The author examines how Christianity changed the ethics of sexual behavior from shame to sin, and shows how the roots of modern sexuality are grounded in an ancient religious revolution. The picture of Greco-Roman sexual culture documented by Harper from his study of ancient literature, art, and jurisprudence is – as you can imagine – complex. Yet some broad-brush characteristics emerge: roman girls of status were expected to marry shortly after puberty; men, however, generally didn’t marry until their late 20s or early 30s (middle age in the age spans of the time); men who violated married women suffered severe penalties socially – and in many cases, legally; the male sexual drive was expected to be freely indulged within available social parameters (unmarried women, concubines, male and female slaves); married men had fewer social or legal penalties than women for extramarital sexual liaisons (with their concubines or slaves). Sex trafficking, prostitution, and pederasty was rampant – to which society turned a blind eye; and the ancient world had no categories for sexual identity or sexual preference –freeborn males routinely had intercourse with people of either sex – unmarried women and both female or male slaves (usually boys ca 15 – 19 years of age).

This is the sexual climate in which Christianity took root, and Harper shows how in the space of several centuries the Church moved from a scorned cult to cultural hegemony in matters of sex and marriage. Hence his title “From Shame to Sin.” Here he means social shame, not spiritual shame. His book demonstrates that what the pagan world sought to do to the human sexual drive using social and political pressure, the Church accomplished by pastoral care.

From Shame to Sin then tackles some New Testament passages as well as the writings of the Church Fathers, that address sexual behaviors showing how “the novelty of Christian language mirrored the transformative logic of a distinctive sexual morality”. Though several aspects of Christian sexual morality are addressed, the author capitalizes on homoeroticism, showing how from “Paul onward, Christian sexual ideology collapsed all forms of same-sex contact, whether pederastic or companionate, into one category”. From Shame to Sin is a scholarly read, looking through the lens of literature, to see the social and sexual conversion of latter Rome.