8 /10 1 Votes
Language English Originally published 1955 Subject Homosexuality | 4/5 Goodreads ISBN 978-0208014924 Country United Kingdom | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Media type Print (Hardcover and Paperback) Pages 181 (1986 Shoe String edition) Similar Christianity - Social Toleranc, Is the homosexual my neigh, The Church and the H, Encyclopedia of Homosexuality, Same‑Sex Unions in Premoder | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition is a 1955 book about homosexuality by Derrick Sherwin Bailey. It is a pioneering study that almost all modern historical research on gay people in the Christian west has depended upon.
Scholarly reception
Medieval historian John Boswell writes that Bailey's book, "suffers from an emphasis on negative sanctions which gives a wholly misleading picture of medieval practice, is limited primarily to data regarding France and Britain, and has been superseded even in its major focus, biblical analysis." Boswell also states, however, that it remained the best work on its subject in print.
Gay scholar John Lauritsen describes Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition as the work of a Christian apologist who pleads for greater tolerance while "striving to exonerate the Church from her historic culpability in fostering intolerance".