The gay deacon

I find it very difficult to tolerate the wilful stupidity of religious leaders, or worse still, the hypocrisy of Church leaders who are gay, but dare not admit it," says Diarmaid MacCulloch, professor of the history of the Church at the University of Oxford.

The openly gay historian, a speaker at ZeeJLF 2018, also hinting at clergy sex abuse by priests "who need to be punished", offers a remedy: end the compulsory celibacy demanded of Roman Catholic priests. "It twists so many men by making artificial demands on denying their sexuality," says the Doctor of Divinity (DD) degree holder from University of Oxford, also an author of a couple of books on ecclesiastical history. His 'History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years' won the 2010 Cundill Prize, a prize given to best history writing in English, and was adapted by BBC Four into a four-part series in 2009.

MacCulloch has always publicly called out the church for its homophobic stance – the very reason he refuses to be ordained as a priest, despite serving the Church of England as a deacon. Even the Bible, he says, discourages homosexuality. "But we just have to accept that often, in many things, the Bible is wrong. That is because it's not a book, it's a library – in Greek, its name 'Biblia' is in the plural: 'books' and you wouldn't expect all the books to say the same thing," he says, adding, "There are broader themes [in it] to listen out for: love, acceptance, mercy and creativity."

It's radical views as these that have continued to attract trolls, many of whom have assured him that his 'arrogance' towards the church and Bible will surely land him a spot in hell. "They used to write in green ink and misspell my name on the envelope. Nowadays, they have to know how to spell the name in order to troll me online."

MacCulloch uses the Bible to silence his detractors, quoting Jesus, 'Ye shall know them by their fruits', the 'fruits' being the results of letting gay people form relationships. "Gay relationships are the same as everyone else's, and include a great deal of love, laughter, self-sacrifice and joy. Why stand in the way of that?"

Knighted in January 2012 for his services to scholarship, MacCulloch is known to write on characters and episodes of 16th-century Tudor history that continue to rivet history buffs and literati.

Previous books 'Thomas Cranmer: A Life', won him the 1996 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and 'The Reformation: A History', won him the 2003 Wolfson History Prize as well as the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award.

He now has an upcoming book on Thomas Cromwell – the advocate who helped King Henry VIII dissolve his marriage with Queen Catherine so he could marry Anne Boleyn. And as with his previous books, he has made peace with dead ends in the plot line that despite copious amounts of research remain unanswered. "I would love to know how this humble brewer's son [Cromwell] from a tiny Thames-side village, turned himself into one of the best-educated men in England, spoke multiple languages, and aroused the envy of all the English nobility".

And sometimes, he chances upon juicy details after the book is published. As in the case of 'The Reformation...' where he discovered that Cromwell and the third great figure of England's early Protestant Reformation, Anne Boleyn, loathed each other, much later. "She had destroyed his beloved master Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. The hatred was discreet till Cromwell decided to destroy her in 1536," he says, elaborating that when Boleyn died, Cranmer had a price to pay: some of his best estates passed to Cromwell, who he still tried to defend to Henry VIII when the king executed the minister."

MacCulloch, who enjoys writing biographies, maintains a fixed schedule: writing from half past eight in the morning to seven at night till dinner, with a siesta in-between. A two-mile run through the English countryside before breakfast invigorates him enough to tackle occasional hiccups in plot lines. "The cattle, the horses, the deer and the changing weather bring objectivity..." If an idea flashes in the middle of the night, it is penned down that very moment.

Author or teacher, MacCulloch is unable choose the role he prefers the most. "I love sitting at my desk in my study, surrounded by books, and digesting the experience into my own prose. But it's also a pleasure to see the excitement in the eyes of a student audience at a lecture."