Lower Than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity

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. (Apr.)