“Janes has written a fascinating study of the artistic and ritual elaborations of male homoeroticism in the nineteenth century's Anglo-Catholicism. With his arguments, he redirects long-running debates. With his examples, he charms. Janes introduces readers to gallery after gallery of splendid images, to whole monuments of extravagant piety. There is much here to persuade—and much to delight.”
— Mark D. Jordan, Harvard University
“This is a landmark book: decisively drawing together histories of religion and male same-sex desire via the ecclesiastical closet and the specter of queer martyrdom. Janes’s analyses of figures from John Henry Newman to Derek Jarman are rich and original, and together convince us of the significance of religion as key point of reference in queer identity and identification.”
— Matt Cook, Birkbeck, University of London
“Essentially the story of the clash between the ‘muscular Christianity’ of the Protestant Church of England and the Anglo-Catholics who, while remaining in the Anglican fold, formed a counterculture of their own by turning to Catholic ritual, sacraments, and imagery.”
“In this book, Janes has a rich, rich subject, a gold mine, really…”
— Andrew Holleran, The Gay and Lesbian Review
“Janes develops a provocative defense of ‘ecclesiastical camp,’ arguing for a new history of what came to be known as ‘gay liberation’ that repositions the latter movement as a self-consciously secular alternative to the ‘ecclesiastical closet’ . . . his argument about the need to rethink the history of religion and sexuality is crucial.”
— Journal of British Studies
“In this provocative and fascinating book, Janes tackles the thorny issue of same-sex desire and countercultural sexuality, with a particular focus on Anglo-Catholicism from the time of the Oxford Movement. . . . This is a book which invites engagement with a complex tradition. Anglicans fixated on sexual identity might learn much from it.”
— Journal of Anglican Studies
“Janes’s impressive command of bibliography positions his work amidst literatures on British homosexuality, gay studies, and queer theory, arguing that post-gay-lib studies have denigrated creative dimensions of ‘closeted’ experience.
— Anglican and Episcopal History