Lower than the Angels

A History of Sex and Christianity

Diarmaid MacCulloch author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd

Publishing:18th Sep '25

£18.99

This title is due to be published on 18th September, and will be despatched as soon as possible.

This paperback is available in another edition too:

Lower than the Angels cover

This non-fiction paperback, "Lower than the Angels" from Diarmaid MacCulloch, is due to be published 18th September 2025 by Penguin Books Ltd.

Magisterial ... In Lower than the Angels, Diarmaid MacCulloch offers a history of sex and Christianity that is both confronting and reassuring in its detail and complexity, taking biblical scholarship and theological development seriously at the same time as insisting on the historian’s independence. A thrilling read -- Financial Times * Lucy Winkett *
A compelling and encyclopedic survey of how Christianity makes sense of sexual desire. MacCulloch is an ideal guide in tracing this story... [he] writes with such liveliness and energy that the reader hardly notices the length of the book or the comprehensiveness of its field of reference … His narrative is dispassionate, sometimes quietly and wittily deflationary, careful and generous, its own moral compass neither intrusive nor indecipherable…. He is judicious and convincing -- Rowan Williams * Sunday Telegraph *
Incendiary ... a comprehensive and richly entertaining history of the ways in which, for 3,000 years, the church has tied itself in knots over sex (and love and marriage). [It] offers a fabulous catalogue of the babel of voices in the Bible and the ways that they have been interpreted, invariably for political purposes, down the centuries -- Tim Adams * Observer *
Lower Than The Angels [is] an intellectual history of Christian ideas about sex [and] an argument for more flexibility and responsiveness in Christian proclamations on gender and sexuality. Across three thousand years we have the pleasure of MacCulloch’s erudite company as he explains how Christian thinkers have met the problem of desire. [He] emphasizes the contingency and ingenuity of Christian responses to the difficulties of human sexuality and family life [and] show[s] that so much of what many fundamentalist Christians today understand as ancient, deep-rooted practices are, in fact, relatively shallow ... an epic tale -- Erin Maglaque * New York Review of Books *

ISBN: 9780141990958

Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 35mm

Weight: 500g

688 pages