Religious Studies Professor Explores Black Women, Faith and Sexuality in New Book

ATLANTA—Religious Studies Assistant Professor Monique Moultrie’s upcoming book was initially based on her dissertation, an analysis of televangelist Juanita Bynum’s No More Sheets sermon. After conducting a series of interviews with Black single, Christian women across the South, however, the book quickly morphed into something much larger in scope. 

The result, Passionate and Pious: Religious Media and Black Women’s Sexuality, is a deep dive into the influence of faith-based ministries on Black women’s spirituality and sexuality.

“I did a small group of interviews for my dissertation just to largely check my own understanding of the populous, but when I sent the book proposal off to several publishers one came back and said ‘you know what’s really the book is the interviews,’” said Moultrie. “The book that is published is one chapter from the dissertation and everything else is new material that came from interviews that I did with women and an attempt to be true to the stories they shared as well as some of the questions that I had in my own faith walk.”

Moultrie received a Ford Foundation Fellowship to conduct her year-long research study. During the fellowship, she hosted focus groups with Black women of all ages and stages of life and followed up with women from the focus groups with one-on-one interviews.

She discovered that her longstanding assumption that women she interviewed would share stories of despair and “woe it’s me” was wrong. Instead, she found women who were moving about their lives and actively pursuing sexual freedom.

For some of the interviewees, sexual freedom was about being celibate in Christ and honoring God with their bodies, for others sexually free meant not feeling guilt or shame about non-monogamous relationships and for others it meant having a monogamous relationship that may or may not include sex.

“The emphasis on sexually free isn’t about genitalia,” said Moultrie. “It’s about a mind, body and soul integration.”

Passionate and Pious also looks at the rise of religious digital media and its impact on Black women’s sexuality, specifically the text and social media messaging shared by movements such as Pinky Promise and Wives in Waiting.

The book is set to be published this December by Duke University Press. 

“I’m really grateful for the people who shared with me, and I hope that the work that I produced not only makes a scholarly intervention but also that it makes a practical intervention,” said Moultrie. “I want it to offer readers an alternative to what they’re hearing on Sunday mornings.”

To preorder a copy of Passionate and Pious, visit Duke University Press or Amazon.