sexual misdeeds of their politicians depending on the degree to which the individual in question reinforces evangelical interpretations of "American values" and a "Christian nation." Such values include not just moral integrity, but strength, courage, and conquest. As a consequence, sex scandals are less likely to occur in cultural moments when the public is open to reading a politician's moral lapse as a symbolic form of national dominance. Put simply, when a leader is perceived as strong, domineering, and necessary for national health, many people will find ways either to overlook his illicit sexual behavior or somehow read it as an American act.