A dense but accessible and highly illuminating history of Christianity which takes as its central themes sex and sexuality. MacCulloch traces ideas and teachings about relationships, the links between clergy and lay people, the position of women, over the course of two thousand years. Although he refers to Eastern Orthodoxy, MacCulloch primarily examines the evolution of western European, predominantly English, religious institutions from Catholic to Protestant. MacCulloch doesn’t consider the Bible as primary in directing how sex and relationships were framed or understood – one example is his encounter with a conservative American evangelical who asserted the holiness of marriage but was happy to overlook Jesus’s comments against divorce. More significant are the ways in which the Bible interacted with wider cultural norms and theological thought. This means that MacCulloch draws on wide-ranging sources from literature to legal documents. MacCulloch positions himself as essentially an outsider for much of what he’s exploring. Once on track to become an Anglican vicar, like previous generations of his family, his identity as a gay man stirred conflicts that led him towards the practice of history instead.

Key areas examined here are issues around the nature of marriage, celibacy and the priesthood, sexual intercourse, and gender. MacCulloch explores the impact of wider social and cultural contexts on Church doctrines. One example from the early years of Christianity was the impact of the acceptance of same-sex relationships in Greek society as a life stage; one that operated rather like mentoring between an older ‘wiser’ man and a younger one. In Hebrew settings this was not an accepted practice but polygyny was, many heroic Biblical men such as Abraham had more than one wife. It was only later under the influence of figures like Paul, and through New Testament representations of Jesus’s teachings that monogamy became the expectation, the marriage of one man and one woman. From around the sixth to twelfth centuries, what was commonly referred to as “sodomy” was fiercely denounced, Christmas sermons proclaimed that Jesus refused to be born until all the “sodomites” were dead, so that Christmas Eve was tied to their wholesale slaughter Although MacCulloch suggests that same-sex relationships resurged and were reconfigured through monasticism, imported into Christianity in the second century CE. Monks were initially those given to the Church as children by their parents. However, later adults were allowed to enter monasteries. It wasn’t then uncommon for Christian monasteries to have a homosocial component – or “same-sex emotional energy” - not unlike the concept of the romantic friendship. Although an insistence on celibacy and asceticism ruled out actual sex.

An emphasis on celibacy and the notion of purity it was said to represent, was also a later development within Christianity. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, celibacy tended to be confined to those intent on rising within Church hierarchies, parish priests were free to marry. In western Europe celibacy persisted within Roman Catholicism. But the Protestant Reformation dispensed with it for priests within what became the Protestant Church. Instead, Protestant clergy were encouraged to model an ideal of family life for their parishioners, a holy family of sorts. Post-Enlightenment, sex was increasingly regarded as private – at least for Protestants – and the Church began to lose its authority in this area. MacCulloch notes that this was particularly the case in England and The Netherlands where increasing economic prosperity encouraged notions of freedom of choice in general: from everyday consumption to the more personal. Women began to have a stronger voice, while the development of Brazilian rubber plantations made condoms more widely available, severing connections between sex and reproduction. Something which both Protestant and Catholic authorities denounced but that became acceptable within Anglicanism if within the context of marriage.

Changing attitudes within Church institutions and teachings over time, underline the ways in which Christianity is not a fixed set of beliefs with concomitant behaviours. But rather it’s subject to external historical forces from social to cultural to economic. Something which, for MacCulloch, points to the possibility of further, future variations, creating or opening spaces for difference – for instance broader acceptance/acknowledgement of queer identities and contemporary forms of expression. Overall, thoughtful, fascinating and incredibly informative.

A great read that made me see a lot of different sides of the history of sex and christianity. A lot of different ideas, sin and brimestone, mystycism and sensuality.
Well researched and fascinating.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine