Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine.

What were Jesus's views on sex? Why did so many Christians choose a celibate life?

And has the church ever been tolerant of homosexuality?

These are some of the questions explored by Professor Dermott McCulloch in his new book,

Lower than the Angels, a sweeping 2,000-year history of sex and Christianity, which Dermott expects will annoy a great many people.

In today's episode, Rob Atar caught up with him to find out why,

and he began by asking Dermott whether he had any trepidation about writing a book on such a potentially contentious topic.

I have written on contentious topics before, like the history of all Christianity everywhere.

You're going to annoy someone. And the great thing is to annoy several different groups at

the same time. So I think there will be people, I can guarantee,

there will be certain groups or outlooks who will find this book very difficult. One will be

conservative evangelical Protestants. They won't like the fact that I don't agree with them,

that there is a single infallible book called the Word of God, the Bible.

They won't like it.

Conservative Roman Catholics won't like it because they believe that there is a continuous

authoritative tradition about all matters which is in the property of the church.

It's magisterium as the technical jargon phrase.

They won't like it because I don't agree with that.

But a third group, I think, may be angry with the book.

And that is a set of people all over the place who have been damaged by Christianity,

who often hate it.

And they will be cross because they will feel I've not put the boot in enough to Christianity.

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