Original episode:https://youtu.be/VeDKWf80Z3M?si=tgYchuRPSXpo_dEk · Timestamps are clickable — they seek the player in place
In this episode of Tyler Cowen's "Conversations with Tyler," historian Diarmaid MacCulloch — emeritus professor of the History of the Church at Oxford, author of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Thomas Cranmer: A Life, and now Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity — discusses his new book in a wide-ranging conversation covering two thousand years of Christianity's fraught relationship with gender, sex, and marriage.
MacCulloch's core historical argument is that Christianity's relationship with sex is far more complex and contradictory than either religious conservatives or secular critics acknowledge. Early Christianity contained a genuinely egalitarian impulse — most visibly in baptism replacing circumcision as the initiation rite (the former gender-neutral, the latter male-only), and in Paul's startling statement in 1 Corinthians 7:3 that "the husband's body belongs to his wife" equally as the wife's belongs to him. But the two thousand years that followed are largely a story of gradual retreat from that impulse.
The real rupture, MacCulloch argues, came in the twelfth century: the sacralization of the Eucharist required priestly purity, which required clerical celibacy — the first time in Christian history that all clergy were required to remain unmarried. The logic then cascades: if only laypeople have licit sex, marriage becomes foundational, and marriage requires the possibility of procreation. This twelfth-century invention is the root of what many mistake for timeless Christian teaching on sex. The Protestant Reformation then flipped it again: clerical marriage became mandatory, and the minister's family replaced the monk as the model of Christian life. MacCulloch also delivers a sharp critique of Foucault's history of sexuality, calling the claim that homosexuality was "invented" in 1869 "stupid and so French" — the historical record shows permanent equal-partner same-sex relationships long before the word existed. The conversation closes with MacCulloch's manifesto for the historical profession: "unsettling settled facts" to keep humanity sane.
Monogamy is not a product of Christian monotheism but of Greek and Roman civilization; Christianity adopted it to be credible to Greco-Roman society. [01:47-02:26] | Type: Historical fact | Note: Judaism permitted polygyny well into the 20th century in some communities; the correlation between monotheism and monogamy assumed in the opening question is historically weak.
Christianity's earliest genuine egalitarian innovation is the substitution of baptism for circumcision, plus Paul's extraordinary mutual body-ownership statement in 1 Corinthians 7:3 — almost entirely disregarded for two thousand years. [02:52-06:13] | Type: Historical fact | Note: MacCulloch calls this text "really extraordinary, and new" for the ancient world. Eastern Christianity spiritualized it away; Western canon law then redirected it toward procreation.
The twelfth century is the decisive rupture: Eucharistic sacralization → mandatory clerical celibacy (a first in Christian history) → marriage redefined as requiring procreative possibility. [09:56-11:14] | Type: Argument | Note: This is the historical root of Catholic teaching on contraception — a 12th-century institutional invention, not an ancient tradition.
Foucault's claim that homosexuality was "invented" in 1869 because the word was coined then is "stupid and so French" — permanent, equal-partner same-sex relationships existed in the ancient world long before any vocabulary existed for them. [20:57-21:43] | Type: Critique / historical fact | Note: MacCulloch holds Boswell and Bray also responsible for "special pleading" — their Catholic backgrounds distorted their conclusions about Christianity's historical tolerance of same-sex relations.
The New Testament's cool treatment of Jesus's family reflects the outcome of the early power struggle over who would lead the church — texts were written by the winners (Pauline discipleship tradition) over the dynastic family model (James, brother of the Lord). [27:13-28:06] | Type: Historical interpretation | Note: MacCulloch explicitly draws the parallel to Sunni vs. Shia Islam's dispute over succession authority.
The Protestant Reformation's deepest sexual revolution is not theological but institutional: mandatory clerical marriage replaced the celibate monk with the minister's family as the model of Christian life for everyone. [37:44-39:14] | Type: Argument | Note: Monasteries were nearly completely abolished; MacCulloch notes he is personally a product of this 500-year tradition as a minister's son.
Elizabeth I, not Henry VIII, is the true shaper of the English Reformation: her aesthetic tolerance, love of music, and acceptance of cathedral liturgy defined the distinctive character of Anglicanism. [43:22-44:04] | Type: Historical judgment | Note: She preserved cathedral choral tradition, the most elaborate form of Protestant worship — more elaborate even than Lutheran practice.
"Belonging without believing" (Denmark model: 80% baptized, 10% attend) may be a fully valid form of Christianity — religious belonging through practice rather than doctrinal assent, analogous to orthopraxy in Islam and Hinduism. [57:45-58:15] | Type: Observation | Note: MacCulloch is sanguine about the Church of England's role as an institution that exists to minister to those outside its walls.
The historian's professional purpose is "unsettling settled facts" to prevent lies from hardening into common sense and keep humanity sane. [01:00:27-01:01:06] | Type: Position statement | Note: MacCulloch cites Indian historian Jadunath Sarkar's 1937 dry remark that civil servants feared archival access would "unsettle many settled facts" — and calls this exactly the historian's job.
