Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Lower Than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity

Diarmaid MacCulloch's new book, Lower Than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity , is published by Viking Viking.

The author has a command of historical detail that would be intimidating if his writing weren’t so genial and witty.

He writes that there are multiple Christian theologies of sex, many of which have been downright contradictions of each other.

For several of those centuries , most Christian priests were married, as was the custom of many officials in the religions of the ancient Mediterranean .

Polygyny , or multiple wives living with a single husband, was also common in wealthier families.

It wasn’t until the Second Lateran Council in 1139 that celibacy became mandatory for Catholic priests.

There was also a “masturbation panic,” which he regards as “yet another symptom of the age of individual choice, for few pursuits are more shaped by individual decision than masturbation.

MacCulloch also sees the explosion of evangelism as recognizably part of the same newly forming world of choice that produced such phenomena as the emergence of homosexual identity and the drive for personal privacy.