Published July 16, 2026
The United Methodist Church (UMC) has removed Asbury Theological Seminary from its list of institutions approved to train its ministers. Hardly a bastion of right-wing Protestant fundamentalism, Asbury has nonetheless run afoul of the UMC. Why? The seminary has had the temerity to uphold the traditional Christian teaching on sex and marriage. Asbury’s conviction looks potentially costly, but what price should we place on such matters? Sexual morality isn’t just about behavior; it’s about the essence of human nature and society, involving the profoundest questions about personal relationships, social structures, and teleology—what human beings are for.
Years before “swinging” meant anything beyond big band music, thinkers such as Sigmund Freud and J. D. Unwin pointed out that sexual codes are at the heart of culture. Dismantle them, and you dismantle the essence of those human relationships that define a civilization. The sexual revolution did just that, turning a lifelong human bond connected to procreation into mere recreation. It thereby turned sexual partners into instruments of worth only insofar as they meet one’s sexual needs. Sex today is not about self-giving; it is about selfish taking. And the fruit of this “liberation” has been the unprecedented objectification of women, pornography being only the most obvious example.
In recent years, feminists such as Louise Perry, Christine Emba, and Mary Harrington have highlighted the sexual revolution’s obvious problems. But despite these green shoots of sanity, progressive Christianity, true to form, still cheers for the wrong team.
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Carl R. Trueman is a fellow in EPPC’s Evangelicals in Civic Life Program. His work focuses on helping civic leaders and policymakers better understand the deep philosophical and cultural roots of our current social malaise. In addition to his scholarship on the intellectual foundations of expressive individualism and the sexual revolution, Trueman is also interested in the origins, rise, and use of critical theory by progressives and the current crisis in anthropology. He serves as a professor at Grove City College.
