By Benjamin Morse
I should open with a few disclaimers. One, when it comes to interviews, I am no Jeremy Paxman. I regretted that in my attempt to explain my take on gender, I probably spoke too much. Two, considering Diarmaid MacCulloch’s accomplishments as a historian, I was self-conscious of a postmodern “power dynamic”. And three, we were previously acquainted through a mutual friend when he offered me a quote for my children’s Old Testament. So I am predisposed to returning that favour.
Diarmaid MacCulloch (Photo Credit: Barry Jones)
Before sitting down to discuss his latest book, Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (Allen Lane), he gave me a tour of Campion Hall, the Jesuit institution that’s now home to international graduates in theology, ethics, humanities and ecology. Its art collection ranges from 17th Century paintings from the Cusco school to a North African Madonna and Child that Evelyn Waugh donated following his reporting on the Italo-Ethiopian War. A more savoury legacy to contemporary sensitivities than his satire Scoop, I noted.
I begin by asking about the process of covering over 3,000 years in a mere 497 pages. Christianity is anything but a monolithic phenomenon. Even focusing on Christian conceptions of sex, one must tame the hydra of all that entails: male versus female bodies, marriage and adultery, celibacy and monasticism, and of course the gay question. To convey a century or two via a limited number of figures or incidents must be frustrating when there are countless others that must be omitted. That is part of the craft, he shares. You have to establish two primary narratives, East and West, and the branches within each, then sustain those throughout. Contrary to the way many histories are written today, MacCulloch maintains a historian’s neutrality throughout.
I was relieved to read of his dissatisfaction with the elusive signifier “queer”.
That said, my gender-critical eyes were on the lookout for where fashionable ideas might be at odds with his closing plea to reconsider natural law in today’s conversations about sex and sexuality. I was relieved, I tell him, to read of his dissatisfaction with the elusive signifier “queer”. Although the idea of opposing dominant norms has an undeniable allure, “that still seems to leave unanswered too many questions about the assumptions of the observer about dominance, opposition and norms to make ‘queer’ especially useful for historical purposes” (p. 16). Indeed. Elsewhere he cautions against projecting today’s ideologies onto the past. When I mention the trend of identifying thousand-year-old skeletons as nonbinary and ramble on about how queer constructs depend on resentment, he finally gets a word in: “I have no time for theory.”
And yet there are moments in the book and in our interview when MacCulloch hovers closer to accepting the discourse around gender identity (e.g., that gender is fully distinguishable from biological sex) than I am. He suggests that eunuchs might represent a different gender, when I would emphasise the political and social motivations for castrating males, frequently on a non-voluntary basis. Surely the eunuchs of Justinian’s court shown accompanying Theodora in the San Vitale mosaics were there to avoid any heir-threatening shenanigans, not because, as some might claim today, they weren’t “cis”.
We discussed a great deal, including the special role single gay men like us can play in society and how, no surprise, the clitoris never seemed to enter the consciousness of the Church Fathers.
Tiptoeing into the trans issue, I raise LGB Christians’ concern about the impact gender theory is having on children and on same-sex attracted adults. It’s not long before I’m explaining autogynephilia and the problem of being expected to play along with someone’s sexual fetish. I barely give him a chance to answer my most burning question, “Is it loving to tell a child they were born in the wrong body?” because I’m riffing on how, remembering we are dust, we should avoid flying off into fantasies of infinity. MacCulloch after all wraps his closing chapter with a quote about the gospel being “flesh and bones”. Doesn’t that remind us to remain grounded in nature?
Cover of Lower than the Angels by Diarmaid MacCulloch
In contrast to fundamentalism, “the Church in both East and West has not generally tackled matters of sexual morality through biblical proof-texting, but through deploying natural law” (p. 495). If technology has fragmented us and the digital age has disembodied us via fillers and filters, then don’t we need to fortify our theological understanding of gender with an honest engagement with biology, psychology, and endocrinology? MacCulloch says yes, replying that the Bible “simply has no use as a central way for organising our thoughts about sex. And natural law has the capacity for being flexible and welcoming disciplines that were not there before.”
We discussed a great deal more, including the special role single gay men like us can play in society, whether LGB couples might look to Hosea for inspiration on fidelity, and how, no surprise, the clitoris never seemed to enter the consciousness of the Church Fathers. One particular gem in Lower than the Angels is the story of how the tele-evangelist Tammy Faye Bakker finally came around to the gays. Having spent her career denouncing us, she told Larry King Live in 2006 that it was LA’s Metropolitan Community Church who reached out to her in the depths of her disgrace.
I suggest to MacCulloch that this story might be a model for us in all our relations. Reach out to others and be prepared to understand their misery, no matter how much they might have openly hated us—or we might currently hate them. It took me a few years to clock liberal condescension towards Brexit voters and MAGA Republicans as an outstanding achievement in Othering. MacCulloch sees my point but surmises that it’s tough to engage with populist fear, so I change tack.
My plunge into activism in 2020 exposed me to narcissistic personality disorder like never before. Whether railing against white people or wishing death to all TERFs, a new generation of crusaders proved to be more fiery than any red-faced Baptist preacher I’d ever heard or caricatured. I did my head in trying to understand and stand up for them. With zero self-reflection and with personal accountability being the responsibility of the enemy alone, their rage was irredeemable. They were angry evangelicals to a T. In matters of race and gender, they were fundamentalists hellbent on shaming ideological fornicators with the original sin of their oppressor status.
MacCulloch hears me. “Yes, and that’s one of the reasons I cannot bear theory, because of the way it tries to force people into particular channels.” I might have dominated the conversation, but as a general rule I’d rather agree on general things like that than go for all-out victory over minutiae. I learned an immense amount from MacCulloch’s latest, and I like to think he learned a thing or two from me. A peck on the cheek, and I was back to London.
Lower Than The Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity by Diarmaid MacCulloch is available from Penguin Books.
About Benjamin Morse
This is Benjamin’s second article for LGB Christians, read his first, Paradise Calling: Inclusive Church and the Masquerade of Good Intentions
Benjamin Morse is a writer and illustrator with a rich background in theology and art. Inspired by his mother, one of the first women ordained in the American Episcopal Church, he pursued advanced studies in Biblical Interpretation at Oxford, Modern Art at the Courtauld Institute, and completed a PhD in theology from Glasgow University. His work includes The Bible Beautiful Series, designed to make biblical stories accessible to people of all ages, colours, and creeds. Through his writing, Morse advocates for LGB Christians to embrace their unique experiences and bring light to those facing loneliness and rejection, while fostering a relationship with God as part of the broader human family.