‘I thought of the church as a friend and it slapped me in the face’: historian Diarmaid MacCulloch on the Church of England’s hypocrisy

The award-winning author, ecclesiastical historian and church-goer on his incendiary new book about sex and the church, challenging centuries of self-serving homophobia, fakery and abuse. He is primed for the backlash…Sitting in the sun in the back garden of his modern terraced house, Sir Diarmaid MacCulloch is explaining to me, with half a smile, his imminent plans to shake the foundations of the Church of England. Appropriately enough, we are in Jericho, just outside the centre of Oxfor