Holy Sexuality and the Gospel: Sex, Desire, and Relationships Shaped by God’s Grand Story is by Christopher Yuan, published by Multnomah in 2018, 234 pages. Rosaria Butterfield is credited alongside Yuan on the listing and contributes the foreword.
What “holy sexuality” means
Yuan’s term covers two states and only two: chastity in singleness, or faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman. He argues that framing the Christian sexual ethic this way puts every believer under the same standard rather than singling out one group. A single man who is attracted to women and a single man who is attracted to men are, on his account, called to exactly the same thing.
That framing is the book’s main contribution and it is worth sitting with. It removes the implicit message that marriage is the normal Christian outcome and singleness is a holding pattern.
Where the author is coming from
Yuan came to faith after years of living as an agnostic gay man, a story he told with his mother Angela in the memoir Out of a Far Country. He went on to teach at Moody Bible Institute. So this is not a book written at a distance from its subject, and it is not written in the register of a culture-war broadside. The tone is closer to teaching than to argument.
One genuine disagreement to know about
Yuan takes a firm line against identity language, arguing that a Christian should not describe himself as a “gay Christian” because identity belongs in Christ. This is a live disagreement among Christians who hold the same sexual ethic he does. Some believe the descriptive language is honest and useful; Yuan believes it concedes too much. He is not soft about it.
We are flagging that because a reader could easily assume the whole book is uncontroversial among conservative Christians. The ethic is widely shared. The argument about identity language is not settled, and Yuan is a participant in it rather than a neutral reporter of it.
Where Called to Better stands
We hold the historic Christian position on marriage and sexuality: marriage is between one man and one woman, and sex belongs inside it. This book teaches that position, which is why it is here.
We also hold that the posture matters. This is a subject where men carry real shame, and where a father may be reading because of a conversation with his son rather than about himself. Condemning people is not the job. Yuan, to his credit, understands that, and the book is more pastoral than its subject line suggests.
What we removed
The previous version of this review invented reader reactions and a community discussion that never happened, and was titled as though the book were about building a faith network. It is not. Those are gone.
Where we land
The most useful single book we have found for a Christian man who wants to think clearly about this rather than react to it. Read it with the identity-language disagreement in mind, not as the final word on that piece.
Holy Sexuality and the Gospel by Christopher Yuan on Amazon