Sex and the sacristy

Battles over sex and gender are almost impossible to avoid in 2025. From women’s sports to public school libraries, it appears to most of us that what supposedly happens in the privacy of one’s home has now invaded every inch of our lives. The same goes for our churches too: The United Methodist Church, historically one of the foremost Protestant denominations in the United States, has seen a split in recent years over same-sex marriage and the ordination of openly gay clergy. But as Diarmad MacCulloch’s new book Lower Than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (Viking, 688 pp.) reveals, sex has been a central topic of concern to the Church from the very beginning.

MacCulloch, an award-winning historian of Christianity who has written extensively on the English Reformation, is an emeritus professor of history as well as a fellow of St Cross College and Campion Hall at the University of Oxford, but his relationship with the history of Christianity and sex is also deeply personal.

Ordained a deacon in the Church of England in 1987 and identifying as a gay man, he refused the priesthood on account of the church’s stance against homosexuality. Now calling himself “a candid friend of Christianity” rather than a typical believer, he aims to demonstrate to modern readers that “there is no such thing as a single Christian theology of sex” but rather “a plethora of Christian theologies of sex” when the full record of Church history is taken into account. His hope is that encountering such diversity “may make it easier to see that our own beliefs about sexuality are our own creations, rather than something handed down on tablets of stone for all time.” He further hopes this will make us “less afraid of things that initially look strange and frightening.”

MacCulloch focuses on how Judaism was impacted by a prolonged exposure to Greek thought before the birth of Christ. Early Christians struggled to reckon with Scripture’s inadequacy for “providing answers on questions of sex and gender, given the silences on now significant matters in the recorded discourses of Jesus.” Most of the church fathers were forced to acknowledge the procreative necessity of marriage while holding celibacy in a much higher regard. Borrowing from the Hellenistic Jew Philo of Alexandria and the Pythagoreans, they believed that sex existed solely for the purpose of procreation and should not be enjoyed so as to preserve one’s soul.

MacCulloch emphasizes how monasticism “gave an unparalleled opportunity to seize one’s own fate and exercise personal choice” in fully pledging oneself to worship and serve Christ in singleness. After the legalization of Christianity under the Roman Emperor Constantine, those committed to monasticism saw themselves as embodying “a variety of living martyrdom” and idealized sexual renunciation. Still, marriage and sex increasingly became a matter of public concern as church authorities became more powerful within society, particularly as the elite classes were Christianized. The debate over clerical celibacy as Pope Gregory VII sought to enforce it during the 11th century heightened the sense of spiritual inequality between the married laity and those devoted to religious life.

Nothing, however, could have prepared Europe for the repudiation of Gregorian sexual classism that the Reformation introduced. Luther and the other magisterial Reformers defended married and family life as just as blessed and sanctifying in the eyes of God and actually more so than singleness. Men like Luther practically saw celibacy as impossible due to the ubiquity of sexual desire, vigorously pushing for individuals to get married so as to discourage sinful lust.

Although prioritizing the family became widespread within the West across the early modern period, by the dawn of the 20th century both Catholicism and Protestantism were forced to confront the pervasive reality of contraception and its accompanying complications for sexual ethics. The foremost problem was of course homosexuality, as contraception’s separation of sex and procreation, in the words of the Bishop of Oxford Charles Gore (1853–1932), “‘justifie[d] the philosophy of homosexuality.’” According to MacCulloch, the rise of the LGBTQ movement brings with it the possibility for “stor[ies] of judgment suspended and transformed by personal experience” in which Christians learn to be accepting of sexual minorities. For him, the fact that “Christianity continues to be the chameleon faith it always has been” means “there is more variety to come in marriage, sex and the family,” regardless of whether religious conservatives warm up to it or not.

MacCulloch’s commitment to accurately map the terrain of historical Christian beliefs about sex, gender, and marriage is to be commended. With consistently crisp prose, he offers clear and needed historical context on crucial matters, managing to weave together a broad overview of Christian history with extended forays into conflicts on sexuality as they occurred.

But sincerity is no substitute for truth. Despite the fact that “there were always other voices” to consider, Christians still remain responsible for how they steward the Word of God in any age. Not all interpretations are equally sound.

Nevertheless, I believe MacCulloch provides a sobering reminder to evangelicals. Far too often, core beliefs are treated as if they have been givens from the beginning. While the sinfulness of homosexuality and the firmness of the gender binary are quite evident in the Bible itself, majority views about the worthiness of marriage and the value of women did not arise overnight and in fact were often seen as problematic at best and detestable at worst by some of the foremost figures of Christian history. Those living on the other side of the Reformation can easily take many things for granted when it comes to how we prize marriage and the family especially. MacCulloch’s book forces us to ask a deeper question: What exactly is Christianity? If it is something socially and culturally constructed, as he suggests, even long-held dogmas can find themselves in the dock of popular opinion. On the other hand, if the Scriptures that sufficiently reveal who Christ is and what He wishes for His followers to believe and do in His name are indeed true, then perhaps things pertaining to our bodies this side of eternity are pretty settled after all.