The Protestant Revolution transformed people's experiences of sex, love, family life and the relationship between men and women.
In the second episode, Tristram uncovers how Protestantism replaced the Catholic veneration of celibacy with a devotion to family life. The programme shows how Luther became the loving husband and father, and how the first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury gave us our modern idea of marriage.
The programme traces the contradictory legacy of Protestantism – on the one hand sexual equality, while, on the other, virulent patriarchy. Viewers meet the austere Puritan preacher who met his soul mate, and the programme also investigates radical, free-loving 17th-century sects as well as discovering how straight-laced Victorian mothers became the sexually liberated women of today.
In gay and lesbian churches, and in conservative Christian communities today, we can see the continuing impact of Protestantism. Gay bishops, gay marriages and abortions dominate debate, and now, ironically, threaten the world's largest Protestant communion, the Anglican Church.
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