A key transformative act of the Reformation was Martin Luther's push for clergy to marry. This dethroned the celibate monk as the pinnacle of Christian devotion and elevated the married pastor and his family as the new, accessible model for all believers to emulate.
The historian's primary value is not merely recounting events but actively questioning and disrupting established narratives. This intellectual function is vital for protecting the public from misinformation and keeping society grounded in reality, preventing it from listening to lies.
The great cathedral-building boom was fueled by the theological innovation of Purgatory. This intermediate afterlife state, which could be shortened by prayers, created a massive market where nobles funded religious institutions in exchange for masses to save their souls, driving immense construction.
The adoption of baptism, a rite available to both men and women, over the male-only rite of circumcision from Judaism, represented a fundamental, built-in move toward gender equality at the very core of Christian initiation. This liturgical act affirmed equality from the beginning.
Contrary to popular belief, Christianity's monogamy isn't rooted in Judaism, which practiced polygyny. Instead, it was a strategic adoption of the prevailing Greco-Roman norm, a move crucial for the new religion to be taken seriously and spread within that society.
Once clergy were mandated to be celibate in the 12th century, the laity became the sole group sanctioned to practice sex. This logical division forced a theological shift, defining lay marriage primarily by its openness to procreation, a concept not central before this period.
Mandatory celibacy for Western clergy wasn't an early Christian rule. It arose in the 11th-12th centuries from a new theological emphasis on the Eucharist. The belief that priests physically handled Christ's body and blood created a powerful demand for their absolute sexual purity.
Diarmaid MacCulloch argues that foundational historians of sexuality, including Michel Foucault, John Boswell, and Alan Bray, produced unreliable work. He posits their perspectives were distorted by their Roman Catholic backgrounds, leading to flawed theories like the 19th-century "invention" of homosexuality.
Paul's statement that a husband's body belongs to his wife, just as hers belongs to him, was an extraordinary assertion of physical equality in marriage for its time. Most subsequent Christian theology, particularly in the East, actively spiritualized or ignored this radical concept.
The Gospels' sometimes negative depiction of Jesus's family isn't incidental; it reflects a political victory by non-familial disciples (like Paul) over the dynastic faction led by Jesus's brother, James. The texts were written by the winners, who naturally minimized the authority of their rivals.