Few topics generate more public interest and public anxiety than sex and religion. Much of the political conflict and division in societies worldwide revolves around sexual issues, and about one-third of the global population identifies as Christian in some form. This debate strikes at the core of modern-day religion. MacCulloch, an emeritus professor of church history at Oxford, has authored a nearly 700-page book on Christianity and sex, which he describes as a “well-placed hand grenade” aimed at the perpetual church debates about sexual morality. MacCulloch aligns himself with the progressive view, noting that angels, the original gender-fluid beings, defy conventional pronouns.
This book seeks to calm fears and encourage understanding through telling a 3000-year-long tale of Christians encountering sex, gender and the family, with noises off from their sacred texts. The message of Lower than the Angels is simple, necessary and timely: to pay attention to the sheer glorious complexity and contradictions in the history of Christianity. The reader can decide from the story told here whether there is a single Christian theology of sex, or many contending voices in a symphony that is not at all complete. Oxford’s Emeritus Professor of the History of the Church introduces an epic of ordinary and extraordinary Christians trying to make sense of themselves and of humanity’s deepest desires, fears and hopes.
The Bible observes that God made humanity ‘for a while a little lower than the angels’. If humans are that close to angels, does the difference lie in human sexuality and what we do with it? Much of the political contention and division in societies across the world centres on sexual topics, and one-third of the global population is Christian in background or outlook. In a single lifetime, Christianity or historically Christian societies have witnessed one of the most extraordinary about-turns in attitudes to sex and gender in human history. There have followed revolutions in the place of women in society, a new place for same-sex love amid the spectrum of human emotions and a public exploration of gender and trans identity. For many the new situation has brought exciting liberation – for others, fury and fear.
“MacCulloch is an ideal guide in tracing this story. He writes, as always, with such liveliness and energy that the reader hardly notices the length of the book or the comprehensiveness of its field of reference.”
- Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury
“MacCulloch is the best kind of scholar: one with a keen sense of mischief. He was among the few people his late, great friend Hilary Mantel might have deferred to in knowledge of Thomas Cromwell and Reformation politics. For the past four years, since his retirement from university teaching, he has applied that lifelong erudition to a comprehensive and richly entertaining history of the ways in which, for 3,000 years, the church has tied itself in knots over sex (and love and marriage).”
- Tim Adams, The Observer
About the Author
Diarmaid MacCulloch is Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University. His Thomas Cranmer (1996) won the Whitbread Biography Prize, the James Tait Black Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize; Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490-1700 (2004) won the Wolfson Prize and the British Academy Prize. A History of Christianity (2010), which was adapted into a six-part BBC television series, was awarded the Cundill and Hessel-Tiltman Prizes. He was knighted in 2012 and was awarded the Norton Medlicott Medal by the Historical Association in 2022.
‘I thought of the church as a friend and it slapped me in the face’: historian Diarmaid MacCulloch
Diarmaid spoke at Wolf Hall weekend event in June earlier this year, revealing his insights into Thomas Cromwell’s true place in the making of modern England and Ireland, for good and ill, as well as recalling some of his conversations with Hilary, who he remembers fondly as an ‘intellectual companion’.
Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity will be available September 19, 2024.
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