This public lecture is now available as: MP3 (please listen to the file below).

Most religions have sexual politics, and Christianity is no exception. Many of the internal Christian struggles have some component of sexual politics, such as celibacy of the clergy, access of women to priesthood, and the question of homosexuality. At stake in these conflicts is the basic organisation of society, and the establishment and control of the reproductive unit (man and woman). This basic organisation, the household structure, constituted the fundamental means of social organisation in feudalism as well as in capitalism in Western Europe. 

This paper discusses the challenge to the household structure posed by the radical Christian movement, the Moravian Brethren in 18th Century Germany, which is the focus of a larger research project.  The case reveals the challenges that religious dissent posed to the feudal household, which would have facilitated the restructuring of the household into a new formation, not unlike the re-shaping of indigenous communities under the various European missions in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. A better understanding of the systemic development of gender roles advances our understanding of Christianity’s role in European society and culture.

Dr Christina Petterson obtained a PhD from Macquarie University in 2011. Her research focuses on the role of Protestant Christianity in the formation of modern Europe and its colonial enterprises with special focus on gender, race and class. She is the author of Acts of Empire: Acts of the Apostles and Imperial Ideology (2011, in press with CCLM Press, Taiwan) and has published articles in the areas of cultural studies, postcolonial studies and biblical studies. Dr Petterson has taught at universities in Denmark, Norway and Greenland, and will shortly be taking up a position as a postdoctoral research fellow at Humboldt University in Berlin.

To view the flyer for this event please see: Religious Dissent, Sexuality and Social Control in Europe