Vile Bodies are bodies that have been vilified by Christian thought,
often with catastrophic consequences. The bodies of women, Jews,
Muslims, slaves, Blacks, LGBT people, children, wives have all been
harmed by negative Christian teaching about bodies. This book sidesteps
the endless controversies in the churches about sexuality and gender and
goes deeper – unmasking instead the abusive theology that ensures these
controversies and their harmful outcomes persist.
Drawing extensively from scripture, and from two millennia of church
history and theology, Vile Bodies slowly exposes how churches have
preferred doctrine to compassion, orthodoxy to justice, and legalism to
love, culminating in the global abuse crises in the churches that have
largely destroyed their moral credibility.
Adrian Thatcher is Honorary Professor in
the Department of Religion and Theology, University of Exeter, U.K.
Author of 16 books and editor or co-editor of another five, he is
managing editor of Modern Believing, a Trustee of Modern Church, and an
Anglican.