1. Foundation Society and Culture Seminar Activities: Religion
Group 2: Sex, gender and religion
1. Reread sections ‘ Religion in classical sociological theory’ and ‘Christianity, gender and sexuality’
(pages 693‐4), the ways in which various religions have represented women are outlined and early
feminist attempts to challenge this discussed. Recent debates around the position of both women
and homosexuals within the Church of England are also considered. You need to think about these
issues and to think about how some of the ideas of the classical theorists set out in the section
‘Theories of religion’ can help to further your thinking.
2. This extract comes from Alan Aldridge. He links concerns about women and homosexuals within
religious groups by seeing both as manifestations of a concern about the control of sexuality.
A feature of religions, obvious yet insufficiently studied, is their central concern with sex and gender.
Among the classical sociologists only Max Weber … was fully alert to the significance of the erotic.
He argued that hostility toward sexuality is an essential feature of religion. It is not confined to
Christianity, but present in all the great religions of the world. This is because sexuality is the
strongest irrational force in human life. Religions are bound to seek to control it. In particular, they
aim to tie sexual expression to reproduction. Non‐procreative sexual acts are strongly discouraged in
Roman Catholicism, and regarded by most Muslims and conservatively minded Jews as forbidden.
Hence the abhorrence of homosexuality found in most religions, the Roman Catholic opposition to
artificial methods of birth control and the Hebrew Scriptures’ curse on the sin of Onan – which was
in fact coitus interruptus, not masturbation as commonly thought.
Religious control of sexuality takes many forms, ranging from ascetic renunciation, as in vows of
celibacy made by religious virtuosi, through strictly confining sexuality to reproduction in the
monogamous marriage, to the apparently unbridled but actually carefully controlled and ritualized
sexual expression found among the Rajneeshees.
Women’s sexuality is typically presented as a threat to men. As McGuire … puts it, in creation myths
‘women’s presumed characteristics of sexual allure, curiosity, gullibility, and insatiable desires are
often blamed for both the problems of humankind and for women’s inferior role’. So in the Jewish
and Christian traditions it is Eve’s seductive influence which leads Adam to disobey God’s command
not to eat the apple from the tree of knowledge. Evil temptresses are counterbalanced by women of
supreme virtue, such the Virgin Mary. Arguably, the former should not and the latter cannot be
imitated as role‐models.
(Alan Aldridge, Religion in the Contemporary World: A Sociological Introduction,
Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000, pp. 198–9)
1. How have religions separated sexual activity into ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ forms?

2. Foundation Society and Culture Seminar Activities: Religion
2. In what ways could clergy who are either women and/or homosexual weaken the role of
collective ceremonial in reaffirming group solidarity?
3. In what ways could clergy who are either women and/or homosexual strengthen the role
of collective ceremonial in reaffirming group solidarity?