Lower than the Angels
A History of Sex and Christianity
-
- USD 15.99
-
- USD 15.99
Descripción editorial
‘A 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) … fabulous’ Observer
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? 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, bringing liberation for some and fury and fear for others.
This book by Oxford's Emeritus Professor of the History of the Church seeks to calm fears and encourage understanding by telling the 3000-year-long tale of Christians encountering sex, gender and the family, with noises off from their sacred texts. It beckons us to pay attention to the sheer glorious complexity and contradictions in the history of Christianity, an epic of ordinary and extraordinary Christians trying to make sense of themselves and of humanity’s deepest desires, fears and hopes.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian MacCulloch (Christianity) notes in this sweeping study of Christian sexuality that the teachings of Jesus contain numerous heterodox statements regarding sex and gender. These include his famous call for mercy toward women adulterers, but also a less well-known observation concerning eunuchs—that some had "been so from birth" and some had "made themselves for the sake of the kingdom of heaven." These words, a reference to the biblical notion that angels are "genderless beings in heaven," inspired some early Christian men to "imitate angels... by surgically dispensing with their genitals." Once Christianity became a state religion, church administrators attempted to steer such "countercultural" depictions of angels as "positioned between gender identities" in a more conservative direction by associating them with the gendered notions of virginity in women and celibacy in men. But the concept retained a radical edge—MacCulloch notes that by the 12th century the practice of chastity had become so extreme that the church had to clarify it "would expect marriages to produce children," a claim so controversial that some medieval theologians refused to "admit" it. As Christianity became "a world religion," it grew more authoritarian and less intimate, McCulloch concludes, with radical expressions of sexuality happening despite the church, instead of within it. Both scholarly rigorous and amiably open to the variations of human experience, this enthralls.
