“Even more bizarrely, Christianity held up lifelong celibacy as an even more exalted state of life”
(Link): Why so many Christians won’t back down on gay marriage
Excerpts:
- By Pascal Emmanuel Gobry
- Christianity’s opposition to homosexuality is not the product of some dusty medieval exegete poring over obscure Old Testament verses.
- From the beginning, what set apart the new and strange sect called Christians from the rest of their culture was their strange sexual ethic.
- They refused polygamy. They refused the sexual exploitation of slaves by their owners.
- They refused prostitution, premarital sex, divorce, abortion, the exposure of infants, contraception — and homosexual acts.
- As the British philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe noted, in this Christianity was a great equalizing force: Because of the fact of pregnancy, most premodern cultures enforce sexual restraint on women. Where Christianity’s bizarreness lay is that it insisted on the same restraint on the part of men — whether gay or straight.
- Christians held a bizarrely exalted view of (lifelong, monogamous, fertile, heterosexual) marriage as reflecting the image of God himself, but, even more bizarrely, held up lifelong celibacy as an even more exalted state of life.
- From the start, alongside the refusal to worship the Roman emperor as a god and Christians’ supererogatory care for the poor, this was what set Christians apart, and goes a long way toward explaining why Pagan writers could scorn Christianity as a religion of “slaves and women.”
~Otherwise known as the good old days, when many Christians not only defended virginity and celibacy but actually practiced the concepts.
Good luck finding many examples of either one in today’s “virgin shaming” and “celibate shaming” Christian and Non Christian cultures.
Related posts:
(Link): The Christian and Non Christian Phenomenon of Virgin Shaming and Celibate Shaming
