 Classics scholar Kyle Harper references the historian Peter Brown as showing sexuality (especially female sexuality) was at the heart of the early clash over Christianity's place in the world.Views on sexuality in the early church were diverse and fiercely debated within its various communities; these doctrinal debates took place within the boundaries of the ideas in Paul's letters and in the context of an often persecuted minority seeking to define itself from the world around it.In his letters, Paul often attempted to find a middle way among these disputes, which included people who saw the gospel as liberating them from all moral boundaries, and those who took very strict moral stances.