A Plain Anabaptist Story: The Hutterites
ulmer457718.substack.com
ulmer457718.substack.com
It's not mentioned in the article, but an interesting event in the early history was Anabaptists taking over the city of Munster and forming a sort of commune, later having the city sieged upon [2].
It's a little lengthy, but one of my favorite episodes of a history podcast and definitely worth the listen.
[1] https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-48-prophe...
Their website: https://www.bruderhof.com
One of the oldest ideas in Western statecraft is that you can't have a country with religious diversity. So when a town became protestant all the catholics had to leave and vice versa. But in the Netherlands the leaders devised a sort of "diversity is strength" policy tolerating all kinds of weirdos as long as they paid taxes and didn't disturb the peace. This is how Jews ended up in Amsterdam.
However the real crazies who did not want to function in society ended up in America.
I mean, I can think of a few non-Christian examples, but most of what I'm aware of originate from OT+NT bible followers.
For example, Buddhists do think you advance by giving up all attachments, which includes not only sex, but all forms of love for individuals - the Buddha left his wife, child, and society to seek enlightenment, and that is their ideal. Buddhist monks are celibate. Hinduism can be very austere too.
Christianity is actually a pretty sex positive religion - the Catholic Church requires sex as part of a sacrament (a marriage is only valid if consummate) and there are similar rules in the other big churches.
The anti-sex cults are pretty small. They are not all nutcases either - Shakers seem OK AFAIK, for example.
I think what you are aware of in terms of extreme groups reflects the culture you live in. There are Hindu nationalists, there are violent Buddhist movements, etc.
The biggest and most violent extremist movements of the last 100 years or so have been non-religious ideologies, often anti-religious ones.
Christianity considers any sexual activity other than heterosexual sex for procreation within marriage to be sinful, and female sexuality to be inherently corrupting because "it was Eve who tempted Adam in the Garden of Eden."
The Christian dogma around sex and sexuality has led to thousands of years of sexual assaults and violence against women, persecution of gay and transgender people, suppression of access to medical care (particularly in poor countries,) suppression of any useful sexual education beyond "abstinence only", censorship of art and media and countless other crimes and horrors. That isn't "sex positive" in any commonly understood sense of the term.
Mostly true, except the "for procreation only" part. That's specific to Cathlicism.
Protestant doctrine tends to be "anything goes, so long as it's in marriage", with the implication that marriage is heterosexual.
> and female sexuality to be inherently corrupting because "it was Eve who tempted Adam in the Garden of Eden."
I don't know of any non-sectarian modern Christian group that think like this. I don't think it was even current thought at the time of the Reformation.
> The Christian dogma
You are, once again, talking about Catholicism. No other denomination calls their teaching "dogma", because only Catholicism claims to be infallible. And for that reason, any serious error in their dogma is nearly impossible to excuse without some serious mental gymnastics. Other denominations can go to the Bible and point to a passage showing some attitude was wrong, change their doctrine and move on. But not Catholicism.
I also heard these things in sociology class at school, but they are outdated and partially incorrect. And it's a very anachronistic interpretation of history.
> That isn't "sex positive" in any commonly understood sense of the term.
No indeed. Modern Christians aren't either. But that's not what the GP was referring to. What you got was women actually being consulted on who they should marry, getting basic human rights and so on. Which, at the time of the first century A.C., was rather revolutionary. A lot of these were weakened over time by Catholic (and also some Protestant) culture, but treating people like people is very much a big message in the Bible.
Another big message in the Bible is restraint, so of course Christianity can never be fully "sex positive" in the modern anything-goes sense of the term.
The important thing is that sex is per se an intrinsically good thing.