Sex & God

Darrel Ray’s 'Sex & God' is a provocative anthropological and psychological audit of the world’s major religious traditions, arguing that their preoccupation with regulating sexuality is not a moral sidebar but a central mechanism of control. The book posits that from Buddhism and Christianity to Islam and Mormonism, doctrines concerning purity, sin, and permissible acts function as a primary tool for maintaining institutional authority, shaping identity, and ensuring generational transmission of faith.

Ray, a former minister turned secular psychologist, dissects how religions systematically pathologize natural sexual behaviors—masturbation, premarital sex, homosexuality—to induce guilt and create a dependent relationship between the believer and the religious structure. The narrative traces the historical and theological roots of sexual prohibitions, demonstrating how they are often less about divine commandment and more about pragmatic concerns over property, lineage, and social cohesion. The book ventures into the impact of these teachings on individual psychology, arguing they create a lifelong internal conflict between body and spirit.

The final sections of the work are prescriptive, offering a roadmap for what Ray terms 'secular sexuality.' He advocates for an ethical framework divorced from supernatural punishment, one built on informed consent, personal responsibility, and the conscious cultivation of pleasure. The book is aimed at those recovering from religious upbringing, as well as anyone interested in the often-unexamined intersections of culture, power, and intimate life. Its legacy lies in its uncompromising challenge to view religious sexual mores not as timeless truths, but as malleable social technologies with profound human costs.

The consensus finds the book’s core thesis compelling and its information invaluable for readers deconstructing religious backgrounds, praising its fearless exposure of systemic control. However, a significant portion of the audience, including sympathetic secularists, criticizes the author’s tone as unproductively hostile, which they feel undermines his persuasive power and alienates potential converts. The argument is also seen as occasionally reductive, attributing too many societal sexual dysfunctions solely to religion while underestimating other cultural forces.