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Lower than the Angels

A History of Sex and Christianity
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Brief Description
A major assessment of Christianity's encounters with questions of sex, gender, and the family over the ages. 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... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
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A major assessment of Christianity's encounters with questions of sex, gender, and the family over the ages.

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.

Lower than the Angels by Oxford's Emeritus Professor of the History of the Church seeks to calm fears and encourage understanding through telling a 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.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780141990958

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 18 September 2025

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Penguin Books Ltd

Audience: General / adult, Tertiary education, Professional and scholarly

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 31.0mm

Width: 129.0mm

Height: 196.0mm

Weight: 499g

Pages: 688

About the Author

Diarmaid MacCulloch is Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University. His Thomas Cranmer (1996) won the Whitbread Biography Prize, the James Tait Black Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize; Reformation- Europe's House Divided 1490-1700 (2004) won the Wolfson Prize and the British Academy Prize. A History of Christianity (2010), which was adapted into a six-part BBC television series, was awarded the Cundill and Hessel-Tiltman Prizes. He was knighted in 2012 and was awarded the Norton Medlicott Medal by the Historical Association in 2022.

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