Student Book Review: Nancy Pearcey’s Love Thy Body

Posted On June 17, 2025

Written by Elise Klompien, an RBC alumna.

What does it mean to be human? In Christian thought, humans are composed of two inseparable parts, body and soul, but the worldview behind the latest cultural controversies makes another part of man all-important: the mind.  

In her book Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality, Nancy Pearcey presents the worldview of a secular morality and argues that it “doesn’t fit the real universe.” Using quotes from leading figures and true stories from those involved, Pearcey presents the problems this worldview causes, emphasizing the solution only Christ provides and the need for the church to help those struggling today.

Behind Pearcey’s entire presentation is the fact-value divide. This divide draws a hard line between body and person, biology and psychology. One is considered relevant; the other irrelevant. In the politically correct narrative, the mind always wins. The assumption that drives the secular worldview is that there is no value in the living human body, but only in the consciousness.

This assumption, Pearcey explains, is at the heart of secular views on abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, and transgenderism. Personhood theory claims that not every human is a person, and a fetus is a human nonperson because it does not think. Since only persons have rights, abortion is not wrong. By this logic, neither is infanticide or euthanasia. Without a definition of personhood, Pearcey warns, those in power will decide which humans have a life worth living.

Homosexuality and transgenderism are also based on ideas contrary to reality. Since the mind takes precedence, the facts of biology do not matter. Rather than teaching children to love their bodies the way they are, transgenderism encourages hatred towards the body while homosexuality excludes it from consideration of identity. In addition to these problems, the secular worldview encourages sex without emotional attachment, objectifying the body and treating other people as things.

In opposition to the secular worldview, Pearcey sets up the Christian one, in which human beings were created male and female, both body and soul, with inherent worth based on their creation in the image of God, independent of their mental faculties and physical abilities. She argues for the value of the body at all stages based on the birth, resurrection, and glorified body of Christ and points to the example of the early church in dealing with rampant sexual immorality and the treatment of children and slaves as nonpersons. At the end of each chapter, Pearcey urges the church today to minister to those wounded by the dehumanizing lies of our culture.

Love Thy Body is not only well researched and engagingly written, but is incredibly relevant to the church today. These are hard questions that we must understand and answer biblically if we are to avoid falling prey to the reality-denying claims of the secular worldview. The call is clear: In a world that devalues what it means to be human, we must learn to properly love our neighbors, our families, and even our own bodies.