Christianity and the Invention of the Sexual Revolution in Britain, 1963–1967
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8958989 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sam Brewitt-Taylor (0000-0002-6156-186X, Lincoln College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 60 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 519-546 |
| Publication date | 2016-06-03 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Historical Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-246X • E-ISSN: 1469-5103 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0018246x1600011x |
| OpenAlex | W2604432852 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 28 |
This article argues that the myth of ‘the sexual revolution’, increasingly accepted in Britain's national media between 1963 and 1967, played a central role in causing the real transformation of British sexual culture that occurred from the late 1960s. It also argues that Christian agency played an important role in the framing and the legitimation of this myth. Until 1963, British debates about sexual morality had been dominated by Christian arguments. In 1963 and 1964, the existence of a rapid, widespread, inexorable, secular, and antinomian transformation of sexual mores was prominently proclaimed by Christian commentators, who thought it an inevitable consequence of ‘secularization’, whereas secular commentators usually objected that this narrative was insufficiently evidenced. After its initial discussion in the mainstream media in 1965, the ‘sexual revolution’ narrative was increasingly articulated without explicit reference to Christianity, but it usually retained theologically inspired structural features inherited from earlier religious discussions. In the late 1960s, elite perceptions of inexorable sexual liberalization decisively legitimated rapid decensorship, wider access to the pill, and the reimagination of ‘normal’ sexual behaviour, thereby importantly shaping real popular change. In this way, Christian clergymen made a significant, early, unwitting, and hitherto unacknowledged contribution to Britain's sexual revolution
Art · Christianity · Human sexuality · Literature · Mainstream · Mores · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Sexual revolution · Sociology · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Gender Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies
A heavenly poise
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Youth Sexuality, Responsibility, and the Opening of the Brook Advisory Centres in London and Birmingham in the 1960s
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Postsecular Sex? Secularisation and Religious Change in the History of Sexuality in Britain
Baby-Boomers to ‘Beanstalkers’
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Ecclesiastical McCarthyism
Victorian Britain, 1831–1963
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Sex, Religion, and the Single Woman c.1950-75
Reassessing 'the Generation Gap
The Politics of School Sex Education Policy in England and Wales from the 1940s to the 1960s
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The “K-Bomb”
The Religion of Englishness
The Unholy Mrs Knight' and the BBC
Affluence’ and the Left in Britain, c .1958–1974
Love and Courtship in Mid-Twentieth-Century England
Sexual scripts
Syncopated Sex
The Persistence of Rites of Passage
The Pornography of Permissiveness
The English Sexual Revolution
Adultery in Post-war England
Sexuality in the Postwar West
Against Epochalism
The discourse of American civil society
Structuring the sexual revolution
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,44 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2022 (6) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |