Search Results (18)

This paper identifies and critiques the way conceptions of fidelity and reproduction shape contemporary approaches to doctrine. As an interdisciplinary work, I draw tools from adaptation studies, queer theory, and theatrical practice. This allows me to demonstrate how, in recent debates over doctrinal expansion or inclusion, both liberal and conservative approaches operate within the logics of the fidelity urge and reproductive futurism. The result of these commitments is an emphasis on handing on the past to the future. The work of Paleo-Orthodox theologian Thomas Oden, and the recent debates over marriage rites in the Uniting Church in Australia serve as illustrations. In suggesting an alternative, I turn again to the theatrical practices of adaptation to resource new conceptions of fidelity (and, in turn, novelty and transgression) that resist a dichotomy between a stable, unified origin and dependent, derivative copies. In their stead, I connect the bisexual epistemology of Marcella Althaus-Reid to the task of doctrine. Such a move brings the present into focus, resisting the allure of reproduction through a doctrinal agenda of confusion, effusiveness, and obscenity. Doctrine, outside of the fidelity urge, is suggested to be an act of non-competitive adaptation, whose horizon is not bound by the past or beholden to the future but is directed to the needs of the present. Full article

The ecclesiastical discourse in Britian over homosexuality has included a significant focus on the narratives and experience of LGBTQ+ people. However, the relationship between and respective authority given to human experience and the Bible within church debates remains a matter of contention, especially among evangelicals committed to ‘biblicism’. This study considers how even those unconvinced about experience as a ‘source’ of theology might still engage with queer narratives as an invitation for personal and cultural reflexivity and how the plausibility of theological claims might be tested whilst still prioritising Scripture. I examine testimony through a three-stage study. First, I conduct a narrative analysis of audiovisual recordings of my own prior practice of testimony as a celibate gay evangelical. Second, I offer up new, autoethnographic, thick descriptions of three pivotal crisis moments. Third, I theologically reflect upon these in relation to Romans 12.1–2 and the meta-theme of identity formation. I argue that LGBTQ+ testimonies have the potential to illuminate and thus transform heteronormative cultural patterns within the church; I argue that Christian identity formation must include the central integration of God’s identification of a person in Christ; and I attempt to model how Christians might cautiously discern God’s activity within a practice of testimony. Full article

This article seeks to rethink martyrdom, suffering, and resurrection from the perspective of queer theologies within the Latin American context and in dialogue with the praxis of the first faith communities who witnessed Jesus’ martyrdom. Starting from the queer body of Jesus—which incorporates in its praxis an ethos without gender violence and discrimination—the theological reflection contributes to the recovery of the fundamental principles of human experience. To this end, the analysis begins by addressing the feminist contribution to the understanding of violence against women to then rethink the intersection of bodies, sexuality, and violence against queer individuals and communities as a theological locus. It concludes by recognizing that queer theologies configure a resistant theological community that empowers queer bodies as a territory of hope of resurrection and transformative political action that does not disregard the suffering and the injustices perpetrated against them. Full article

This article aims to approach Sanjuanist mysticism from a queer perspective. It is not a monolithic apology to queer people, nor a treatise on mystical interpretation, but an effort to recognize and validate the spiritual experience of LGBTIQ+ people. It takes some mystical passages from St. John of the Cross that help to read the experience of queer life in a mystical key. With this, the potential of mysticism to combat those phobic, segregating, and unjust ideologies that mistreat so many people because of their sexual orientation and gender identity dissidence is manifested. Although it is problematic, talking about this is an act of epistemic, sociocultural, and religious justice. Full article

In recent theological scholarship, there has been a wave of interest in the tradition of spiritual sense and marginal social identities within analytic and philosophical theology. In this article, I explore the theologies of spiritual sense in analytic theology (AT) to highlight part of the reason for the predominance of cisgender heterosexual voices in the field. Many feminist voices in AT express a common concern for a lack of integration between the mind, the body, and spiritual sense, which has enshrined the post-enlightenment cisgender heterosexual ‘man of reason’. Through an exploration of these feminist voices (Sarah Coakley and Michelle Panchuk), I argue that the field does not simply need more diverse voices but also voices of spiritual sense that undo a straight cisgender elitism. This elitism has kept the field from widely examining the anthropological questions of sexuality and gender, ethics, and theodicean dilemmas of desire and faith. By opening analytic philosophical approaches to spiritual sense, the field releases noetic control that has two consequential outcomes. Firstly, the field revalorizes pneumatology and ethics. Secondly, as a consequence of this, the field can see those who were previously unseen and heard, and, therefore, AT can develop into a sensing and thinking discipline capable of perceiving the queer or other in its midst. Spiritual sense and its priority for bodily and cruciform realities of suffering and desire can move the field from homogeneity to embracing the diverse ethical concerns of sexuality, gender, and race, and subaltern or queer subjectivities which are yet to be represented well in its midst. Using a distinctly neo-Augustinian approach, I argue that Augustine’s philosophy of the amor dei, with its emphasis on analytic clarity and inner spiritual sense, can redeem the eyes of AT’s heart. Full article

