Sexuality, Religion and the Sacred: Bisexual, Pansexual and Polysexual Perspectives is a collection of essays largely about bisexuality and spirituality, with polyamory as a recurring theme.
All but two essays were previously published in a special issue of the Journal of Bisexuality (Vol. 10, Issues 1-2, 2010) entitled “Bisexualities and Spiritualities.” The two new essays on Buddhist ethics and on non-monogamous bisexuality in The Color Purple are both excellent.
The authors are from varying backgrounds, both academic and non-academic. Christian/Unitarian, Buddhist, neo-pagan, Afro-centric, feminist, and post-colonial views are represented; however, the author working within Islamic studies writes only the forward, and Judaism is not truly represented. Some authors write from personal experience as both a method (ethno-autobiography) and as a way of doing theology. Some use more standard hermeneutical methods or use various traditions of literary criticism, and one author reports on a social scientific interview. The methods and issues, therefore, are diverse as is the tone of the essays.
Several common themes emerge. First is the continued misunderstanding and mislabeling of bisexuality in both the LGBT community and in society as a whole and the resulting effects on bisexuals. The second theme is the belief that bisexuality breaks down gender and sexual dichotomies, a trope drawn, in part, from queer theory. A third theme, alluded to above, is whether polyamory or its reverse, monogamous commitment, are somehow related to bisexuality. The last recurring theme is that spirituality and sexuality can be positively related, both for the individual and for religious traditions and society as a whole.
Is the book useful? Given the high price, and shrinking library budgets, it is a real question as to whether it would be too costly for most libraries, academic and public, to purchase.
If a public or academic library decided that it wanted the complete set of essays and was not content with the contents of the Journal of Bisexuality’s special issue, this volume has several positive aspects. First, many of the essays push the boundaries of the theological discourse in the United States or at least the theological discourse that most Americans will encounter in the public sphere. Second, bisexual perspectives remain under-represented in academic discourse. The book Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out, published in 1991, is frequently referenced in this collection as a bisexual classic, or rather, as the bisexual classic.
If we are of the view that a multitude of perspectives are necessary to reflect human experience and to help build up a collective truth of some sort, this book is useful and can even be considered necessary. I found that it was also revealing and inspiring in places.
Recommended for academic and public libraries.
Reviewer: David Woolwine
Associate Professor of Library Services and Reference Librarian, Hofstra University