After the one-hour introduction on 27^th August, this is reminder that the short course will be held from 2.00 to 4.00pm on both Tuesday 27^th (session 1) and Thursday 29^th October (session 2) in the St John’s room of the Cornerstone Community Centre on Palmeira Square, Hove.

These four hours will follow on seamlessly from that introductory hour.  We’ll look at just one OT myth, the Creation Narratives, before leaving the Bible almost completely and launching into the entire history of the Church, the centuries of its domination and control of the faithful, the extreme views of some of the Church Fathers, and how occasional courageous individuals, many of them women, developed their own “theologies of sex”. We’ll look also at men like Abbots Aelred of Rievaulx and Bernard of Clairvaux and try to get behind their same-sex relationships.

In time, Europe changed. The year 1450 is a handy date after which these tentative and lonely voices became louder and more assertive in movements like Humanism, the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment, not forgetting the creative environment of Michelangelo’s Florence. A new order came into existence and with it a new human being. New sciences were born. And the Church came in for a hammering.

By the Victorian Age the churches were in retreat. How did they react? Where are they today in sexual matters?

If you intend to come to these 2-hour sessions, please contact me directly at specialevents@brightonandhoveu3a.org. Replying with a simple YES guarantees you a seat. No confirmation will be sent; I simply need to know how many chairs to lay out – and if a couple could come early and help with that, I’d be most grateful. This will be limited to 40 – so first come first served. You will be sent a 2-page summary of what we covered in that introductory hour.

And just one more request: Please leave the front row free for those who hear and see less well or who are in wheelchairs.