Over the last few days, I have answered about a couple of hundred questions on Curious Cat, on a host of different topics. I’ve particularly tried to answer questions on various issues that are taboo or difficult to discuss in many fora, especially on the subject of sex and race. I’ve also tried to answer a few unusual questions. Here are a few examples:

What were you impressions on the different parts of the US. Were some regions weirder than others? To which do you plan to eventually move? [Answer]

Why are you an Anglican? [Answer]

Why are you Anglican rather than Presbyterian? [Answer]

Is it okay to be bored by theology? This isn’t a wind-up, I just don’t know whether it’ll make me a better Christian. I try to follow the commandments as best I can. [Answer]

Following up on a previous question about baptism, I’m interested specifically in your formulation of the relationship between paedobaptism and faith. Does your position have affinities with the “presumptive regeneration” stream in Reformed thought? And how does your understanding of the (dis)continuity of the covenants shape your reflection on the practice of paedobaptism? [Answer]

Can you define patriarchy and if/how it differs from complementarianism? [Answer]

Much of the scientific literature around gender suggests that there are real differences between men and women when considered broadly, but that there is some diversity within the genders when considering particular individuals. You’ve used the analogy of “family resemblances” to describe how people of the same gender are both similar to each other but can also be different.

How do we understand the relationship between the particular differences between individuals of the same gender and the universal commands to men and women in the Bible? Does the Bible call men and women to strive towards a kind of archetypal man or women or are the Biblical commands (like the scientific literature) speaking in generalities as well? Ie. women shouldn’t be in leadership “in general” but there may be outliers and exceptions? Curious to hear your thoughts! [Answer]

You argue that “Men and women are different kinds of persons, the bearers of different symbolic and relational meaning.”

What symbolism and relationships are you referring to? (Between God and humanity? Between Christ and his church? Within humanity? Within marriage?)

What are some of the key characteristics for each of the sexes? (I’ve heard you mention things like forming, naming and combat for men and filling, giving life and communion for women.)

What grounds can be used to identify appropriate characteristics? [Answer]

Benefited from your labors on work and gender (e.g., Davenant lecture). You’ve mentioned Luce Irigaray before, and I’m wondering if any of her oeuvre would tie into your comments on creational gender differentiation in Gen 1-2 or the fragmentation seen in modern economic approaches (such as her work in je, tu, nois and her writing against some streams of capitalist feminism, if I read her correctly)? Apologies for the longform question! [Answer]

How does the Evangelical church decide what is appropriate male and female behavior? For example, I can do construction type work, and I mow the lawn and know more about what’s under the hood of vehicles than a guy might. Do evangelicals relegate women’s roles to that of Suzy Homemaker? Seems to me that a woman who isn’t quiet and in the kitchen making homemade bread would be excluded from evangelical community. [Answer]

Alastair, do you agree that procreation is a fundamental purpose of marriage, and secondarily, that there is something lacking in marriages without children? [Answer]

A recent Duke dissertation complains of the Christian “tendency to sexualize women’s bodies far more than men’s bodies.” This is a common complaint; I feel there is something underneath it that I cannot cut down to. What is that thing? =) [Answer]

Why do gay people ‘look’ gay? (Serious question I’ve always had, reminded of it by the recent face scanning article) [Answer]

Is onanism a sin? [Answer]

What do you think about the concept of “rape culture”? On the one hand, there have been numerous scandals in the church of sexual assault allegations being hushed up and handled inappropriately, but at the same time the language of rape culture comes out of an unchristian ethical system where consent is the only thing that matters. How can we humbly accept outside criticism of the church without unconsciously adopting unbiblical categories? [Answer]

Is the manosphere / red pill view of male-female religions correct? Do women crave control from their men? [Answer]

Why are a substantial minority of women attracted to psychopaths and men of violence? What is the theological purpose of this? For context, I know someone who use to deal with Ian Huntley and he apparently would receive hundreds of letters a year begging for sex / maintaining that he was innocent. [Answer]

Is there an alternative to capitalism that Christians can support? [Answer]

Any thoughts on what governments, institutions, and individuals should do about the (probable) coming mass displacement of workers via automation? [Answer]

What advice would you give to an orthodox Christian man aged 30 who is (almost) exclusively same-sex attracted, who has stayed completely ‘in the closet’ about this fact and remained celibate, but who is increasingly finding the isolation and the lack of any sense of meaningful vocation despair-inducing? Should such a man disclose these attractions to his family and friends? And is it wrong for a man in this situation to seek marriage (with a woman, obviously) and fatherhood, despite the lack of instinctive physical attraction to women? [Answer]

If God wants men to remain virgins, why would he make male virginity so unattractive to women? [Answer]

Thanks for the long answer on virginity. But what about men who are too ugly or idiosyncratic to find a wife? [Answer]

Would, uh, would you mind giving the single guys some advice–practical or other–about “how to master oneself and be chaste”? [Answer]

Is ethnic nationalism incompatible with Christianity? [Answer]

Are jews culture annihilators? [Answer]

Do you accept the HBD premise that certain racial groups are genetically more intelligent than others? [Answer]

Is there any sort of Christian position against race-mixing? I would really like my grandchildren to be white, and I would regret if my son marries his Chinese girlfriend, as they will look nothing like me, or any of our ancestors for thousands of years. [Answer]

Is western civilisation a product of the white race? [Answer]

But why isn’t race decisive in forming western civilisation? Of course, I wouldn’t regard myself as simply a deracinated white man: I am English. But it is obviously the case that, for instance, you and I are white. An Italian is white, a German is white, a Frenchman is white. The white race is the soil out of which western civilisation sprang. [Answer]

Follow-up to those questions here, here, and here.

What do you make of Chesterton’s contention in chapter 5 of Orthodoxy that suicide is “the ultimate and absolute evil”? [Answer]

Is lifting a Christian thing? [Answer]

I have a huge backlog of questions that I’ll probably never get to answer, but ask any question you’d like answered here!