Sex and the Church in the Long Eighteenth Century: Religion, Enlightenment and the Sexual Revolution

The Long Eighteenth Century was the Age of Revolutions, including the first sexual revolution. In this era, more tolerant sexual attitudes prevailed and there was a marked increase in the discussion of morality, extra-marital sex, pornography and same-sex relationships in both print and visual culture media. William Gibson and Joanne Begiato here consider the ways in which the Church of England dealt with sex and sexuality in this period. Despite the backdrop of an increasingly secularising society, religion continued to play a key role in politics, family life and wider society and the eighteenth-century Church was still therefore a considerable force, especially in questions of morality. This book integrates themes of gender and sexuality into a broader understanding of the Church of England in the eighteenth century. It shows that, rather than distancing itself from sex through diminishing guidance, regulation and punishment, the Church not only focussed attention on it, but its attitudes to sex and sexuality were at the core of English society’s reactions to the first sexual revolution.