The liturgy is one of the most important places in which people are formed theologically through components such as prayers, music, visual art, and preaching. Yet, depending on the theology that is expressed, the liturgy can be a place that heals or harms. Because LGBTQIA2S+ and nonbinary people are often excluded and made invisible in Christian worship, this article focuses on the importance of Christian congregational song and how—drawing from Nathan Myrick’s work—it can be ethical for LGBTQIA2S+ and nonbinary people when it contributes to their flourishing. First is an articulation of a theology of “both/neither” which (1) acknowledges that LGBTQIA2S+ and nonbinary people exist, (2) is based on a sexually polymorphic reading of Genesis 1:27 and asserts that LGBTQIA2S+ and nonbinary people are made in God’s image, and (3) celebrates difference, diversity, and multiplicity. Next is a discussion of how enacting a theology of “both/neither” in the liturgy creates liturgies of livability for LGBTQIA2S+ and nonbinary people, whereas when it is not, it inflicts liturgical violence. This article concludes by exploring examples from Christian congregational song that support liturgies of livability through their expression of a theology of “both/neither.” Full article

This essay examines the theology and politics of queer Muslims in South Africa. Through a queering of the analytical lens of “struggle and praxis” or jihad, this essay traces the deployment of the term jihad by a collective of queer Muslims in Cape Town. In this articulation, queer Muslims play with their inherited traditions of liberation, challenging its presuppositions, and expanding its contours. This essay argues that these queer Muslims read liberation traditions through their experience and praxis which guide their orientations toward theological meaning-making and community practice. By doing so, they challenge the regulatory nature of hegemonic forms of queerness, which emerged in the Global North, resonating in the local posturing of South Africa as a safe space for queer people, ignoring the disparity between the law and public practice, and erasing the experiences of the margins of the queer community. By embracing this marginality, queer Muslims “reimagine” tradition by presenting an inclusive alternative theology and praxis, suggesting a queer possibility within Islam. Full article

Medieval nuns and anchorites (recluses) were spiritually and economically bound to pray for the dead, no matter their feelings towards the departed, who frequently appear to them in visions. This article charts medieval enclosed women’s attempts to intervene in this economy by forgetting souls. Staging a generative conversation between medieval women’s writings and Marcella Althaus-Reid’s (1952–2009) ‘indecent theology’ (queer liberation theology), this essay scrutinizes medieval female-authored texts for indecent forgetting (socially and economically disruptive forgetting). It juxtaposes a Middle English visionary text, A Revelation of Love by anchorite Julian of Norwich (1342/1343–c. 1416), with the mid-fourteenth-century Middle High German sister-book (compilation of nuns’ lives) of the Dominican convent of St Katharinental in Diessenhofen (in present-day Switzerland) and the early sixteenth-century Middle Dutch sister-book of Diepenveen (in the present-day Netherlands), originating from a Devotio Moderna convent of Augustinian canonesses regular. Heeding Althaus-Reid’s call, it dissects how forgetting unsettles systems of sanctioned spiritual and economic exchanges. I first examine how the sister-books forget certain souls and define their own terms for their participation in this system. I then turn to how Julian enlists all believers for her intercessory duties but also misplaces souls. Throughout, this article considers how these texts prise open space for medieval women within indecent theology. Ultimately, it illustrates how medieval women’s negotiations of their economic conditions supply a fertile ground for considering larger concerns of defiance, community, and the charity that binds together the living and the dead. Full article

This paper attempts to bring queer perspectives to interfaith dialogue in India. It will first consider what is interfaith dialogue and will situate interfaith dialogue within the framework of a theology of religions and a theology of missions. It will then offer an evaluation of some works accomplished by National Council of Churches in India with regard to the question of interfaith dialogue and sexuality. Finally, it will look at whether Christians in interfaith dialogue can learn anything from a queer reading of Hindu sacred texts. Full article

This theological reflection is a motivation to walk in the footsteps of Marcella Althaus-Reid to discover the disruptive principles of Latin American Queer Theology. Between tangos and popular music, libertine evocations and dissident stories, prosthetic considerations, and transit strategies, this indecent text indicates some revitalizing ideas that manifest the need to think and inhabit the Global South in a more queer way. The voice of the South is powerfully theological and potentially revolutionary. Full article

