Odd to the World, Coherent to the Faith: A Comprehensive Critique of The Economist’s Account of Christian Sexual Ethics
The Economist’s article “How odd Christian beliefs about sex shape the world” (13 September 2024) attempts to diagnose Christianity’s sexual morality as an eccentric system whose historical influence stubbornly refuses to disappear. Yet in doing so it reveals a deeper conflict between secular anthropology and the Christian vision of the human person. The article publicly promoted its thesis in the terse claim: “Christianity’s sexual beliefs are odd. Still, they continue to shape our culture and politics today.” This juxtaposition—odd yet foundational—exposes the tension within the entire piece. If Christian sexual ethics are so strange, why did they build the civilisation in which The Economist now writes? And why do they continue to shape debates long after faith has declined? The following analysis expands the argument further, engaging not only the explicit claims but the assumptions beneath them.
Framing Christianity as Culturally Eccentric: The Secular Presumption
The article begins from a premise rarely examined by the secular press: that modern sexual anthropology—constructed within the last fifty years—provides the normative baseline for judging ancient or religious moral systems. From this standpoint, Christian teaching appears odd simply because it asserts that sexuality has purpose, meaning, direction, and moral gravity. Yet this apparent oddness dissolves once one recognises the philosophical coherence of Christian anthropology. The early Church understood the body as created good, wounded by sin, redeemed by Christ, and destined for resurrection. This vision grounds the Church’s insistence that sexual acts participate in truth or falsehood, love or exploitation. There is nothing arbitrary here; the moral framework flows from Christological and Trinitarian doctrine. The Economist’s framing reveals a secular metaphysic that no longer understands the very moral categories—dignity, fidelity, consent—upon which Western society rests.
Claim and Counterclaim: The Charge of Scriptural Ambiguity
The Economist summarised its own argument by stating: “Modern Christians often look to the Bible for clear answers to sexual questions. A new book … argues that such answers are impossible to find.” This claim is central to the article and thus deserves deeper scrutiny. It reflects an assumption that Christian moral reasoning is biblicist, treating Scripture as a standalone rulebook rather than as part of a living Tradition. Christian teaching has always interpreted Scripture through the apostolic succession, conciliar definitions, patristic reflection, natural law, and sacramental theology. When read in this fuller context, moral clarity emerges. The New Testament unequivocally condemns porneia, sexual exploitation, adultery, homosexual acts, and the misuse of the body. The Fathers consistently reinforce these teachings, and councils and magisterial documents elaborate them with philosophical depth. The Economist’s claim that “clear answers are impossible” is only plausible when the interpretive lens is limited to isolated verses rather than the Catholic fullness of Scripture-in-Tradition.
Accusations of Doctrinal Accretion: A Misunderstanding of Development
Perhaps the article’s most telling remark appears in its public promotion: “Any religion is as much almost random accretion as actual doctrine—and Christianity’s sexual obsessions are no different.” This language—“random accretion”—is not historical description but metaphysical assertion. It presumes that doctrine emerges accidentally, rather than through organic development guided by the Holy Spirit. It also ignores the rigorous philosophical and theological work that shaped moral teaching. Marian doctrines, which the article reportedly highlights as examples of intellectual eccentricity, arose to defend the Incarnation against heresy. The rise of Christian celibacy responded to Christ’s own teaching about eunuchs for the Kingdom, not to cultural quirk. Monogamy was embraced because the early Christians recognised in Genesis and Christ’s own words the divine pattern for human relationships. Nothing about this is accidental. Development is not drift; it is clarification.
Historical Transformation: Christianity’s Sexual Ethic Reconfigured the Pagan World
The Economist rightly notes Christianity’s civilisational impact, but fails to understand why that impact occurred. Classical antiquity normalised prostitution, concubinage, pederasty, infanticide, and the sexual availability of slaves. Ancient sexual morality was primarily a matter of status, property, and honour—not virtue, consent, or dignity. Christianity upended this entire order. Men were bound to the same moral standards as women; fathers were accountable for the protection of their children; the poor, widows, and slaves were given equal dignity before God. The sanctity of marriage, the obligations of fathers, and the protection of children were not cultural adjustments but doctrinal consequences. The Economist notices the effects while ignoring the theological engine that drove them: the Incarnation itself. The Son of God taking flesh dignified the flesh of all.
