Sexual Heresies

Joy Dixon is Associate Professor of History at the University of British Columbia and the author of Divine Feminine: Theosophy and Feminism in England (2001).

"This beautifully researched and carefully documented book offers a fascinating analysis of the ways in which religion, of various sorts and broadly defined (from the occult to evangelical Christianity), interacts with debates on sexuality. Joy Dixon brings together scholarship on the history of sexuality and gender, psychology secularization, and religion to create an original and important piece of work." —Jane Shaw, University of Oxford "Dixon's study offers a treasure trove of insights into the complex relationship between science and religion in modern debates about sex. This rich and nuanced history is a must read for anyone interested in how sexuality took shape in Britain." —Heike Bauer, Birkbeck, University of London "Joy Dixon's Sexual Heresies is a tour de force in its sophisticated charting of the complicated and contradictory reverberations between the sexual and the spiritual in early twentieth century Britain. Its cast of intriguing actors - sex reformers, liberalising clergymen, mystic theosophists, esoteric experimenters, and secular radicals – illustrate the intimate dialogue between faith and desire when harnessed to modernising impulses in sexology, psychology, and theology. In creatively braiding together often siloed histories of gender, sexuality, and religion, Dixon illuminates the diverse intellectual and experiential resources deployed by men and women before the Second World War in fashioning the modern, gendered, sexual, and increasingly secularising self. Sexual Heresies will reset the terms of the debate about the relationship between modern sex and heterodox religion for future scholars." —Alana Harris, King's College London

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Religion and the New Science of Sex2. Psychology, Sexuality, and Liberal Modernism3. Gender, Sex, and the Body in Modern Esotericism4. Sin, Salvation, and Sexuality5. Secularism, Anticlericalism, and SexualityConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex