The Presbyterian Church in Ireland has had a turbulent time facing up to ongoing evolutions in social norms. Its firm opposition to the prospect of equal marriage was not that surprising, but the declaration in 2018 that same-sex couples were also ineligible for communicant membership and baptism for their children has been more contentious. Several prominent elders and LGBT allies have resigned over the issue, but to no avail: while sister churches like Scotland’s move toward liberalisation, Ireland’s Presbyterian Church leadership remains stubbornly out of step. Leanne Calvert’s comprehensively researched and enticingly written history of Life, love and family in Presbyterian Ulster does not reach these more recent fractures, but its reconstruction of lives that could be both Pious and promiscuous is a revelation of how difficult contemporary questions of sex, faith and community have a far longer pedigree.

The book covers Ulster’s long eighteenth century, from the Battle of the Boyne to the dawn of the entwined industrial and urban revolutions that so fundamentally reshaped the province. Calvert’s main sources are church court records, and the kirk session in particular. This was the lowest of the Presbyterian governing bodies, which meant it dealt with the highest number of cases. Those who were accused of transgressing religious or moral norms were brought before the (all-male) elders to explain themselves, with evidence also heard from complainants, witnesses and other members of the session, all of which was handwritten by a clerk into a minute book. Historians of the quotidian have long understood that such materials are valuable but methodologically tricky; they give an unrivalled glimpse into lives that would otherwise go unrecorded but must be understood as constructed narratives that were mediated by an unwanted lens of authority. Calvert is fully aware of these perils yet opportunities, noting how the church court records ‘reveal not only how Presbyterians “told stories” but also the wider social and cultural values that they drew upon to understand the world around them’ (xxv). Personal archives from five families from the middling ranks of Ulster are also used to supplement the twenty-three minute books at the heart of the analysis.

Pious and promiscuous is smartly structured by the lifecycle of its subjects, beginning with pregnancy and paternity disputes and ending with widowhood, and journeying in between through growing up, courtship, getting wed and married life. Chapters start and finish with one individual or couple, which anchors the approach in an appreciation for the complexities of different experiences. One particularly vivid vignette is the brawling reverend of the First Monaghan congregation, Robert Darragh. He faced allegations of drinking too much, berating his flock, and beating his wife; thankfully, he was eventually deposed from office, but the suffering Anne Darragh did not live long enough to see his punishment. Another section, focusing broadly on courtship rituals, details one lothario’s ‘hairy treasures’ (81): fourteen locks that were gifted to him by at least ten different women, all kept and precisely dated (thus evidencing some overlaps in wooing). These fascinating and often beautifully told stories will capture the imagination of public audiences.

There are also important contributions made to a historiography that has usually been more concerned with doctrine than desire. Calvert demonstrates how women were not passive victims but rather active in the process of Presbyterian regulation, whether that meant actively covering up extra marital indiscretions, declining to name their illegitimate children’s fathers and refusing to engage in church discipline altogether. That said, the well-known sexual double standard is in evidence too, whether in the inequality apparent when women wished to break a union or the intrusive investigations that meant many decided not to report sexual assault and rape. Certain facets of sexual practices do fall outside of the author’s coverage, however, most obviously female prostitution and queer experiences. Part of the Irish mythos was that these forms of ‘deviance’ were rare in comparison to what the degenerate ‘Anglo-Saxons’ were getting up to across the water (and sometimes in their colony, too). But Calvert’s focus on the rural does mean that the freedom that larger towns may have given for Presbyterian sexual nonconformity is less easy to uncover. At the other end of the scale, the focus on quasi-legal records also means that the moments that relationships broke down are more visible in the book than when they continued happily.

Pious and promiscuous ultimately sets out to demonstrate that ‘the Irish family is, and always has been, marked by rich diversity’ (159). In practice, Calvert argues, this means that neither the stereotypes of piety nor promiscuity adequately capture the complex reality of Presbyterian practice. Neither was the Presbyterian experience unique; its diversity, she concludes, means there were commonalities between the faiths as well. In reconstructing Ulster’s church court records as ‘an archive of family life’ (157), then – with its multitude of passionate, heartbreaking and often messy possibilities – this deeply resonant book is a major contribution to the historical reassessment of Irish intimacies of sex, love and relationships.