Volume 35, Number 8 · May 12, 1988
The Politics of Paradise
By Elaine H. Pagels
The attitudes and values we associate with Christian tradition, particularly attitudes toward sexual matters, evolved in Western culture at a specific time—during the first four centuries of the Common Era, when the Christian movement, which had begun as a defiant sect, transformed itself into the religion of the Roman Empire. These attitudes had not previously existed in the Christian form they eventually took and they represented a departure from both pagan practices and Jewish tradition. Many Christians of the first four centuries CE were proud of their superiority to non-Christians in practicing sexual restraint. They rejected polygamy and often divorce as well, which Jewish tradition allowed; and they repudiated extramarital sexual practices, including prostitution and homosexuality, that were commonly accepted among their pagan contemporaries. Christians who practiced celibacy believed, too, that their sexual restraint freed them from the burdens of marriage and family life.
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