ABSTRACT
If Christianity were ‘with the grain’ of social nature there would be no difficulty about eliciting its approach to the manifest problems of regulating sexuality. It would recognise sexuality as an absolutely central aspect of social life, both in its capacity to bind together in solidarity and violently to divide, and it would set out a responsible and realistic ethic for its optimum control and regulation. When anthropologists study a tribe or a cult they treat sexuality, social reproduction, kinship obligations and lineages as topics of central importance. After all, sex – and gender, its cultural analogue – is constitutive of personal identity and infiltrates every aspect of the individual’s response to life. It also determines the limits of one’s life trajectory, most dramatically in the case of the exchange of women which has been a central feature of many societies. The fact that the Apostles operated in a society where only men could be candidates for an intimate circle of discipleship is actually used in some circles to defend an exclusively male priesthood. The participation of women is clearly present in the Gospels but has not historically been given the prominence it deserves on account of exactly the same estimate of what are the appropriate roles of men and women.
