From hot priests to hot rabbis, is faith the new forbidden fruit?

First, we all lost it for Fleabag’s “hot priest”. Now, our collective crush is “hot rabbi” from Nobody Wants This. The men of God are the sideshow, though. What’s really hot, according to the No. 1 Netflix romcom in Australia everyone is currently bingeing, is restraint.

In Nobody Wants This, Kristen Bell plays the unlucky-in-love Joanne whose dating dramas provide endless material for her sex-positive podcast (“always be the hot one” is her tip for surviving threesomes). Sparks fly between her and hot rabbi Noah, played by The O.C.‘s Adam Brody. Noah is fresh out of a relationship, but Joanne isn’t a believer. Inconveniently, as with Fleabag’s hot priest, where Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s protagonist fell deeply in love with a celibate man of the cloth, hot rabbi is all in on the God thing. Nevertheless, opposites attract.

The “hot priest” from the TV show Fleabag, played by Andrew Scott, and the “hot rabbi” from Nobody Wants This, played by Adam Brody. Credit: Illustration by Monique Westermann

Makes sense, really. Modern love guru and psychotherapist Esther Perel says eros is all about the forbidden, the unknown, the new, and dangerous. Sure, Perel was talking about how monogamous marriage – aka “mating in captivity” – meant death for sexual desire. But if it’s a human thing to want what we can’t have, then even God-botherers might be forbidden fruit for the irreligious.

We find sexy the things, and people, in short supply. In a landscape awash with dating apps where commitment-free sex can feel as polite, obligatory and impersonal as a handshake, maybe Joanne and hit rabbi’s G-rated icecream and sidewalk kiss is what it takes to bring back sexy.

It’s also possible that the believing-in-God bit might, all things considered, make for a better dating experience, overall, for women. In theory, it should put a moratorium on sex outside of marriage, or at least act as a handbrake on too-hasty sex, leaving lots of time for charged but chaste dates, and multiple opportunities to demonstrate that he’s really into you, not just trying to pressure you for sex. Delaying sex for as long as humanly possible might, at least potentially, restore the thrill of the romantic chase.

Or you’d think that, anyway. I’m only halfway through Nobody Wants This and – spoiler alert – Joanne and Noah have sex way too soon. There’s barely any romantic tension. The show could’ve strung us along much longer, like the Emmy award-winning limited series Shogun, where doomed love across the Protestant-Catholic divide proved surprisingly steamy.

In Shogun, Hot Prod John Blackthorne (Hot Protestant just doesn’t have the same ring) burned for Catholic convert Mariko, whispering the Lord’s Prayer to her when he overheard her praying in Latin. If you’re an atheist, that undoubtedly sounds lame. But note the vaguely heretical vibe plus the fact that believers are lusting humans too. If Perel is right, Blackthorne and Mariko’s impromptu prayer session shows that there’s a fine line between being spiritual and getting physical.

What does all this mean for young ones looking for love, or at least the chance to knock knees more often than not?

The New York Times recently reported that Gen Z men were increasingly more religious and church-going than their female peers. In the US, anyway. Maybe it’s the Jordan Peterson effect: young men are more drawn to the structure, rules and order of organised religion. Meanwhile, women today are more on the “spiritual but not religious” side of things; that is, they are more likely to be out of love with the institutional church. God only knows what’s going on here, but this is a reversal of the expected order of things: historically, women have been considered more religious than men.

There’s another factor at play, too. Recent Gallup research suggests that the sexes aren’t only polarising religiously, but politically, as well: young men are increasingly trad and right-leaning, young women more liberal and left-leaning, with #MeToo apparently the catalyst. This isn’t just a North American phenomenon, either, according to the Financial Times, but a global one.

If guys are getting godlier – and admittedly, that’s a big if – then it really matters what kind of god they’re taking their cues from. A man who, nudged along by his religion, is pushed to sacrifice his self-interest – including any hint of sexual entitlement – may wind up being the most eligible bachelor in today’s sexual wasteland. Hot Priest, Hot Rabbi, and Hot Prod, then, might have the edge over Hot Agnostic any day. Chances are that the former three get that they can’t always get some – especially if they’re Catholic – and that changes the dynamic between the sexes.

But human yearning runs even deeper than sexual desire. Humans are “desiring creatures”, as one philosopher-theologian puts it, whose ultimate love object is God. Ernest Becker, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, said the death of God left us a God gap we ached to fill with “apocalyptic romance”. Becker wasn’t a believer, but he got how a romantic partner could come to bear the burden of all our hopes.

In other words, even the likes of Hot Rabbi are only human. That’s the devil in the detail, in the words of church father and reformed cad Saint Augustine. “You have made us for yourself, O Lord,” Augustine pants, “and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” There’s a spiritual itch, that is, that no human, no matter how hot, can scratch.

Justine Toh is senior fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity.