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The "pressing of sexual imagery on to the world" means western culture is hated in the rest of the world and leads to jihadists wanting to "kill people in the name of

purifying the world", Diarmaid MacCulloch said. The gay Oxford theological historian and presenter of the BBC's Sex and the Church said the hatred of western culture reaches far

and wide and can be seen in Boko Haram in Africa, in the Middle East and in Vladimir Putin's Russia. He said: "It seems to me that it is about sex. "A unique feature of

western culture is that it loves talking about sex, it obsesses about sex, it presses sexual imagery on to the world. "Other cultures think about sex a lot but they do not talk about it

and they find it intensely embarrassing and frustrating that the West talks about it." The enhanced role of women in society is another reason Islamic State comrades hate western

culture, the professor added. He said: "The anger that other cultures feel towards western sexual openness, it is so much of the murderous anger which we are seeing in Boko Haram,

Islamic State and other revivalist movements of the 20th century. "Islam, in particular, is the religion of angry young men who are terrified by the way in which women's roles have

changed in the last 50 years." Talking at the Hay Literary Festival in Wales this week, he said Christianity's attitudes towards sex had undergone a big change in the past two to

300 years. The West's "obsessions with sex" has come out of western Christianity and in particular agricultural advances in Britain and the Netherlands which freed people from

fear of starvation in the 17th century, he told the audience. He said: "The 1690s were when so many momentous changes happened. "Not the permissive 1960s." The professor, who

is a Church of England deacon, has spoken before of not being able to proceed further within the Church because he is gay and said the West's Christian churches were still in a state

of disarray over sexual issues - in contrast to the rest of the West's pride in openly talking about sex. He slammed the Church of England has being "so stupid, so

self-defeating" when it put a "quadruple lock" on performing same-sex marriages in churches. Professor MacCulloch added: "One of the greatest pastoral opportunities you

can have is a wedding day. "You can do so much on a wedding day. and here was the church stopping that possibility. "As a loyal Anglican I feel really angry about it."