OVERSTATED DICHOTOMY

Wendy Doniger’s review of John Boswell’s “Same Sex Unions in Premodern Europe” (July 31) captures the arguments and even the feel of the book. But she overstates a small part that goes to the core of Boswell’s case. She says: “For the early church created a violent dichotomy between heterosexual marriage, in which sexuality was tolerated for the sake of children, and the priesthood, in which asceticism was idealized and sexuality entirely rejected.”

In fact, first millennium Christianity did not make such a “violent dichotomy” between sex and church, and that is one of Boswell’s most important lines of evidence for same-sex unions. While early Christian thinkers considered celibacy and abstinence the highest state of spiritual devotion not only for those who practiced asceticism but for people getting married, in actual practice, early Christianity was ambivalent, contradictory and unsettled about sex and relationships throughout the first millennium.

* Local priests were allowed to marry. Not until the second half of the millennium, were bishops not allowed to marry.

* Marriage was considered a state function. The Christian “blessing” of even a heterosexual marriage was not performed regularly but done as a favor.

* In this context, the Church performed “blessings” on any number of relationships: marriage, same-sex relationships, households, business partnerships, adoptions, etc.

* Priests, however, were forbidden to have same-sex relationships “blessed” (an indication that same-sex blessings may have involved sexual relationships).

Boswell argues that in a context of such sexual pluralism within Christianity and the culture at large, same-sex unions appear plausible. The “violent dichotomy” between the Church and sexuality occurred in the second millennium when Christianity institutionalized heterosexual marriage as a sacrament, prohibited sexuality among clergy, marginalized blessing ceremonies and campaigned against women and homosexuality.

JAMES CONN, Minister, SANTA MONICA

John Boswell’s consistent use of the terms Christian and Christianity where he really means Catholic or religious is misleading. It is a documented fact that the origins of the Catholic faith include the incorporation of rituals and practices common to the pagan religions of the time. This would explain why Boswell’s research discovered what seemed to be acceptance of homosexual relationships and the encouragement of chastity within marriage. Both behaviors find their roots in pagan worship and neither can be supported by Scripture. The Bible is very clear in placing sexuality within the confines of a heterosexual marriage. “Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually impure” (Hebrews 13:4 NIV). Serious study into early church history will reveal that a body of true Christians existed in the shadow of the Catholic church whose activities were characterized by a close adherence to undefiled Biblical teachings. Boswell’s “Christians” were most likely not true Christians by definition, since they obviously did not understand nor follow the teachings of the New Testament.

CATHERINE KNAB, LANCASTER