Diarmaid MacCulloch on Christianity, Sex, and Unsettling Settled Facts | Conversation with Tyler

Tyler considers Diarmaid MacCulloch one of those rare historians whose entire body of work rewards reading. This work includes his award-winning Cranmer biography, his sweeping histories of Christianity and the Reformation, and his latest on sex and the church, which demonstrates what MacCulloch calls the historian's true vocation: unsettling settled facts to keep humanity sane.

Tyler and Diarmaid explore whether monotheism correlates with monogamy, Christianity's early instinct towards egalitarianism, what the Eucharistic revolution reveals about the cathedral building boom, the role of Mary in Christianity and Islam, where Michel Foucault went wrong on sexuality, the significance of the clerical family replacing the celibate monk, why Elizabeth I—not Henry VIII—mattered most for the English Reformation, why English Renaissance music began so brilliantly but then needed to start importing Germans, whether Christianity needs hell to survive, what MacCulloch plans to do next, and more.

Recorded October 29th, 2025

This episode was made possible through the support of the John Templeton Foundation.

Transcript and links: https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/diarmaid-macculloch/

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Timestamps:
00:00:00 - The egalitarian tendency in Christianity
00:14:50 - Christianity’s position against homosexuality
00:18:37 - What Foucault got wrong about Christianity
00:22:31 - Women in Christianity and Islam
00:28:25 - The medieval church building boom
00:35:18 - The Reformation’s uneven spread and Luther’s marriage mandate
00:39:57 - The English Reformation under the Tudors
00:44:08 - The music of the English Renaissance
00:50:43 - The sustainability of Christianity
00:58:24 - The historian’s mission to unsettle settled facts

Image Credit: Barry Jones