[04:07-04:13] vs [04:14-04:22]: MacCulloch affirms that early Christianity contained a genuine egalitarian innovation (baptism, Paul's body-mutuality text) but then says "the history of the last 2,000 years is a stealthy march away from that idea." If the egalitarian principle was never genuinely practiced, was it "real"? He leaves unresolved whether this is a genuine theological inheritance that was suppressed or a paper clause that never had institutional force.
[55:05-55:11] vs [55:20-55:26]: MacCulloch calls hell "a profoundly unconvincing doctrine" but acknowledges that removing the threat does reduce church attendance (Scotland). He doesn't explicitly reconcile the gap between theological falsity and social functionality — whether "unconvincing" is a theological claim, a historical observation, or both.
[22:03-22:28] vs [09:11-12:22]: MacCulloch dismisses the "cousin-marriage ban drove Western rise" hypothesis as "far too simple" while his own 12th-century argument follows the same logical structure — one institutional mechanism producing cascading long-run consequences. He doesn't explain the methodological difference that makes his account more reliable.
Most people, when they think about Christianity and sex, have one of two pictures in their heads. Religious conservatives see timeless natural law: marriage, family, procreation. Secular critics see a two-thousand-year project of sexual repression and gender hierarchy. Diarmaid MacCulloch's argument is that both pictures are anachronistic myths.
Start with what Christianity actually inherited. Judaism — Christianity's root — allowed polygyny (one man, multiple wives). Some Jewish communities practiced it within living memory. Monogamy didn't come from monotheism; it came from Greece and Rome, both polytheistic. Christianity adopted it not from scripture but from cultural strategy: you couldn't get the Greco-Roman world to listen to you if you practiced something that looked exotic to them.
Early Christianity then did something genuinely innovative: it replaced circumcision with baptism as the initiation rite. Circumcision is male-only; baptism anyone can receive. This quietly built gender equality into the foundation of the religion. And Paul — usually cast as the enemy of egalitarianism — wrote in 1 Corinthians 7:3 that not only does the wife's body belong to her husband, but "likewise the husband's body belongs to his wife." MacCulloch calls this "really extraordinary, and new" for the ancient world. Two thousand years of Christianity then spent their time quietly setting that text aside.
The twelfth century is where everything changed. The Western church was developing an increasingly elevated theology of the Eucharist — the bread and wine are literally transformed into Christ's body and blood by the act of a priest. Therefore, the priest must be as pure as possible. Purity rapidly slid into sexual purity. And so, for the first time in Christian history, all Western clergy were required to remain celibate — like monks. This had a strange logical consequence: the only people in Christian Europe now permitted to have licit sex were ordinary laypeople. So marriage suddenly became doctrinally important in a way it had never been, and it had to be potentially procreative. This is the historical origin of Catholic teaching against contraception — not ancient scripture, but a twelfth-century institutional cascade.
The Protestant Reformation then reversed it again, in a way MacCulloch — himself a minister's son — feels personally. Luther's most socially consequential act wasn't his theology; it was making clergy marry. Once clergy had wives and children, the minister's household became the template for how all Christians should live. The celibate monk, the organizing ideal of medieval Christianity, was simply abolished in most of Protestant Europe.
On Foucault: his claim that homosexuality was "invented" in 1869 just because the word was coined then is, MacCulloch says, "stupid and so French." Ancient records contain what look exactly like permanent, equal-partnership same-sex relationships — not the classical Greek model of an older tutor and a younger student (which is what Paul's obscure words arsenokoitai and malakoi probably describe), but people who built their lives together. The word was new in 1869. The reality was ancient.
His closing remark is his best: historians exist to unsettle settled facts. They don't cure cancer or go to the moon. What they do is stop lies from hardening into common sense — by going back to the sources, reading primary evidence, and showing people that what they thought was tradition is often invention, what they thought was nature is often policy.
[05:45-06:22] Paul's body-mutuality statement in 1 Corinthians 7:3. MacCulloch traces the logic: first the "expected" ancient statement (wife's body belongs to husband), then the reversal ("likewise the husband's body belongs to his wife"), then his judgment: "really extraordinary, and new." A clean model of close historical reading.
[09:11-11:06] The twelfth-century cascade. MacCulloch lays out the mechanism: Eucharist → priestly purity → clerical celibacy → only laypeople have licit sex → marriage must be procreative. The rarest thing in historical explanation: a clear causal chain that actually works.
[20:57-21:43] The Foucault demolition. "So stupid and so French" — then the immediate historical counter-evidence. Compact, surgical, satisfying.
[37:44-39:14] The Reformation's real sexual revolution: mandatory clerical marriage and the invention of the minister's family as Christian life template. MacCulloch brings in personal testimony — he is the product of this tradition.
[01:00:13-01:01:06] The "unsettling settled facts" manifesto. The Jadunath Sarkar anecdote is perfect: an imperial official lamenting that archival access might disturb settled conclusions is a gift to any historian. MacCulloch's response: "That is what historians do."
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