Journalist and female rights campaigner Louise Perry may seem a surprising advocate for the historic value of Christian sexual morality. She was raised in an agnostic environment and had imbibed the same progressive outlook as most of her peers on sex and relationships.

However, the experience of working in a rape crisis centre began to change her perspective. In 2021 she published an unexpected bestseller, ‘The Case Against the Sexual Revolution’ - a spirited critique of the porn-saturated, hyper-sexualized, hookup culture of the modern world.

But Perry did not write the book from a Christian perspective. The arguments in her book for why the sexual revolution has been bad for women are all made from a purely socio-evolutionary perspective. Yet, almost to her own surprise, she found that what she was arguing for looks a lot like the historic Christian conception of monogamous marriage and chastity.

Why Sex Is Special

Since the publication of the book Perry has occupied more and more public stages. I was delighted to feature the story of why she changed her mind about the sexual revolution on a recent edition of The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God podcast.

Perry says:

“We have a deep intuitive feeling that sex is special for some reason. It may be that has evolved in us for some reason. Regardless, that’s how human beings feel about it. And if you go around trying to pretend otherwise you will generally make yourself miserable and other people miserable.

There are some women for whom they really can enjoy casual sex like that, who can ‘have sex like a man’ (that’s the expression used in Sex In The City). But the vast majority of women actually don’t feel like that. What they will normally end up feeling is deep instinctive feelings of discomfort and distress which are very difficult to articulate.”

Perry told me why simply focussing on freedom and consent in sexual relationships and unmooring them from the Christian commitment to lifelong monogamy on the part of both men and women has overall worked against women’s interests.

'“Freedom for the pike is death for the minnow. If you push the freedom lever some people will benefit from that. But the people who benefit from that are usually going to be those who are already in the strongest position to begin with and able to take advantage of these new opportunities that freedom brings with it.

I think the real losers from the sexual revolution in particular are poor women. There are some ways in which women are inherently more vulnerable than men in all times and places. We are smaller physically than men; we are more vulnerable to violence; we get pregnant, which is a joy and a wonder but alse bring with it all sorts of pain and vulnerability.

Poor women are particularly vulnerable because the sex industry has always been the terrible threat hanging above poor women’s heads. What we see in the sexual revolution is not an attempt to protect women from that fate, but a repackaging of it - ‘sex work is empowering’ - and all that liberal gloss over what is actually any ancient form of exploitation and oppression.”

The Christian Sexual Revolution

Louise Perry has come to realise that there have in fact been two sexual revolutions. The revolution of the 20th Century saw technology such as the pill break the link between sex and childbirth, while changing social mores did away with the requirement for monogamy and marriage.

However, for all its advantages in breaking some of the stigma and shame around women’s sexuality, Perry says that the consequent enormous rise of the porn industry, the commodification and de-personalized nature of sex, and the subsequent rise of the surrogacy industry has also come at a huge cost for women, men and children.

Alongside other feminists such as Mary Harrington she has increasingly been arguing that we need a return to the first sexual revolution - when Christians changed the Greco-Roman culture, insisting that sex was not just about recreation or the powerful exploiting the weak - but was something sacred that required mutual consent, love and faithfulness and was aimed at raising children within a family unit.

“The idea that a slave woman’s sexual violation is abhorrent - that’s an idea that comes from Christianity and was absolutely not universally recognised in the ancient world or many other cultures. I really do think that feminism comes out of Christianity and is completely reliant on Christian moral principles.”

Finding Christianity Attractive

Having become convinced that, while it’s not perfect, the Christian concept of chastity and monogamous marriage is overall the best way of managing sex and relationships that we’ve yet come up with… where does this leave Perry herself on the question of faith?

We touched on this question toward the end of our conversation when I appeared on Perry’s own Maiden, Mother, Matriarch podcast. Perry said:

“I find Christianity very, very compelling intellectually and emotionally, but I find the metaphysics difficult. I think it’s because we’ve had this sort of firebreak.

I think if I had been born some centuries ago I would have just believed. I don’t think I’m a natural atheist. I would have embraced the faith that I swam in at the time. But given that I wasn’t, it’s now quite hard to sign up for all of it. Not just the resurrection. There are so many supernatural claims within Christianity, which my disenchanted brain can’t quite manage.”

I went on to offer Perry some thoughts on how she might attempt to bridge the gap she feels between her ‘disenchanted brain’ and believing the supernatural claims of Christianity. Listen to our conversation toward the end of the episode to hear what I had to say in response.

Perry listened graciously and responded with some advice a Christian friend had recently given her:

“The good thing about Christianity is that it is comprehensive and internally coherent and it’s not like there’s really an alternative. Its not like the scientism of Dawkins offers a real alternative. It doesn’t tell us why were here or any of that. It doesn’t claim to. So you dive in face first and say ‘I’ll just accept it and stop worrying about it’.. as the [atheist bus campaign] poster advises us to! Why don’t you just believe in God and stop worrying about it… and enjoy your life!”

For now I’m grateful for Louise Perry’s voice in a disenchanted age, and I look forward to seeing where her intellectual and emotional journey with faith takes her next.

Get early access to EP 12: ‘The Christian Revolution: How the cross changed the world’

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I resume my conversation with Tom Holland alongside other historians and thinkers on the how early Christianity contributed to the end of child exposure, the rise of adoption, hospitals and healthcare, and a path towards the abolition of slavery.

Tom Holland also gets really personal about his journey of faith, sharing how an experience in a ruined church in Iraq left a profound impact on him.

P.S. Have you booked yet for our live Tom Holland event in London on Tue 5 March? You can do so here.

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