Patchwork or Pattern? Why the Charge of Moral Inconsistency Fails
A licensed summary of the article claims Christian sexual teaching forms a “patchwork.” This misunderstands the difference between disciplinary variation and doctrinal continuity. Whether priests may marry is a discipline; whether marriage is indissoluble is doctrine. Whether a culture emphasises virginity or fidelity more strongly is a matter of emphasis; whether chastity is a virtue is not. Across two millennia, Christianity has consistently taught that sexuality is ordered toward procreation, unity, and holiness; that abuses of sexuality harm the soul; and that marriage reflects the covenant between Christ and the Church. The supposed patchwork is unified by a single thread: the body is for love, not possession; for self-gift, not self-gratification.
The Persistence of Christian Categories in Secular Culture
The Economist acknowledges the central paradox of the modern West: Christian sexual beliefs continue to shape society even where the Christian faith has collapsed. This is perhaps the most important insight of the entire article. Secular culture takes for granted moral concepts—dignity, consent, equality, bodily integrity—that only make sense within a Christian framework. Pagan antiquity had no such categories. Modern materialism cannot justify them. Thus the West increasingly borrows Christian conclusions while rejecting Christian premises. The result is moral confusion: the language of human rights persists, but the metaphysical foundation is gone. The Economist recognises the persistence of Christian moral instincts but fails to see that these instincts cannot survive indefinitely without their doctrinal roots.
Secular Reductionism: Virtue Misread as Neurosis
Some reproductions of the article refer to Christian morality as “sexual hang-ups” or “obsessions.” Such language reveals a worldview that has lost the capacity to distinguish freedom from licence. Christianity warns against the disintegration of the person under the tyranny of desire; modernity rebrands this tyranny as liberation. The Economist interprets chastity as inhibition rather than virtue because it has adopted a therapeutic rather than moral anthropology. Yet in the Christian vision, purity is not repression but strength; fidelity is not constraint but love’s endurance; continence is not fear but freedom for holiness. Secular readers may not understand this, but they inherit the benefits of a civilisation built on it.
Modern Sexual Crisis: The Consequence of Abandoning Coherence
The Economist is correct that Christian teaching still shapes public debate. But it fails to diagnose why. The modern West is experiencing a crisis of identity, marriage, fertility, and sexual ethics precisely because it has severed moral intuition from theological truth. It wants the fruits of Christian morality without the tree that bore them. The narrative of “oddness” obscures the deeper truth: Christian ethics are not culturally anomalous but metaphysically integrated. They reflect the structure of the human person as created by God. The crisis of modernity is not that Christian morality is odd, but that secular anthropology is incoherent.
Conclusion: The Economist’s Mistake and the Church’s Mission
The Economist sees Christianity’s influence everywhere but understands it nowhere. It sees the moral order but not the revelation that produced it; the ethical structure but not the divine foundation; the civilisation but not the Christ who shaped it. To the secular mind, Christianity may appear odd. But to the Church, and to the saints, and to the faithful who still see reality as God made it, Christian teaching is the illumination of human nature. The West’s future does not lie in dismissing this inheritance as eccentricity, but in rediscovering it as truth.
¹ The Economist, social media promotion (13 September 2024).
² The Economist, official tweet summarising the article’s thesis.
³ The Economist, promotional line describing doctrine as “random accretion.”
⁴ BizNews licensed summary of The Economist article (2024).
⁵ 1 Corinthians 6:12–20; 1 Thessalonians 4:3–7; Augustine, Confessions VIII; Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew 5.
⁶ On the abolition of infanticide and sexual slavery in Christian antiquity: Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity; Kyle Harper, From Shame to Sin.
⁷ Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II–II, qq. 151–154.
⁸ Matthew 19:3–12; canonical and conciliar tradition across East and West.
⁹ The Economist promotional restatement of the article’s theme (2024).
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