Smith-Petit Lecture: Dr. Robert Orsi
Sexualized Religion/Sanctified Sexuality: Religion and Sexuality Out of the Sacred Closet
Catholicism and Mormonism, separately and, often enough, together, in pernicious comparison, have been repeatedly framed as paradigmatically bad religions vis-à-vis the normative category, “modern,” specifically, “modern American,” religion. As such, precisely as outliers and necessary others,Mormonism and Catholicism contributed fundamentally to the making of “modern American religion,” and of “good” religion generally. And of all the many reasons why Catholicism and Mormonism have been so construed, the most damning has had to do with sexuality. This lecture proposes to use the histories of Mormonism and Catholicism—as lived religions and as anxious creations of the modern religious imaginary—to examine some alternative possibilities for thinking about religion and sexuality.