Book Review: "Handmaid - The Biblical Morality of Master/concubine Relationships" by Ruprecht Wachter

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Not Something I Expected Anyone to write

There are not very many people who are ever willing to address the plain, simple fact that just because someone is religious doesn't mean their sex life has to be boring, and there are fewer still who are willing to write a book about it. So when a book came out that openly asked "let's examine if your Master/slave kink is permitted in Christianity or not," it kind of got a double-take from this scatterbrained little submissive concubine. This book started from the core question: "is it, or is it not, sinful to be a slave girl in a Master/slave relationship?"

No Soft Steps (Spoiler Alert)

If you think the book is going to be tentative and timid, the table of contents helps give you a clue that it is not. The chapter titles are these.

"What is a Concubine?"
"The Concubine: Wife, Slave, or Both?"
"A Covenant, Not a Contract"
"No 'Release Clause' in God's Eyes"
"Is It Sinful to Kneel to my Master?"
"Is It Sinful to Wear a Collar?"
"Will This Ever Grow Into a 'Normal' Marriage?"

And at the risk of spoilers, the book's Biblical proof of "if you are in a Master/slave relationship then God considers this a marriage" was a bolt right out of the blue for me. It was a relief to read most of the book's conclusions, but it was also sobering to read the conclusion of "since god sees a Master/slave relationship as a marriage, then if you've ever asked to be released then you committed the sin of divorce."

No Speculation

What I love most is that the book does not give any prudish modern Western "Eurochristian" morality as its basis. Nothing is backed up by "come on, does that feel right to you?" Not once is anything based on any Human definition of morality. Every line is backed up by "here's what the Bible actually says, in its original language, vs what you've been fed by the Greco-Roman Church (which is something I have gotten used to since living in a polygynous marriage)." There is no Sunday School talk here, no Westernized "Sloppy Agape." The author has zero fear of offending feminists (or fans of modern watered-down church doctrine) and leans only on what the Bible's original text actually says, and he restates again and again "if you can't find a bible verse that prohibits it, it's no sin." He follows this up with plenty of examples of D/s and M/s relationships in the Bible, with plenty of reminders that there's not a single time when God called them out for it saying "you're sinning."

Unexpected Answers

Even with the book making its final conclusions pretty clear from the cover onward, it hit kind of hard to be told so frankly "yes, it is perfectly normal and Biblical for you to be in a Master/slave relationship, and God has been honoring those kinds of relationships for millennia." Basically, to anyone who is Christian and in a Male-led D/s or M/s relationship, who worries that they might somehow be breaking the Commandments of their Faith by doing so, I'd recommend reading this book. It will show you all the reasons why the answer is "no, you're not."

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