The Tabernacle of the Gospel Truth, led by the fiery young Pastor Dennis, has been causing quite a stir in sleepy Stonewood Heights. In recent years the vocal and growing church has pressured the local video store to remove its Adult section, protested the town's use of neutral holiday messages at Christmas time, and attempted to cleanse the high school library shelves of Judy Blume novels.
So when Ruth Ramsey, Stonewood Heights High's sex education teacher, makes a seemingly innocuous classroom comment about oral sex, she is shocked but not entirely surprised when church lawyers turn up on the school doorstep threatening legal action and sparking a media frenzy. The school district, succumbing to the pressure, changes its sex education curriculum to a church-run abstinence program, much to the dismay of the left-leaning Ruth.
Thus begins The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta, an author whose critical portrayals of modern suburban dystopia have led the New York Times to label him "a truth-telling, unshowy chronicler of modern-day America". The "truths' chronicled by Perrotta in The Abstinence Teacher are mostly concerned with sex, a subject with which most of his characters are unsettlingly obsessed (and one which saturates the book, in some fairly distasteful ways).
Perrotta's treatment of sex and sexual attitudes in The Abstinence Teacher bears little resemblance to a Biblical understanding of the topic. It is an issue about which much could be said, however to do so would be perhaps to miss one of the books more potent undercurrents.
Interwoven among Ruth's story, we meet Tim Mason, a recovering drug addict and alcoholic, divorced father of one, and the church's star poster child. Clean of drugs since joining the church, Tim now coaches his daughter's soccer team, plays in the church worship band and - at the urging of Paster Dennis - has remarried a gentle and submissive young Christian woman. Tim's reformation, however, is not all it seems " sexually obsessed with his ex-wife and constantly battling the demons of his addictions, Tim spends most of the novel growing more and more confused as to why, having proclaimed Jesus as his Lord, his life has only grown darker and more troubled.
As the reader becomes more familiar with Tim and Pastor Dennis, the reasons behind his confusion become more apparent: Tim has accepted Jesus into his life, however the Jesus Tim has accepted has been seriously misunderstood. Where Christ redeems us from sin, Tim's Jesus saves him only from himself; where Christ conforms our hearts, Tim's Jesus merely helps him to pull himself up by his own bootstraps; where Christ's love is unconditional, Tim struggles daily to make himself just "be a good Christian and toe the biblical line". To Tim's credit, he loves his version of Jesus and wants to please him, but the Tabernacle's teaching have hobbled Christ, and it is a sad end to the story when Tim ends up walking away from his Christian life, into the arms of the easier and more understanding Ruth.
In Ephesians 2: 8-9 Paul writes that "it is by grace you have been saved, through faith " and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God " not by works, so that no one can boast". That we cannot save ourselves is not one of the truths that Tom Perrotta is attempting to convey in The Abstinence Teacher. Nevertheless, Perrotta has painted with sobering clarity a picture of what happens when Christ's saving work in the cross is sidelined in favour of moralistic therapeutic deism. In the story of Tim Mason and the Tabernacle of the Gospel Truth, Tom Perrotta has captured a snapshot of modern America and its religion of choice which should deeply concern those who seek to proclaim Christ crucified. The Abstinence Teacher may not a particularly memorable or recommended book for many reasons, but if a writer like Tom Perrotta can see it then so should we " your own personal version of Jesus may take the edge off, but he cannot save, and a gospel which proclaims anything less endangers all who hear it.
