So much for the “frozen chosen….”
A British historian is researching sexual misbehavior among Presbyterians in Ireland and North America in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Her research “asks what Presbyterian women and men in past centuries got up under the sheets (or, in many cases outside in fields, barns, up against a tree or on the roadside).” She writes:
As a historian of Presbyterian sexuality, I want to assure you all that these Presbyterian folk far from deserve this prudish reputation. A scroll through the records of the Presbyterian church courts brings to light a whole range of naughty goings-on. Stolen trysts in fields and forests; heavy petting and dry-humping on the roadside; misbehaving ministers riding drunk on horseback, seducing the wives of their church members; runaway wives and bigamous husbands; and enough baby-mama drama to rival any soap opera abound in the records.
According to the Westminster Confession, one of the purposes of marriage is the “preventing of Uncleanness.” “Unmarried (and married) persons who engaged in illicit sexual activity were labelled as fornicators and subjected to discipline by Presbyterian church courts.” Discipline generally consisted of a “public rebuke,” in which the offender acknowledged his transgression before the whole congregation and without which the sacraments were withheld. Public shaming served to uphold communal standards of behavior. “Historians of Presbyterianism, in both Ulster and Scotland, have noted that the discipline of sexual misdemeanours accounted for a large proportion of church business.”
A social media feed recounts some of her findings:
Perhaps a historian will next examine licentious Lutherans.
Lutheran Guilt 