The article is an exercise in constructing theology from a Latin American perspective in dialogue with queer studies and theologies. The starting point is the tragic death of Lorena Muniz, a transwoman, in the process of getting breast implants making evident aspects of gender oppression, cis-sexist aesthetic pressure, and state neglect of health care specific to the trans population as denounced by ANTRA (National Association of Travestis and Transexuals). From this context, the article discusses a hermeneutics of mutilation in relation to Latin America and to the experience of trans people and introduces countersexuality (Preciado) as a way to resist the mutilations of cis-heteropatriarchy. With those tools in hand, the last part of the article realizes an exercise of theological and religious imagination engaging with the song Vaca profana (Caetano Veloso/Gal Costa) as a possible way of reconciling the reality of Lorena Muniz’ death with the hope for a different future through the symbolism of the divinas tetas [divine tits]. Full article

This article reflects upon how LGBTQIA+ Christians and their allies within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and its predecessor denominations ‘called the question’ on their right to and responsibility for membership, ordination, and marriage by simultaneously (1) practicing apologetic ‘ministries of presence’ and (2) grounding their ecclesio-juridical arguments in the church’s long-standing polity principles. It is commonly argued that advocates for full inclusion pushed the church to change historic norms, while ‘conservative’ voices called for the maintenance of time-honored principles. In an effort to problematize such reductionistic accounts, this article begins by sketching the historical trajectory of U.S. Presbyterian theology and polity, with special emphasis on the Adopting Act of 1729 and the tradition that proceeds from it. Building upon its survey of the debates that shaped the church’s history between the early eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, the text then shows how LGBTQIA+ Presbyterians and their allies acted within the traditional discursive patterns of their faith community when they advocated for the repeal of the exclusive policies that arose in the second half of the twentieth century. Inspired by the work of advocates and allies alike, when the PC(USA) and its predecessor denominations articulated an inclusive stance toward openly LGBTQIA+ members in 1978/1979, removed barriers to their ordination in 2011, permitted same-sex marriages within Presbyterian communities in 2015, and opened the church to receiving new theological insights from queer people via the adapted version of the ‘Apology Overture’ in 2016, the church’s collective discernment drew on historic Presbyterian principles of theology and governance to respond (often imperfectly) to contemporary challenges. The church’s multi-generational self-critique thus created a space in which queer Christians could ‘re-de-normalize’ their experiences of life and faith in ways that may open doors for post-apologetic reconstructive theological engagement in the years to come. Full article

In this article, I explore the interplay of yoga, theology and the time of perimenopause and menopause. Through an approach centered physically, theologically and philosophically on becoming, I find an integrated web of thinking, feeling and moving that weaves new ways of perceiving and living this time of change; an example, I suggest, of what Keller calls creatio ex profundis, new creation from the depths of a life. I bring aspects of process theology (along with feminist and queer theology), phenomenological materialism, embodiment and somatic psychology/physiology into conversation with personal narrative. I examine ideas of severance, threshold and emergence, and images such as release, holding and breath that resonate helpfully with the holistic embodiment of yoga, theologies of change and (peri)menopause. Full article

In this essay, I recount the recent narrative of an evangelical awakening on issues of sexual violence though the impact of Rachael Denhollander, an advocate and survivor of sexual trauma. Denhollander’s evangelical credentials authorized fellow US evangelicals to sympathize with the #MeToo movement. I then show how this script of awakening obscures a long history of abuse in relation to LGBTQ persons of faith. I demonstrate how American evangelical sex manuals make abuse both constitutive to a genuine discovery of personhood and simultaneously marginal to one’s self-identification. Paradox becomes a framework for describing the “problem” of homosexuality in evangelical circles. Finally, I reflect on what it suggests to scholars of religion that a religious community ensconces abuse in this distinctive way. Full article

Reports from Long-term HIV Survivors: Reclaiming Meaning while Confronting Mortality presents research completed by Kyle Desrosiers in conjunction with the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. Applying lifespan theory to spiritual development, it discusses the narratives of four American long-term HIV survivors from Latter-day Saints, Roman Catholic (2), and Conservative Jewish backgrounds. The fifth profile is from a Protestant pastor with an HIV ministry in a rural area. These profiles are five selected from among 10 interviews with HIV-positive people and caregivers across America now archived by the author at Baylor University. Questions directing this research were: how does HIV status affect participants’ relationship to their religious communities, identities, and spiritualties?; what narratives emerge from lifespan perspectives of HIV-positive and queer participants?; and what spiritual practices, mythos, and beliefs evolve/remain as a product of living at the margins of religion and society, alongside coping with a deadly global epidemic? This project reports narratives of change, continuity, and meaning-making to discuss how several gay/queer men from a range of ethnic and faith backgrounds have used spirituality and worldview to navigate life. Full article