In Passionate and Pious Monique Moultrie explores the impact of faith-based sexual ministries on black women's sexual agency to trace how these women navigate sexuality, religious authority, and their spiritual walk with God. Providing churchwomen a space to candidly discuss these issues, these popular ministries exist largely beyond the traditional church, with dialogues about sex taking place in chat rooms and through text messages, social media, email, and other media. Moultrie foregrounds televangelist Juanita Bynum's construction of the black Christian sexual identity these ministries promote while emphasizing how churchwomen reconcile these prescriptive identities with their individual experiences. What does it mean for senior women to exercise sexual agency when their church standing could be questioned? What does celibacy mean for women who experience same-sex desire while believing that such desire goes against God's will? Advancing a womanist sexual ethics, Moultrie reframes biblical interpretations and conceptions of what constitutes a healthy relationship to provide a basis for sexual decision making that does not privilege monogamy or deny female pleasure, thereby calling on black churchwomen to experience responsible and life-enhancing sex.

Acknowledgments  ix Introduction. For All the Single Ladies: Black Women's Stories of Faith and Sexuality  1 1. Sexual Purity as PR: Tracing the Impact of Religious Media  21 2. Reading "Our" Bynum as Text: For a Black Woman by a Black Woman  29 3. Beyond Bynum: Analyzing Contemporary Faith-Based Sexuality Ministries  50 4. "Why I Gotta be Gay?": Approaches to Womanist Sexual Hospitality  81 5. "The Lord Still has Work for Me to Do": Analyzing Senior Sexuality and Faith-Based Sexuality Ministries  96 6. Horny and Holy: Saved Women Seeking Sexual Pleasure  116 Conclusion. Living Sexually Before God: A Contemporary Womanist Sexual Ethics  142 Notes  153 Bibliography  173 Index  183