Sacred Work: Planned Parenthood and Its Clergy Alliances

by Tom Davis

Book Overview

In the struggle for reproductive freedom, there are religious extremists at one end and liberal secularists at the other. Lost in this battle and often invisible to the public eye are the religious leaders and institutions that have worked in favor of protecting reproductive rights.

In Sacred Work, Tom Davis brings to light the ways in which the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a leading reproductive rights organization,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0813534933
• ISBN13: 9780813534930
• Release Date: December 2004
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Length: 245 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.3" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Great historical perspective

Rev Davis work captures the historical aspects of the pro reproductive choice movement. The biblical commands of justice not judgement drive the involvement of the clergy to support women in their reproductive work. Women's health care being provided in churches? What a great concept.

Sacred Work in the Twenty-First Century and Beyond

A book reviewer's job is to provide an informed opinion as to whether the writer accomplished their craft and has written to the best of their ability a good book. A review shouldn't be a platform for the reviewer's political or religious point of view. A review should be about the book. Reviewers should be able to back up their opinions by explaining the strengths and weaknesses of the book by taking examples from the text of the said book. The key word here of course is opinion, to what one reviewer might trumpet accolades, another might pan relentlessly. The reader must remember, it is easier to critique than create and that everyone has an opinion. Sacred Work focuses on subjects that cause great controversy and as a reviewer I dreaded writing this review, not because it is a poorly written book, on the contrary, Davis has written an incredible informative tome on the history of Planned Parenthood and the organization's involvement with the clergy. The conundrum is that as a fair and unbiased book reviewer I cannot allow my personal beliefs about Pro-Life or Pro-Choice seep into this review. With that said let us begin. For my entire life so far, from birth to this exact moment I have enjoyed being a heterosexual male and I haven't any plans in the near or distant future that I can foresee that would invoke me into changing genders. For a decade I have been a husband and partner to a wonderful woman. I am the father of three beautiful and magnificent daughters. I was raised by a strong and independent mother and I am proud to admit that my mother-in-law and I are friends. I think it is safe to say that I am respectful to women and sensitive to their rights, but until I read Tom Davis book I never fully understood the trials and tribulations women through out history, including the present day endured to maintain their reproductive rights and autonomy and how much the clergy was involved. What exactly is the nature of `sacred work' and how does it involve Planned Parenthood and the clergy? Davis writes, "In the biblical view, sacred work is love and in practical social realities, sacred work is justice...nowhere was injustice more clearly present then in the twentieth-century battle over contraception...if women were able to determine their reproductive life, then the control over their lives by male dominated political institutions would be threatened...and since spiritual realities cannot be separated from social and political life, the pursuit of the sacred work of justice takes clergy into the public arena. The realm of justice is a realm of hard, sometimes tragic choices. As Planned Parenthood and the clergy each tried to stand with women making those hard choices a bond was formed." The popular misconception about the clergy and Planned Parenthood in the media is that they are bitter enemies. Davis blows apart this myth. He writes, "In the spring of 1997 the Planned Parenthood affiliate in Washington D.C. opened a clini

One of the Great Social Justice Fights.

I was in the methodist clergy 1971 - 1989 and never knew that this was one of the great conflicts of the twentieth century. Planned Parenthood was firmly in place and I had no idea of the storms that had been involved. The great names: Niebuhr, Oxnam, Fosdick, Peale transformed the social, political and religious environment. In 1916, it was utter ignorance about sex and reproduction. By 1965, everything was available. Sacred Work is about Protestant and Jewish clergy, from pastoral concerns, fighting as great a fight as was civil rights or anti-war. Warfare is begining again; it behoves us to know our history.