Conversations with Tyler · Mercatus Center at George Mason University

Diarmaid MacCulloch on Christianity, Sex, and Unsettling Settled Facts

January 21, 2026·1 hr·4 clips

MacCulloch identifies a passage in 1 Corinthians 7 where Paul states that a husband's body belongs to his wife — a statement MacCulloch calls 'really extraordinary' and completely new in the ancient world.

Monotheism does not settle marriage. MacCulloch starts by pushing back on the premise, noting that Judaism kept polygyny much longer than the easy version of the story suggests. The distinction matters. He separates polygyny from broader polygamy because the social arrangement changes the historical question. Tyler tightens the frame, and the conversation moves from broad correlation into particular traditions, where assumptions about sex, family, and authority start to wobble. Mary becomes the pressure point. The discussion turns to Islam's honor for Jesus and Mary, then to Christianity's later elevation of Mary on thin New Testament foundations. That contrast lands awkwardly, in a useful way. MacCulloch argues that the Gospels do not give a uniformly warm picture of Jesus' family relations, especially when Jesus redirects kinship toward followers. For him, that detail has church consequences. The New Testament reflects the winners in a succession fight over whether the church would be led by Jesus' family or by other claimants. James sits in that tension. So does Paul of Tarsus, whose authority in the excerpt is set against the dynastic possibility represented by the brother of the Lord. The reformers come back as readers. MacCulloch says sixteenth-century Protestants returned to the Bible and sometimes seemed pleased to find a less Marian scriptural record. The close turns archival. Near the end, he says he has seen 6,000, with 8,000 still to go, treating each as a fresh story. That method holds the excerpt together. Inherited narratives get tested by exact wording, institutional winners, and patient reading.

As heard by us

McCulloch finds centuries of editorial work behind Christianity's settled assumptions about sex and family.

McCulloch's approach is quiet demolition. Polygyny, he notes, survived in Jewish communities within living memory -- a detail that loosens the assumption that monotheism and monogamy were always natural companions.

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Why you'd press play

You thought monotheism and monogamy were natural partners. MacCulloch explains why that history is complicated.

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