Today’s post is Part 3 of a three-part series of articles on the history of Christianity and sex, based on the 2025 book, Lower Than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity, by Diarmaid McCulloch. Part 1 can be found by clicking here. Part 2 can be found by clicking here. This series is written by Bondings 2.0 contributor, James E. Porter.
I remember one day in elementary school when our teacher, an Ursuline nun, was telling us about the Holy Spirit, a boy in class asked, Is the Holy Spirit a boy or a girl? I don’t remember the nun’s exact answer, but it was something like, The Holy Spirit is neither a boy or a girl, male or female. The Holy Spirit is part of God, a divine being, one part of the Holy Trinity.
A nuanced but evasive answer. There were no follow-up questions at the time—but I can think of some now. Does that mean the Holy Spirit is a THIRD gender? Is the Holy Spirit binary—or asexual? What pronoun should we use in our papers—he, she, or it? (they not being a grammatical option at the time).
In his book Lower Than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity, Diarmaid MacCulloch addresses this very question. First, MacCulloch thinks it “absurd” to assign divine beings human genders on the basis of (presumed) sexual organs (19). His answer to the question “does not concern genitals but grammar” (19)—but grammar is important as it helps define reality.
In Hebrew scriptures, references to the Spirit of God were feminine. Early Christians, especially Jewish converts, saw the Holy Spirit as feminine. The word spirit is feminine in Hebrew, neuter in Greek, masculine in Latin. For the Holy Spirit, the Baltimore Catechism uses the pronoun He. From a grammatical standpoint, the Holy Spirit is a very complicated being.
The Church has a long history of admitting transgendered beings into its ranks, starting at the top of the hierarchy (the Holy Spirit, angels) and right on down to its acceptance, even celebration of cross-dressing saints, celibates, and castrati. MacCulloch tracks the presence of multiple genders through Church history, a history that belies the Church’s insistence on a strictly binary world of males and females only. On the contrary, Church history is full of queer bodies.
Queer Divine Beings
The queerest two bodies of all are the top two members of the Christian team: Jesus and Mary. Were they human or divine?
Jesus was human, but how human? — if he was conceived without sin (no sex act), born without original sin, spiritually pre-existed his human body, and resurrected bodily. The early Church debated these questions fiercely, and tried to settle them doctrinally 1,700 years ago at the Council of Nicaea (325 CE). The Nicene Creed confirms that Jesus had a dual nature: he was “consubstantial” with God the Father (homoousis) but also “incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man.”
Mary was human, yes, but with certain exceptions (virgin birth, heavenly assumption). The issues involving Mary’s complicated bodily status were “settled,” over many centuries, in the Catholic Church’s four Marian Dogmas. These are complicated doctrines, but they represent the Church’s effort to deal with the problems inherent in a strict body-spirit dualism. Jesus and Mary are two cases where the answer is more nuanced: BOTH.
MacCulloch even wonders about the gender of God. Although the Judaic and Christian traditions both represented God as male father, Genesis 1:26-27 says that God made humans in his own image and likeness: “Male and female he created them.” MacCulloch asks the obvious follow-up question: “Does that mean that God is likewise male and female?” (20). MacCulloch suggests that in “the process of manufacturing images of God,” the Judaic and Christian traditions made God in their own image—that is, in a way that reflects and confirms their own cultural attitudes about gender (20).
Angels pose another interesting example of gender complexity. In art they were sometimes represented as male warriors, other times as female, and in the late 4th century they “virtually all sprouted wings” (150). Ultimately, MacCulloch tells us, they “tiptoed” toward androgyny. In the 18th and 19th century angels “lurched toward outright femininity in appearance” (18-19).
MacCulloch’s research exposes the various ways the Church has struggled to understand gender identity. The foregoing questions are not merely about grammar or representations in art, but rather concern how language, art, and culture intersect to express cultural attitudes and preferences—which are then enforced through laws and doctrines.
Queer Human Beings
The circumcision controversy in the early Church provides an important example of conflicting cultural preferences regarding body alteration.
One of the first controversial issues for the Church in the 1st century was the question of penis circumcision: Male circumcision was a Jewish tradition established in law, but should Gentiles be required to follow it? At the Council of Jerusalem (c. 50 CE) Church leaders, including Paul, debated the point and decided that, no, circumcision was not necessary (Acts 15)—but it was not proscribed either. It was a matter of personal choice—our words, not St. Paul’s. What had been a law in the Mosaic tradition was deemed a custom not essential for the new faith. “Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation” (Galatians 6:15). That is to say, the Church decided that the shape of a man’s penis was not a doctrinal matter for the faith.
St. Wilgfortis
Other kinds of body alteration caused theological distress. Early theologians were uncomfortable about male castration—i.e., elective castration, done in the interest of promoting sexual celibacy. Yes, it reduced sexual desire for men (a good thing for many early Christians). But was it … cheating? The Council of Nicaea did not outlaw castration entirely, but the Council did specify that someone who elected castration could not be admitted to the clergy.
But what about the castrati? From the 16th century on the Church allowed, even encouraged the practice of childhood castration for male singers (between the ages of 6 and 9) as a way to preserve their soprano singing voices for choirs. The practice continued until the late 19th century. (The Sistine Chapel Choir had a castrato member until 1902.) Leah Micken raises the excellent question, “Why is it permissible to alter one’s genitals to sing in the Sistine Chapel Choir, as the castrati did for hundreds of years, but not okay to alter one’s genitals because one is transgender.” MacCulloch concludes that “the ascetic conquest of sex by whatever means … was a means of liberating constructions of gender from the traditional constraints of Graeco-Roman society … Did the ascetic life create a third gender?” (149).
There is a long tradition in Church history of women adopting male identities and garb in order to avoid marriage, or to work in trades, or to enlist in armies. Of course there is Joan of Arc—”queer icon, girl-power hero and patron saint of France … increasingly seen as a nonbinary person or transgender man.” Lesser known is St. Wilgefortis (Uncumber), the daughter of a king in medieval Portugal, who grew a beard in order to avoid a non-Christian marriage—and for that was crucified by her disapproving father (383). The website QSpirit lists 25 such Trans Saints (mostly female-to-male).
The Enlightenment era saw an emergence of changing attitudes toward sexual identity—MacCulloch calls it a “revolution” (378). “Choice was becoming democratized in society” (379), including choice of sexual identity. Medical theory began to reject the classical model, which was “conceived in terms of rigidly divided opposites” (influence of Aristotle no doubt), and shifted in the direction of a “continuum” of possibilities (380). MacCulloch notes the emergence of a third gender in European culture, the feminized man, and a fourth gender, “the mannish lesbian”—lesbian being a word that was invented in the 18th century, well before the use of the term homosexual (382). These developments challenged the Church’s binary gender assumptions.
Conclusion
How does MacCulloch’s journey into Church history help us today? —especially when the Church, or at least the US bishops, seem to be doubling down on anti-transgender initiatives.
MacCulloch’s history tells us two important things: First, queer bodies have always been part of Church history, indeed an integral part of its fundamental doctrines. Second, despite current intransigencies, the Church indeed can find enlightened understandings of the Gospel message as it applies to new situations and new cultural developments in human history.
Does Church teaching change?, Church historian John O’Malley, S.J., has asked. MacCulloch’s book answers that question with a resounding Yes! It has always done so—especially in regards to sexuality, gender, and marriage. We fervently pray it will do so again, and soon.
—James E. Porter, November 10, 2025
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‘Lower Than the Angels’: Queer Bodies in Church History – New Ways Ministry
ByEric Djirackor
Nov 10, 2025